(Updated 11/12) BURN IT ALL (well not the Disneyland part) - a June 2024 TR for Paris and Disneyland Paris

Araminta18 · Oct 13, 2024

Ok, hi everyone! Next Disney trip is in almost exactly 30 days...we'll see if I can get this TR done before we go (not gonna lie, I'm not super optimistic! Going through my pictures...there's a lot #sorrynotsorry). This is going to include our Paris adventures before our 3 days at Disneyland Paris, since that was the overwhelming consensus on my last TR - I'll update the title with an indication of when the DLP part starts for anyone who wants to tune in at that point and not follow along with the pre-DLP Paris bits.

But let's get to it!

The details:
who: me and my husband Trevor
when: Monday June 3 through Friday June 14th (Paris from June 4th through June 11th, Disneyland Paris from June 12th - June 14th)
where: Disneyland Hotel!

Introductions:
I'm Tiffany, I'll be your ghost host for this trip report.

I'm 37 (but 36 on this trip) and while I'm a librarian by education, I currently do federal records management, since records management is where the pay is, and I gotta pay for Disney! Favorite princess is Sleeping Beauty, but I also love Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel. Favorite ride at Disneyland Paris: Big Thunder Mountain, Phantom Manor, Hyperspace Mountain, and their Pirates of the Caribbean.

My traveling companion is my husband Trevor. He's 38 and loves Star Wars and Marvel, but has grown to love Disney--his favorite characters are Boba Fett, Vader and Stormtroopers, and on the non-Star Wars side, Grumpy. His favorite rides at Disneyland Paris are Big Thunder Mountain, Hyperspace Mountain, Web Slingers, and Avengers Flight Force (brb, getting a divorce cause Phantom Manor didn't make his list).

All right, let's get started! So, this trip was absolutely a last minute thing. Trevor switched positions at work earlier this year and now he travels a *lot* more, and so this trip popped up and I was like um heck yes I'm going to go with you! I did Paris by myself in 2022 and Trevor then joined me for a few days at DLP (see our TR for that trip: "But Your Back is Broken!" WDWers do Disneyland Paris - A Sept 2022 TR), and loved DLP enough that I absolutely wanted to go back. This actually was going to be a little bit of a repeat of that earlier trip, because Trevor would be working for the first week or so and so I'd be touring around by myself, before he took a few days to do Paris and then DLP before heading home. I did so much planning for the 2022 trip that I didn't do a ton of planning this time, especially 'cause Trevor's work schedule was a bit up in the air. But I did book the post-work days - a day in Paris to see the stuff Trevor wanted, a day doing Versailles, then Disneyland Paris! Now that the Disneyland Hotel was back open, and I'm ABSOLUTELY a princess fan, I talked Trevor into splurging and so we booked a room at the Disneyland Hotel. So excited! I didn't book any of the table service restaurants at Disneyland Paris, cause with only one full day, none of the restaurants were ones I wanted to repeat. But I did manage to stalk the app and book a reservation for La Table de Lumiere within the Disneyland Hotel. Yay!

Anyways, this is a bit of a scattered opening, which not gonna lie is a bit emblematic of how the trip went. I'm excited to re-live it but know it's gonna be bonkers scattered. But if you're up for it, come along!! (Also, I am going to apologize in advance - I got burned by the whole imgur pictures not embedding thing, so now I just embed my pictures directly in the posts, but there's a limit of 10 and if you are at all familiar with any of my previous trip reports, I include a LOT of photos. a LOT. So there will be a LOT of posts...sorry!)

Araminta18 · Oct 13, 2024

Araminta18 · Oct 13, 2024

Travel Day! - Monday June 3rd and Tuesday June 4th, 2024 (part 1)

We were scheduled to fly out on a red eye on Monday June 3rd, and Trevor was actually coming back from another work trip that day. The plan was for him to get home at about 2:30ish, and then the flight was at 10:45, so we needed to leave home by like 7 pm. So it was definitely a bit of a hectic day for him! I stayed home on Monday to finish packing up and do all the last minute things, like shopping and dropping off keys with our friends, etc.

Trevor made it home just on schedule (about 4 pm) and we did some quick laundry for him and the last minute panic of "do we have all the things" with an extra flavor of "do we have copies of all important documents and things in case a phone gets stolen?!", but we were in the uber by 6:59 pm.

