Boundless Horizons

Day 9 – Second day at Disneyland Paris

This morning we started with breakfast at Earl of Sandwich in Disney Village. This is one of our go-to spots for a quick and tasty meal. I had the Earl’s Club and a coffee, while Rhys had the Cannonballs and a tea. Aside from tasting good, the price is lower than the quick service locations in the parks. While this morning it was quiet, the line can get long at peak times so we like to mobile order which lets them start making our sandwiches as we walk through the Village.

As we’d spent so much time in Disneyland Park yesterday, today we alternated and began the day in Walt Disney Studios Park (WDSP). It’s currently undergoing a massive transformation, so there are a lot of construction walls to navigate. Studio One, the usual entrance to the rest of the park, is closed until 2025 for reimagining, so crowds are directed around the outside of the building. Interestingly, the app and several signs suggest visiting WDSP later in the day, to try and spread out the crowds.

While the construction is messy (and not great “Show”), the entertainment line up at WDSP is unbeatable. We started our day with a showing of Mickey & the Magician, which I adore. It’s a jukebox-style musical featuring Mickey and a cast of Disney friends. The production quality is excellent, and it’s a show we make a point of seeing on every visit.

Next up was Cars ROAD TRIP, the former Studio Backlot Tour. It’s fun, it’s cheesy, it has a low wait, and it has Catastrophe Canyon. What more could you want? I know a lot of people have a low opinion on this ride, but as someone who loved the tram tour at Walt Disney World, I love the chance to go through the canyon again. Plus the parks need to balance out the headliners with some less popular rides, otherwise you’ll spend all day in line.

Then it was time for Together: a Pixar Musical Adventure, which debuted last year. The show features a live orchestra, with Pixar friends coming together to help find missing musical score pages. It’s beautifully done, with a catchy theme song. The stage shows are popular, so I recommend getting there at least 30 minutes before the show begins to ensure you get a seat. There’s no photography during the show, which is nice as it means everyone gets to enjoy the show. It’s the only show where cast members actually hold up signs saying “no photography” and enforce it.

The theatre for Together is near the entrance to Avengers Campus, so we decided to do Web Slingers next. This generally has long lines all day, but there is a Single Rider line which is much quicker. While it means your party is split across multiple vehicles, the time saved in line can be worth the trade off. We’ve done this ride a few times, so didn’t mind riding separately. The down side is that you get an individual score, and a total score for the vehicle which counts for the leaderboard displayed at the exit. There is always a chance of being in a vehicle with people who are a little less competitive! I didn’t set a new Personal Best on this visit but I had a fairly respectable 253,500.

The other attraction where we often make use of the single rider line is Ratatouille: The Adventure. This is another favourite of ours, with a consistently high-ish wait time. Each vehicle seats six people in two rows of three, with single riders used to fill gaps. We’ve been assigned to different rows in the same vehicle once, but we’re usually in separate vehicles with the same dispatch group. During the D23 event at Disneyland Paris in April 2023, we actually had the chance to do a walk through of this attraction with one of the Imagineers, Bjorn Heerwagen. Seeing the details up close gave us a whole new appreciation for this ride!

Wait times for rides are highest in the middle of the day, which makes stage shows a good option since they have a large capacity and fixed show times. With that in mind, we realised that it wasn’t long until a showing of Alice & the Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland. Across from Ratatouille, there are currently chalets for the Rendezvous Gourmand,  which is like a little Food & Wine Festival. This gave us a chance to pick up some wine to take with us to the show!

Alice & the Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland was even more fun the second time around, as we had a chance to focus on different characters. This time we sat a little closer to the front and slightly off to the other side compared to our seats the last time we saw the show for a different angle.

Leaving Walt Disney Studios Park behind for now, we paid a visit to the Disneyland Hotel. One of the reasons we popped into the hotel every day (aside from it being beautiful) was to enquire at the shop about the clock they were selling based on the clock on the front of the building. It’s not a limited edition item, but it has been so popular that they struggle to keep it in stock. It’s been sold out every time we’ve asked, so the quest continues! We did, however, have the chance to see Rapunzel!

Into Disneyland Park for the first time today, and we were just in time to see A Million Splashes of Colour, the current show in the castle hub. It’s not quite as good as the show it replaced (Dream… and Shine Brighter! was a massive crowd favourite), but it’s still cute. And it’s always fun to see Disney friends out and about!

We had a reservation for dinner at Walt’s today, since it was the last night of our trip. The restaurant is beautiful and located on Main Street, USA. The streets were pretty crowded with people watching A Million Splashes of Colour, but we knew we could hitch a ride in the wake of the floats to get down Main Street quickly!

Each room of the restaurant is themed to a different land in the parks. We had a perfect window table in the Frontierland room, which we haven’t been in before. The menu is €55 for three courses. We both started with the chicken pot pie which has changed slightly since I last had it – it’s now served in a little croissant bowl rather than a filo pastry bowl with a Mickey shaped filo pastry lid. But it is still very tasty! Then Rhys had Mac & Cheddar Cheese, and I had Thelma-Style Potato. And for dessert Rhys had the warm chocolate chip & hazelnut cookie while I had the Caramelised Millefeuille. We’ve tried most of the items on the current menu and enjoyed them all.

After dinner we did some shopping, then visited Hotel New York – the Art of Marvel for drinks at the Skyline lounge. This became a bit of a go-to spot while the Disneyland Hotel was being refurbished and it’s still a really nice place to visit. Plus you never know who’ll fly by!

We made it back to Disneyland Park to watch the Electrical Sky Parade for the last time on this trip, and then back to our hotel to pack and get ready to leave the next morning.