TacoCat’s Travels #47 (Paris): Blasting Off! 🚀

Hey Steemit!

So if you didn't catch the last few posts, this series is about our trip to Paris way back in June 2016 when we went there for summer school! Both of us enrolled in a Luxury Management course at a college called HEC Paris! The course itself was 2 weeks long, but we booked our flight a week earlier so we could travel and explore the city.

In the last post, we just started our day-long trip to Disneyland Paris! There are 2 separate parks inside the Disneyland compound - Walt Disney Studios Park, and Disneyland Park. And we just started exploring Disneyland Park! Alright, on with the show!

9 June 2016. Thursday.

So we just got done with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Adventureland and headed towards Fantasyland, which is themed after a storybook village taking many architectural traits from various European villages.

There were many references to Alice in Wonderland, with a hedge maze and the Mad Hatter tea party photo-op.

There were a lot more people in Fantasyland than Adventureland, I guess because of all the Princessy, fairytale stuff.

As you can probably tell, the sun was out in full blast at this point, since it was noon, but thankfully it was just sunny and not that warm.

There were people with strollers all over Fantasyland, so it was kinda difficult to walk through some areas since the strollers would take up so much space.

We just walked around, dodging the crowd whenever possible, and eventually got to It's A Small World!

I think this is a pretty iconic ride in Disneyland, and I'm sure all the Disneylands have it. But since it's pretty much similar to the Pirates ride (other than it being more kiddy and high-pitched), we passed on it. Well I rode it before in Hong Kong, and Sean wasn't very keen, so we skipped it.

So we just walked around for a bit, admiring the European village-style architecture.

Until we got to a really nice photo spot with the castle!

We walked for a little bit more and arrived in Discoveryland!

Discoveryland is the sci-fi part of the park, and is themed after the visions of famed European thinkers and explorers such as Leonardo da Vinci, HG Wells, or Jules Verne. It's also probably the land with the most thrilling rides, since it has Space Mountain!

Another iconic ride at Disneyland, Space Mountain is an indoor roller coaster where you blast off on a space adventure to the end of the universe! There are quite a few twists and turns on the ride, and for the most part it's quite dark other than some lighting and sound effects to depict a supernova. There are also some curving neon lights just before the end to simulate a vortex.

I read that the year we went (2016) was actually the last year that this particular version of Space Mountain was available! In 2017, they remodelled it to Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain complete with Star Wars projections and music! Cool!

There were a lot more people in the park now and it was getting pretty warm so we decided to take a break and look for some lunch.

We found a place that wasn't too crowded and had some pretty alright fish and chips. It was a little expensive, but average for Disneyland prices I guess.

After lunch, we took a walk to Frontierland, which is themed after the 19th century American Old West mining town of Thunder Mesa. There were huge fixtures like desert and wilderness landscaping, large rock formations, a river and frontier architecture.

We came across the Indiana Jones ride (called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril), but I don't think we rode it since we had just finished eating, and it was another fast-paced thrill ride.

After that, we ended up back at the castle again and took some nicer shots.

We were deciding on which ride to take next, and went back to Discoveryland to see if the line for Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast was acceptable.

It wasn't too long a wait, and we needed to digest our food anyway so we decided to go for it.

The Buzz Lightyear ride is also quite iconic in Disneyland, with a different iteration in each park. It is an interactive shooting dark ride attraction where you ride in a car with a partner and shoot at targets with a laser gun. Although each ride may have a different name, they all share the same major plot and characters. Basically, you're "Star Command" recruits sent to defeat the Evil Emperor Zurg.

Just 10 minutes later, we were in the cart all ready to blast our foes!

Guess who got the higher score!

Sean was out of frame when the camera took a photo but we saw an even funnier photo of a dad and his kid that is pretty meme-worthy:

When you've played the game too many times and let your kid try it once

After that, we ended up in the gift shop again, which means photos with silly hats time!

This particular gift shop was huge; with so much stuff from Toy Story and Disney in general. I guess because it's a Toy Story ride, they figured there'd be a lot of kids who would take this ride with their parents. And they sure do know how to attract kids to spend their parents' money, I'll give 'em that.