There was no traffic, which was nice, and so by 7:30 we were at Dulles.

Check in went smoothly and fine, and TSA pre-check continued to be worth its weight in gold, cause we were definitely at our gate waaaaaaaay ahead of time (done by 8). There was a starbucks at the gate so we got one of those blue raspberry boba lemonade drinks - it was yummy but I didn't take a picture - TR fail! We also ended up getting Subway for dinner, cause that was like the only other thing open in the terminal. We were in a weird part of the airport so there wasn't a lot there. Oh well!

Everything went smoothly with boarding, though they were using facial recognition vs scanning passports, which was weird and SO SLOW. After the first couple of groups they were like "nope" and just went back to normal boarding. I boarded ahead of Trevor, and was able to scout out the overhead bin space - the plane was a bit of a weird setup - 2 by 3 by 2, and Trevor and I had made sure we were in one of the 2 seats on the side. But the overhead bin spaces was really small - much smaller than I expected. There were bins over the middle 3 seats but they were too small for roller bins, so Trevor had to stick his roller bag in a space further towards the front of the plane, cause there wasn't anything really left back where we were.

We did get lucky though - the 3 seat row next to us had no one in the 2 seats closest to us, so as soon as the doors closed, Trevor hopped over to that aisle and so I had the 2 row to myself and he had the aisle and a bit of the middle seat. yay legroom!

The flight was fine - uneventful. I prepped a bit better for the flight and had like my night time stuff (took out my contacts, one of those fake toothbrush things - the colgate wisps!, etc etc) so got a bit of sleep, as well as watched movies and stuff. Trevor and I were both disappointed that the wifi wasn't working. womp womp.

Anyways, flight was fine; we landed in Paris at 12:30 pm -ish local time. It went really quickly to get off the plane, get through customs and get our bags, and by 1:30, we were in a cab heading to Paris! The cab ride seemed to take a while but it was cool to see some of the preparations and signage for the Olympics.

I don't have a time stamp of us arriving at the hotel, but by 3 pm, we were in our room. Room tour! We were staying at the InterContinental Le Grand - Paris, right by the Paris Opera House. And as a huge Phantom of the Opera fan, staying that close to the Opera House was awesome.

This was also a suuuuuuper fancy hotel - too fancy for us!

Room tour! You open the door to this:

and there's a little closet off to the left:

The room was on the right - it was definitely a bit cramped:

We did have a little bit of a view, but it was the interior courtyard:

But the windows opened all the way which was cool.

Then the bathroom! Fancy big tub:

This was deep but not super long, sadly.

Commode area.

So yea, a nice little room, but definitely little. You could tell this was the upper floor where the servants used to live cause the ceilings were really low. How did we know other rooms had higher ceilings? Foreshadowing.....

Anyways, we unpacked our stuff a bit, and then it was the fight to stay awake until it was a normal bed time in an effort to fight jet lag. We decided to go get some snacks! We were in Paris - bread and pastries were necessary. So we explored some of the shops near the hotel, and ended up buying fun chips and such at the grocery store (and some fun sodas for Trevor), and then some pastries and a baguette and cheese sandwich. Trevor had a work meeting get called last minute, so we grabbed the food and went back to the hotel, and Trevor had just enough time to eat the sandwich before heading off.

Yay Paris and delicious food. It was so good - seriously, everyone is like "where's the best [whatever] in Paris" but honestly for Americans it's all good. Don't stress.

Ok, we finished our snack, and Trevor went off to his work meeting. It was about 5:30 - what would I do for the next few hours?

DLo · Oct 13, 2024

Following along. Hopping over from your last TR. Can’t wait to read more about your Paris adventures.m

Araminta18 · Oct 13, 2024

DLo said:
Following along. Hopping over from your last TR. Can’t wait to read more about your Paris adventures.m

thanks for joining!

dizneedoll · Oct 13, 2024

Yay! Ive been excited to read this TR! I’ve never been to Paris but would really like to go and do DLP too but I hate to fly so kinda nervous and I’m on the west coast so it’s a really long flight. But my next WDW trip is in 13 days so yay!

erinch · Oct 13, 2024

I am SOOOO in!

nascargirl · Oct 14, 2024

Joining in again. I was lucky enough to visit Paris and Disneyland Paris back in 2012. I would love to visit again.

