In which we spend Christmas at the Magic Kingdom

Ever since we started dating, Blaise and I (and the kids) have spent Christmas in Atlanta with his family. Of course, this year we weren't going to be able to do that, given the cost of international plane tickets for 5 people. That meant we needed to find something else to do on Christmas Day.

When we bought our Disney passes last summer, we noticed both that Disney was open on Christmas Day, and that our passes were valid on Christmas. (We have about 30 days when our passes don't work over the course of the year. There is a pass that works all 365 days a year, but we judged that it wasn't worth spending the extra 30€ a person for it.) Naturally, it seemed like it would be fun to go to Disney on Christmas, and we expected that it probably wouldn't be that busy either, after all, don't people have better things to do on Christmas Day?

Shortly before Blaise's parents left (so about 2 weeks before Christmas), the RER A went on strike. We figured the strike would surely be over by Christmas, since none of the other transport strikes since we've been here have lasted for more than a few days, and most have been only a single day. Christmas Day arrived and the strike was still going on, though it seemed to be weakening. The claim on the RATP website was that they were running 3 trains out of 4, which worked out to 4 or 5 trains an hour. Not too bad, even though we wouldn't know until we got there exactly which 3 out of 4 trains were running.

We headed for the RER station around 10:00, and walked down to a completely deserted platform. Evidently, a train had just left; further evidence that there would be trains running with some regularity. At 10:25, the signs on the platform announced that our train was currently at La Defense, on the opposite side of Paris, about 35 minutes away. We watched the signs update as the train passed through all the stations between La Defense and Val de Fontenay, then noticed that the arriving train was only going to Torcy rather than all the way to Marne-la-Vallée and Parc Disneyland. No matter, we would get on anyway, and just pick up the next train from Torcy. Perhaps they were running trains between Torcy and Marne-la-Vallée? We arrived at Torcy after a 20 minute ride, and discovered that virtually everyone on the (extremely packed) train was waiting for the next train to go the rest of the way to Disney. We also discovered that the next train was at . . . La Defense, and would not be arriving for an hour or so. Once it finally did arrive it was also completely packed, but we managed to shoehorn everyone from the previous train onto this one.

Around 12:30 we arrived at Disney and headed for the Disney Studios, which we hadn't visited before. Blaise was excited about the prospect of riding some of the roller coasters in that part of the park, so we headed over to the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, which claimed to have a fairly short wait. We then discovered that although Sapphire was tall enough to ride, Ezio was just a fraction of an inch too short, and would have to wait outside with Cherry and I while Blaise and Sapphire rode together. He sobbed through their entire ride about the unfairness of it. Ezio was tall enough to ride the Tower of Terror with Blaise and Sapphire though, while Cherry and I tried (unsuccessfully) to stay warm in a gift shop.

We headed over to the main park after that, since the other coaster was closed for repairs, and we weren't particularly interested in sitting through any of the shows. We rode a few rides, and then headed for the exit, and over to the RER station. According to the signs there, our train would not be departing for another 40 minutes, so rather than sit on the station platform for that long, we went up to the Marché de Noël outside Disney Village. We ended up catching a second train 10 minutes later than our intended train, and had our car almost entirely to ourselves the whole way home. (The first train had reached sardine-like levels five minutes before leaving the station. I think we were still the only ones who chose to wait, even though the second train was on the board well before the first left.)