Spring Break ~ France {Part 3)

Day 2 we got a late start because the kids desperately needed baths. Derek went to the grocery store and got some milk so we could have cereal/milk the rest of the mornings for breakfast. He also got stuff to make our own lunches since Disney is ridiculously expensive. We decided to go to the Studios this day since it's not very big and could easily be done in less than 1 day.

Train ride to the park

 

Blake wouldn't pose with Buzz :(

 

This ride is like the teacups ride, which we can't stand.....but Blake really wanted to ride the cars

 

Then we were off to Toyland where all the rides are Toy Story related.

 

The wait times for most of the rides were all over 40 min. So we rode the only one that wasn't.....Slinky Dog rollercoaster

 

Then we were off to wait for the Cinemagique show to start (which was really good!). As we were walking over we saw Ariel, Remy and Emile so Derek and the girls got in line for Remy & Emile and I got in line for Ariel. As soon as they got done getting pics with Remy & Emile I was next in line for Ariel. Perfect timing!

 

 

 

When we came out of the show we saw people lined up so we figured there was a parade starting soon. We found a spot, had lunch and watched the parade.

 

Then we went and saw Animagique which was another great show!

 

Then posed with Mike in front of Boo's door.....

 

 

 

Rode a few more rides and then went and saw Pluto. He was so funny.......which made it easy for Blake to want to pose for a picture with him

 

Then we went back to Toyland to see if any of the rides had shorter wait times.....the RC Racer one was shorter so Derek and the girls went to ride on it. Avery was too short though....she was really upsest. Derek and Allie still rode it. Blake and Avery posed with Rex. LOL, they don't look too happy in the pic. Probably because I was really mad and just got done giving some people a piece of my mind. We experience a lot of very rude people while at the park.......I'll leave it at that.

 

 

Then we ended our day at the studios by seeing Disney Jr Live, which ended up being completely in French.

 

The kids weren't ready to go home just yet so we went over to the main park and road Big Thunder Mountain again. Derek and I took turns riding with the girls and then the other took Blake to Pocahantas Playground.

 

 

Then we explored the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse and called it a night.

Now on to our time at Disneyland............

Our apartment was less than 5 min walk to the train station and from there it was one stop to Disneyland.....less than 3 minute ride. Super easy! Our first day it looked like it was going to be kind of crowded but it really wasn't. We stayed the entire day and rode got to see most of the park. We rode rides multiple times. Having never been to a Disney before I wasn't completely sure what to expect. I loved that the whole family could ride the majority of the rides.

Oh, and the weather was gorgeous every day!!!

 

 

First ride of the day, Autotopia....we rode several times on the trip and was one of Blake's favorites.

 

We rode another ride and then the girls were ready to try and find a princess! So we made our way to Fantasyland.

 

 

The wait to see the princesses was over an hour and a half so we left. The girls were a little bummed.

 

 

We decided to walk thru the castle. The girls wanted to re-enact this pose.

 

 

 

Then it was back to Discoverland to ride the Buzz Lightyear ride which Derek had got us a FastPass for. This one ended up being one of our top 3 favorite rides. We rode it a lot!

 

 

Next up, It's A Small World

 

 

And then another boat ride.....this one took us through scenes from various fairy tales.

 

By this time we decided to go and try to find Mickey. The wait to see Mickey wasn't too bad and there was a big screen showing old Mickey Mouse shows so the kids were entertained! I think we were all a little excited to see Mickey. Blake had fallen asleep about 5 minutes prior though! :(

 

The girls were super excited to get their first signature. I really think that was just about their favorite thing to do.

 

And then the lady that was monitoring the line told Mickey it would be a really cute picture of him holding the sleeping baby. Of course Blake woke up right away..........

 

Then we quickly took a couple group photos

 

As we were leaving Blake was actually wide awake, smiling and waving goodbye! :)

 

After that we walked thru Alice's Curious Labyrinth

 

 

Then the Dumbo ride.......

 

Blake begged to ride the horses so we gave in.

 

About this time the skies started to get dark and windy. It did sprinkle a bit but it didn't last long. Allie got excited and turned a corner.....there were stairs there and she missed every one of them and fell. :(

 

 

 

We contemplated leaving but the girls really wanted to stay. Crowds were really clearing out so that made the decision easier. We rode several more rides back to back with no wait. It was so nice. One of them was Pirates of the Caribbean. Blake and Allie weren't a fan of it the first time. Allie had her eyes closed the whole time and Blake kept saying scary and cried a few times.....but that was only after the boat went down a small drop. It was a really cool ride and was another that was in most of our top 3!