Araminta18 · Oct 14, 2024

dizneedoll said:
Yay! Ive been excited to read this TR! I’ve never been to Paris but would really like to go and do DLP too but I hate to fly so kinda nervous and I’m on the west coast so it’s a really long flight. But my next WDW trip is in 13 days so yay!

Thank you for reading!! I hope you get a chance to go one day - Disneyland Paris gets a bad rap but we really enjoyed it. Also YAY on your WDW trip! I hope you have a FANTASTIC time.

erinch said:
I am SOOOO in!

Thank you for reading!

nascargirl said:
Joining in again. I was lucky enough to visit Paris and Disneyland Paris back in 2012. I would love to visit again.

Thank you for reading!! Ooh, jealous of visiting DLP back in 2012 - getting to see Space Mountain and Phantom Manor before they got rethemed! I hope you get a chance to go back.

rdkeim · Oct 15, 2024

Following!

alohamom · Oct 15, 2024

Following, especially for the low ceiling foreshadowing LOL!

suse66 · Oct 15, 2024

Joining in! I had a whole list of quotes from your other report and I lost them all when I went to reply! Suffice to say I really enjoyed your report and especially all the non alcoholic cocktails you tried! I am trying to have more non alcoholic drinks on vacay so that was super helpful!

Can't wait to hear about Paris as it is definitely on my list to visit!

Araminta18 · Oct 15, 2024

rdkeim said:
Following!

thank you for reading!!

alohamom said:
Following, especially for the low ceiling foreshadowing LOL!

LOL it also ties into the TR title....

thanks for reading!!

suse66 said:
Joining in! I had a whole list of quotes from your other report and I lost them all when I went to reply! Suffice to say I really enjoyed your report and especially all the non alcoholic cocktails you tried! I am trying to have more non alcoholic drinks on vacay so that was super helpful!

Can't wait to hear about Paris as it is definitely on my list to visit!

thanks for joining! I'm glad you enjoy them, and that the non-alcoholic drink reviews are helpful.

I wish Disney would branch out a bit beyond the lemonades, but when you find something different (cough cough Le Cellier) it's usually really good - I hope you find some good ones!

Paulaparm · Oct 15, 2024

Following along!

buteraa · Oct 15, 2024

Excited!

alohamom · Oct 16, 2024

Araminta18 said:
LOL it also ties into the TR title.... thanks for reading!!

OH LA LA, now I'm really invested, hahaha!

Araminta18 · Oct 16, 2024

Paulaparm said:
Following along!

thanks for reading!!!

buteraa said:
Excited!

thank you for joining in!!

alohamom said:
OH LA LA, now I'm really invested, hahaha!

lol uh oh I hope I haven't oversold it!

Araminta18 · Oct 16, 2024

Disney Appetizer - Tuesday June 4th, 2024 (part 2)

Ok, so Trevor was off to work, it was 5:30, I didn't want to stay in the hotel cause I would absolutely fall asleep. Where to? I know you're all shocked, but I figured I'd hop on the Paris Metro to Disney Village - Disneyland Paris's version of Disney Springs.

Disneyland Paris is right off the metro, about an hour ride from the Paris center, so I figured why not?

I got my stuff together and headed out of the hotel to hop on the metro. There's a metro stop right by the hotel - like a 3 minute walk. And the view?

It was supposed to be the Paris Opera House but womp womp - it's under renovation and therefore under scrim. Paris subscribes (a little bit) to the Disney scrim idealogy - make the scrim look like the building it's covering, except for the ad space they sell front and center. Oh well.

The Paris metro is awesome - if you've never been or never used it, I highly recommend it. It's cheap and fast and convenient, and almost exactly one hour later I was getting off at the Disneyland Paris stop, only to find a very familiar site:

Apparently it was their opening day at the train station! Always fun to be far from home and then see something super familiar.

