So, Thursday morning I picked up a few things at the grocery store while the kids tidied the house a bit (and did a pretty good job too, I might add); smeared peanut butter and jam on bread; tossed oranges, cookies, pretzels, and water bottles into a backpack; and headed for the train station. We ended up getting to Parc Disneyland a bit later than I had hoped to, but it still didn't seem to be too busy.
Wednesday evening I had asked all three kids which rides they most wanted to do, and (much to my disappointment) all three of them had picked Dumbo the Flying Elephant, which is a ride that goes around in a big circle with you controlling how high up you go with a little lever. I'm not a big fan because (a) I don't like heights, and you're just kind of suspended out there and (b) there's always a massive line. I decided we could ride it though if the line wasn't too long, which it wasn't (lucky me). After Dumbo, we headed to the Mad Hatter's Tea Cups, which we were able to just walk onto because there was no line at all, followed by Alice's Curious Labyrinth. Ezio was quite proud of his ability to lead us through the labyrinth and up to the castle of the queen without getting us lost. Then, since Cherry really wanted to ride Le Carrousel de Lancelot (there's a little carrousel/merry-go-round in our mall, and she's forever asking to ride it, and I always say no on the grounds that we can ride the one at Disney), we went and rode that, again with no line. Unfortunately, by the time I had Cherry boosted onto a horse and buckled up, and Ezio's seatbelt properly tightened, the horse next to Cherry had been taken and so I ended up having to stand next to her instead of riding. Then we headed over to the Sleeping Beauty Castle, which Sapphire has been wanting to go through for a really long time. It's not a ride (I'm not sure she realized that) but you can walk through it and see the story of Sleeping Beauty in stained glass and tapestry.
The other ride that was on everybody's list was the Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, so we headed over there next. Unfortunately, once we got there the ride was shut down because of some sort of technical problems. They were sending everybody away and no-one could tell us when it was likely to reopen. Since Cherry was hungry (she didn't eat any breakfast) and the rest of us were beginning to get hungry, we decided that it was a good time to eat some lunch before continuing with our day.
After lunch, we went to It's a Small World, which again had very little line, and then rode the Disneyland Railroad most of the way around the outside of the park to get to Frontierland. (We had intended to ride the Circus Train, but evidently it only runs in the summer, so this was a sort of second choice.) Cherry wanted to know whether everything we saw was real. It wasn't. In Frontierland we started out at Phantom Manor. On the way outside afterwards, we were stopped by a woman who was there with her 8 year old daughter. She wanted to know whether Phantom Manor was scary, because, evidently, she had taken her on the Tower of Terror for her very first ride the day before, and now her daughter was refusing to ride anything because she was terrified. Since it was raining (actually, it rained for pretty much the entire afternoon, which made things a bit less pleasant, but didn't seem to bother anyone terribly much) we headed for the cover of the Thunder Mesa Riverboat Landing dock, and waited to ride the riverboat. They had blocked off the top deck of the boat (which would have been wet anyway), so we rode on the middle deck.
After we got off the boat, we went over to the Pirates of the Caribbean, where we encountered our first real line of the day. We had to wait 30 minutes, I suspect partly because it has a nice, warm, inside waiting area and people wanted to get out of the rain, since when we rode it again just before going home (and after the rain had stopped) we (quite literally) walked through the queue and onto a boat with no wait at all. Then, at Cherry's insistence, we stopped for popcorn, which was warm and, much to our surprise, sweet. We ate it all huddled together in the very center of the tent for the Dumbo ride's queue.
Then, we headed back over to Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, which was open and running again, though it also had a relatively long line, mostly under cover. The first part of it, however, ran along the edge of the roof, and so we spent our first 10 minutes in line with icy-cold water dripping down the backs of our necks. After some technical problems getting started (some people had to be moved because the shield on their car wouldn't lower) Sapphire and Ezio outscored Cherry and I 46,000 to 39,000.
Since it was 4:00 at this point, I told the kids that they could each pick one more ride and we would see what we could do. Ezio picked Peter Pan's Flight, which was much cooler than I had remembered it being, despite having to wait for 45 minutes to ride it. Sapphire picked Pirates of the Caribbean, which had no line at all. Cherry wanted to ride It's a Small World again. Then we headed out of the park and to the RER station for an uneventful ride home.
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