 

 

The sun was starting to set so we went over to Frontierland, the only part of the park we hadn't seen. The girls and I got in line for Big Thunder Mountain -- a rollercoaster. Avery was barely tall enough to ride. Whew! This ride was hands down our favorite ride! Probably my favorite rollercoaster ever. Very smooth.

 

Then we went to find our spots for the night time show of the castle. We got pretty decent spots and the show was awesome!!

 

 

 

And that was the end to a great day! Stay tuned for more.......

Spring Break ~ France {Part 1}

Spring break definitely didn't go as planned or expected but we made the most of it and still had a lot of fun. Thursday, April 4th was the girls' last day of school before Spring Break. Avery ended up getting sick that night! :( We had planned on going to see the Imagination Movers live Friday night but that didn't happened since Avery was still sick. We were then going to leave early Saturday morning to head down towards where the ferry leaves from and spend the day exploring Leeds Castle and the village of Rye. We had a hotel booked for Saturday night because our ferry was to leave Sunday morning at 7:30 -- it's a 3 hour drive there so it just made things easier to do it this way. Well, I had ordered some custom made Disney shirts for the kids and they still hadn't arrived so I was hoping that maybe Saturday would be the day. The post office opened at 10 so we figured we'd at least wait until then since we had spent all that money on these shirts just for this special occasion. They didn't make it and, in fact, still haven't. Also, right as we were getting ready to leave for the post office/on our trip Blake got sick. :( I had also been up the majority of the night not feeling well. Things definitely were not off to a good start.

Blake seemed to be doing better since he puked that morning so we thought we'd go back to Dover castle and go thru the 2 Secret Wartime tunnels that we didn't get to do last time.

 

Blake really did seem better....

 

We were only there a couple hours and then we went to the hotel. Hotel check-ins are always interesting for us. In Europe the max people per room is usually 3; sometimes 4. Obviously we exceed that max and think it's ridiculous to get another room when there is clearly enough room for us in one while the kids are so little. So, Derek and the girls go in and then he'll usually just text me the room # and Blake and I will go in about 10 minutes later. It was a maze trying to find our room at this place....and I was carrying my purse, toiletry bag, camera bag and Blake's blanket. I noticed he was starting to walk slower and then all of a sudden he threw up, a lot. We finally found the room.......Derek went and cleaned up the mess and told the front desk that his "daughter" got sick in the hallway. We gave the kids quick baths and called it a night. At 2am I could hear and definitely smell Blake going to the bathroom. He had the worst case of diarrhea, leaked through his pajamas. We got him cleaned up and settled back in bed and I bolted up. I don't know what made me think of it but we had forgotten our Disneyland tickets!!!! Immediate panic and frustration set in. I woke up Derek and he jumped up and took off on the 6 hour round trip -- at this point we had 5 hours until our ferry left and you have to board early to make it. We usually buy the "flex" pass meaning we can pretty much get on at anytime that day as long as there is room....but didn't this time. Go figure. Somehow he made it in 5 hours. We still missed our ferry but got on the next one. Whew!

 

I was worried about Blake on the ferry ride. Figured it would really upset his stomach. He did really well though. Towards the end of the ride he just wanted to lay down though. Derek got to sleep some which was good. Since Blake handled the ferry ride pretty well we figured we would go about our original plan which was to stop in Giverny to see Claude Monet's house and garden. About an hour into the drive Blake threw up all over. :( We pulled over on the side of the road. We were there for awhile as we had to get him cleaned up, change of clothes, carseat cleaned up, etc. So, in the meantime, French security came by. They never got out of their vehicle just sat and stared at us. They left before we did. After that we decided it was best to go straight to our apartment near Disneyland. Check-in wasn't until 5 and I was supposed to text when we were 30 minutes out.....I went ahead and texted asking if we could check in early. Never heard back. Arrived at apartment, went and found a place to eat that had wifi and I got on and emailed the guy. Still never heard anything. We finally borrowed our waiters phone and called and then got ahold of him. We were starting  to freak out thinking that it was on of the many European apartment scams that are out there. When he gave me his phone # there was a number in parenthesis so I just included it with the text......I guess I was supposed to leave that out.

 

The apartment was nice.......sort of. He failed to let me know that a few weeks ago the tenants above the apartment had a pipe leaking and there was a constant drip of water going into the bathroom. It was pretty gross. I also had specifically told him we would bring our own linens....otherwise they were going to charge us 10 euro a person. Well, he had linens on the beds and towels in the bathrooms so when we went to turn in our damage deposit he wanted 50 more euro. We were like no. He said they very rarely make a mistake. I said I had all the emails and started working on pulling it up and then he was quickly wanting to get out of there. But then we had to take off all his linens and fold and put them away ourselves. Annoying.

 

We then walked down the road to the patisserie and got some yummy pastries for the next morning and called it a night.

 

WHEW!!!