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So we went to the two Disney parks, once on Sunday the 13th of December and again on Wednesday the 16th of December. The parks were open til real late on the Sunday and til the evening on the Wednesday. This is because it was pretty busy on the Sunday, but the park being open for 12 hours was a good leveller for that.
Right, first of all, I'd just like to make a general statement of opinion/fact: Disney is a truly amazing place, with something for basically every member of any family, this is despite their attempts to ruin it (I shall explain all).
We arrived at the parks on the Sunday morning, a bit later than we expected but still with 10 hours of park time ahead of us! We got the 1 day 2 parks ticket, which allows you into the two Disney parks as many times as you like on that day (it's one park, but they've found a way to make you pay more money (Disney's first attempt to ruin it)). We decided to go into DisneyLand first as opposed to Studios (wrongly, we later find). We then made our way to Big Thunder Mountain (BTM) because both of us had been to Disney before but the missus had never had chance to ride BTM when she had previously been. When we got there (Disney's second attempt to ruin it, coming up), the entrance to the queue was closed and guarded by park employees explaining that the ride would be open again in 15 minutes. Oh, a problem with the ride? No. The park, it seems, randomly closes the queue to all of it's rides at random points throughout the day. It took me a while to realise why, but it has to the with Disney's third attempt to ruin it. There is TOO many "Fastpass" tickets. At a couple of points during the day, we were in a regular queue for a ride and noticed that the fastpass queue was actually longer than the queue we were in.
Anyway, having been turned away from BTM, we ventured to Indiana Jones. This ride is pretty damn sweet, considering how small a ride it is, it's quite intense, with the closeness to the theming and the general roughness of it. It's just the correct amount of roughness and bad shaping to make the ride better. You know how B&M coasters tend to be missing something? Well, this has it in bucket-loads, I like to call it "amusing shittyness", or something like that. Anyway, the theming is fantastic, just like every other ride at Disney. The ride itself is good, it's fun and probably the most intense ride at Disney (even though it's not particularly intense). For sure, don't go to Disney and come away without riding it.
After Indiana Jones, we went over to Space Mountain: Mission 2, only to find it had fallen victim to the same random fastpass related closure that had been bestowed upon BTM 45 minutes earlier. You can simply wait outside the front of the queue area for them to reopen the queue, it takes about 10-15 minutes and it's just the same as queueing would be. But, we decided to go to Star Tours instead, being as I remembered it as a good memory from when I went to Disney as a child. Star Tours is basically a jumped up motion simulator, but it is a bloody good one. Again, like all the other Disney rides, the queue especially, is fantastically well themed, and even though we queued for 30 minutes, we didn't feel in anyway like we'd lost any time. The queue is just as much a ride as the ride itself.
Having only been on two rides (Sunday was BUSY, man!) by sort of 12:30, we were getting pretty hungry, so it was time to grab some grub. On the way to Indiana Jones earlier, we'd seen something we wanted to try for dinner, so we headed back there. Pizza Outpost, was the name of the place, the menu was Pizzas and various side dishes to shove with it. Disney really do think of everything, they're very good at what they do, when the pizza came, it was shaped like the famour Mickey Mouse logo, which is obvious I guess, but it was a surprise at the time. Prices, considering this is a theme park afterall, were pretty reasonable. The only thing that made it expensive was the current exchange rate, which hit us for the whole holiday. Basically everything is currently about twice the price it would have been if we'd been there this time last year!
After eating, we went across to the other park, Studios. Then, straight to Crush's Coaster. This for me is the best ride in the whole place. It's definitely the best spinner I've been on. Whether it's the intensified feeling of speed giving by the near total darkness or the track itself, I don't really know, but this was mine and my missus' favourite ride. As far as "family rides" go, this is a sweet one!
After CC, I was off to Rock 'n' Rollercoaster, on me todd, as the missus has an aversion to launched coasters and I made the mistake of telling her that it was one. However, I had no idea about this ride other than it was a Vekoma and it was Launched. I'd never put the two together to realise that it was a clone, but I realised after the first element. This ride is pretty good, nothing special, but it's good for sure. The theming inside massively improves the ride, as it has you diving through various tunnels of light. This makes, what I assume is a fairly dull coaster, seem actually pretty good!
There is some other flat rides and some general family experience rides in the Studios park, but nothing else really took our interest, so we left and headed back to DisneyLand. Throughout the rest of the day, we rode most other stuff in the park including, eventually, Space Mountain. I didn't particularly like this ride, whether it was just me or not, I found it quite painful, especially to my head region. Despite the missus' dislike for the launching experience, she actually really liked the rest of the ride. The theming again is simply amazing, they obviously have a lot of money to burn.
![[lol]](https://www.coastercrazy.com/forums/images/smilies/icon_e_ugeek.gif "test"){kind=icon}
The wednesday was much the same only the park wasn't open for as long, but there was hardly anyone there in comparison to Sunday, most stuff was nearly walk on, with 5-10 minute queues and the odd 30 minutes queue.
The park is a pretty special place to be, with a really good atmosphere. Things like random sessions of fake snow being blown over the tops of the building in the main street only add to the atmosphere and make the whole place seem really quite special. If I have plenty of money when I'm a bit more senior, I will definitely be taking my kids to this place. It's worth all the money it costs for my mind. I found it so special a place in fact, that I decided it was a good moment/place for me to propose to my girlfriend [:)] It something you only hope to do once, and we both agreed that I'd made a pretty good choice with my location, so yeah, if anyone's thinking of popping the question.... [;)]
Want some pictures?
The entrance
Main street
Parade type thing
Space Mountain
and again
Even the pizza is themed!
Crush's Coaster
The theming at this place is pretty special
Sleeping Beauty's Castle by night
The sight of my proposal [:)]
I saw this and I thought of you, Gaz
btw, it was pretty cold
More special theming. Thunderhead Falls, anyone?
The missus getting in the mood for Crimbus
and posing with Sully
... that's basically all the pictures I can be bothered to upload. This has turned out to be a pretty huge trip report anyway, so I shall finish by saying: Don't not visit Disney if you happen to be on the European mainland [;)].
