Day Eleven of London, Amsterdam, Paris

Sunday

If you don't know this about Lola, she's a big Disney fan. She grew up going to Disneyland with her family almost every year and it's a massive touchstone for her whole family. It's her childhood summed up in a place. So when Paris was discussed, going to Disneyland Paris was the first big box on the bucket list.

My perspective is less Disney-centric. While I did go to Disney World (FL) once as a kid, it didn't have the same connection to me. For me, my favorite vacations as kids were the exploration type visits. One of the big ones was in my early teens my father decided we'd go hunting for information on his favorite pastor from the early 1800s, Charles Finney. I can vividly remember (now almost 30 years in the past) going into deserted gravesites, scraping moss and sticks off graves, looking for familiar names. I can specifically remember going into a church where the pastor had spoken and seeing his pulpit. It sounds weird now, but that was exciting stuff! I don't doubt that's why I still love old graveyards and churches. You get your hands dirty, touching the history.

But my view on Disney has softened listening to Lola talk about her love of the brand, her experiences, and how the characters shaped the way she saw herself as a growing child. We're passing that love to our daughter and you cannot avoid getting sucked in when the two people you love most are going on a journey. So if Disney is part of my wife's childhood and is becoming a key part of my child's experience, than I will embrace it to the extent I can (as a jaded 41 year old).

This morning we got up around 8a, walked to Gare du Nord to purchase a special ticket to Disney Paris. The route requires taking the RAR line, which goes outside of Paris proper, so you need seperate tickets. We made sure to buy return tickets in advance and, when prompted, marked that we would return between 8p-10p (when the park would close), more on that later. We boarded the train and began the 50 minute journey out of Paris to the park.

The rail lines in Paris, though often knocked for being dirty and crowded, are actually efficient and carry thousands of people every day, of all class, race, and social stripe. It's amazing how you'll see an obvious homeless person (and smell them, unfortunately) next to a businessman in a suit, next to a middle aged woman with her grandkid, next to a kids on the way home from school. Everyone rides the train/metro.

The trip out was quick (the RAR is high speed) and we arrived at the last stop outside Disney. The last stop even has the Mickey silhouette on the metro sign, they know why you're headed that way. The metro station has an exit directly into the Disney Paris queue, which was already beginning to fill out with the first group. It was chilly and a little damp, but nothing compared to our experiences in London. We got through the line efficiently and popped out into the area between the two parks, dominated by a fountain and the traditional Mickey face made out of flowers. Lola was in heaven.

Tickets to Disney Paris are around $120 per person. However, we made a decision when purchasing them that I'd encourage anyone with means to do. Buy Unlimited Fastpass. It allows the holder to skip lines on most rides (60-70%) and the unlimited means you can go back over and over again if you choose. When lines get up to 90 minutes, you become very thankful for fastpass. If you're only going to the park for a single day, why spend that day in line? Yes, it's expensive. We spent $180 per person (on TOP of the $120 for the ticket), but we bought well in advance and saved the money. It was worth it.

We decided to head into the Disney section of the Park, there was a much smaller area called Walt Disney Studios, but we decided to bump that till later. Once inside, we began hitting the rides as quickly as possible.

The order is a little jumbled in my head, but these are the rides I specifically remember: It's a Small World, Peter Pan's Flight, Phantom Manor, 2X Star Tours: The Adventure Continues (Star Wars Ride), Ratatouille, Big Thunder Mountain. While they were all great, I want to focus on one in particular.

So I'm not a roller coaster guy. AT ALL. Don't like heights, don't like screaming and flying around, don't like being jerked and popped, it's not my thing. I think part of it goes back to my experience at Disney World on Space Mountain, where, DURING THE RIDE, I collapsed into a puddle of tears in my dad's lap. My wife, on the other hand, loves it. Because we were on this trip together, I promised myself I would go on at least one with her, because life is short and she deserves it. There were several roller coaster option in the park, including some very scary ones, but Lola was kind and asked if we could go on the least scary one, Big Thunder Mountain.

I kept joking about chickening out, but I could tell Lola really wanted to go, so we got into line. I did my usual nervous chatter, joked a lot, and stared in horror at the screaming faces on the ride. When we got into the ride, I pulled the bar down a little too hard and it squeezed my gut, but better safe than sorry I whispered to myself. And just like that, we flew up the track. I screamed for about 2 minutes straight and kept closing my eyes. Lola was laughing, yelling, and having a great time. It was entirely worth it. Life is short, the ones you love are worth every moment.

We went to lunch at a "american" style place that served hot dogs and hamburgers. The walls were decorated with old baseball pictures and all the staff were wearing baseball uniforms. The hotdogs were served in pretzel rolls, but the mustard was dijon, so it was a mixed bag. We sat and ate and laughed how they could have really nailed the aesthetic, but just missed it with the tiny details. And for all the Disney fans out there, there were no churros. Which was a big bummer.

We walked the park for hours, even going to the Virtual Reality Star Wars ride twice, but by 5p we were worn out...and we had 3 hours till we could board our train. So we went shopping. We spent a small fortune on gifts for family and friends and had an amazing time. Saving money in advance for what we loved allowed us to have fun without concern in moments like that. We finished shopped around 630p and walked to the train station.

We still had close to an hour to wait, so we bought some sandwiches and chips from a little shop in the train station and sat down and ate them. And then we waited. And waited. We watched family after family walk past us, headed to the trains, but we waited. Watching people is fun and Lola and I are hilarious (or so we think), so we spent most of the time laughing at our snide comments. And we waited.

Finally, 8p came and we boarded our train back to Paris. We arrived at the apartment a little after 9p and collapsed into bed. I struggled to sleep, but Lola managed to crash pretty quickly. We'd have challenges to deal with in the morning.