Disney Village has a World of Disney as well as some fun other little shops and restaurants, though it's undergoing a huge renovation and lots of things were shut down. Thankfully World of Disney wasn't, so I ducked in there to look around a bit. I found some fun things, including Sleeping Beauty ears (Sleeping Beauty is my favorite

) and just enjoyed looking at some of the ride merchandise for rides specific to Disneyland Paris, like Phantom Manor (their version of Haunted Mansion). I didn't buy anything yet, because while France (and all the EU, really) have a VAT tax, if you spend over $100 at one spot, you can get the VAT refunded. All the shops at Disneyland Paris count as "one shop" for the purpose of the VAT refund, so I was holding off until I'd looked at the other shops and knew I was either gonna spend $100, or that I wasn't and so I'd hold off til we actually went to Disney near the end of our trip.

As I ventured further into Disney Village, I saw these really fun pictures up on one of the renovation walls:

It's the castle with that Sleeping Beauty style! So pretty - I wish they'd sell prints like this.

I didn't really see anything else in any of the other shops, so I was getting ready to head out, and then I decided what the heck, might as well wander over to the Disneyland Hotel and see if they were letting non-resort guests in. When it initially reopened they weren't letting anyone in unless they were staying there, and I wasn't sure if they were still operating that way or not. If they weren't, great I could go in and look at the gift shop there and look around the hotel a bit; if they were oh well.

But they were letting everyone in!

It's such a pretty lobby - hard to see in this shot but the hanging chandelier forms the castle!. I really enjoyed just kind of wandering around and making my way up to the second floor where the gift shop was. There are so many fun details:

In the hallway they have this throne-like chair just sitting there for fun photo ops.

There are a bunch of display cabinets in the hallway by the gift shop as well, showing the various merch items they have, but the part that caught my eye was that the main decoration on each cabinet points to a particular princess! And in true "me" fashion, I'm giving you pictures of all of them.

Tiana's flower.

Snow White's apple.

Ariel's shell.

Rapunzel's star/flower

This is the only one I'm unsure of - I think it's Mulan's flowers?

Araminta18 · Oct 16, 2024

Shopping and Pastries! - Tuesday June 4th, 2024 (part 3)

And one last:

Beauty's rose.

And then I was shopping! There's a bunch of Disneyland Hotel specific merch, a lot of it for the re-opening, and I'm not gonna lie that I was definitely having some FOMO and figured if there was anything I wanted I should buy it in case it sold out. It was all so pretty! But I was proud of myself - i almost bought the $425 Disneyland Hotel Dooney and Burke bag but I was strong and didn't.

I did buy a sweatshirt and some art and such.

Definitely put me over $100 so I headed back to World of Disney to buy the other things I had my eye on.

I love this mirror with the castle etched in it, on the way out of the Disneyland Hotel.

Isn't it so pretty? My quick little shopping trip had made me even more excited for our stay.

On my way back to World of Disney, I may or may not have stopped to get some chocolate covered strawberries in Disney Village - one of my favorite snacks in Disneyland Paris.

I quickly ducked into the store and bought my goodies (including my Sleeping Beauty ears and some Big Thunder Mountain keychains - Big Thunder Mountain at DLP is the best Big Thunder Mountain!), and then hopped back on the metro back to the hotel.

I got back to the hotel area by 9, but I was hungry, so I went to the Galleries Lafayette to get some snacks from their fancy food court there. Trevor was weirdly enough not super hungry, but I got myself a quiche, a baguette for Trevor (cause a baguette is like his favorite food ever) and then:

raspberry tart! This was SO good. I love that the French love raspberries in their pastry - it's my favorite fruit and so much more popular in France.

They threw in a fancy croissant for free:

Yum.

Trevor was back from work so we split it, though thankfully Trevor only wanted a small bite of my raspberry tart and focused more on the croissant and the baguette.

Satisfied with the yummy French pastries, we were dead on our feet and fell into bed. Yay jet lag.

Tomorrow, Trevor had to work, and my plan was to go to the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Fun with metrics:
Steps walked: 10863 steps (4.5 miles)
Ride count: 0 (unless we count the metro?)
I'd love to count pastries but I don't think I kept an accurate count...I just ate them

alohamom · Oct 17, 2024

OMG-that chandelier is stunning!

(Updated 11/12) BURN IT ALL (well not the Disneyland part) - a June 2024 TR for Paris and Disneyland Paris

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