Where the Magic Happens

Is there anything more magical than being in Disneyland on your birthday?  At any age, I contend there’s not.

We had just finished with a wonderful six days of touring Paris and decided to use one of our free nights from hotels.com to stay on the Disney resort at the Santa Fe hotel (it’s the spend 10 nights in a crappy hotel and use your free night to stay in a fancy one plan).  It is accessible to the park via convenient shuttle bus running every 12 minutes.  Perfect!  We weren’t sure when we arrived how many days of free tickets to the park we would have, so we were very happy to learn we had 3 days to explore the two parks.

The first day we focused on the Walt Disney Studio and the first thing Maylene convinces me to ride is the Aerosmith roller coaster.  Anyone who knows me, knows I don’t really care for roller coasters – especially the ones that do loops and cork-screws.  Take me on the kiddy rides any day!  So I decide to go into the coaster entry with her to keep her company and find out it does the crazy upsidedown stuff.  As we approached the front of the line, I seriously considered ducking out but then had my Amazing Race moment where I thought – if I was on the Amazing Race, would I do it?  The answer is, of course, yes because all these other people are doing it – it must be okay and there’s usually a million dollars on the line.  So I did and I even rode it again.  Can’t say that I really care for these types of coasters, but I can handle them better now.  I rode every ride in the park except for the Tower of Terror, but I don’t really think that counts.  =)  Space Mountain in Paris was definitely scarier than Tokyo, California, and Orlando with loops and corkscrews.  Maylene had a blast.  All of the pictures taken of me on any of the coasters shows me in sheer terror or quiet zen.

Only exception is to this rule is Big Thunder Mountain – we rode it like six times in a row at the end of my birthday because we wanted to squeeze every minute out of the tickets and Maylene wanted to do something that I really enjoyed and boy do I like Big Thunder Mountain – it’s also the best one I’ve been on with excellent design and a lot of pitch dark moments.  Fun!

We went all out for my special day – princess hat – lunch with the characters and when the little kid nearby celebrated his birthday with a cake, I joined in and pretended all the clapping and singing was for me! 😉  Good times!

Disneyland in Paris is very much like the one in Tokyo or California – doable in a few days and a lot of fun.  The way they made the train station terminate at the park entrance, right next to the shuttle buses made it perfect logistically.

Now I guess we’ll have to make our way to Hong Kong and if the timing is right, maybe we can be there for Maylene’s birthday!