From Frozen To Fresh: Exploring: Disneyland Paris Village & Park

After we arrived in Disneyland (you can read about my journey to France here) we decided that our first spot was definitely going to be the Disneyland Park. Before you even get inside you pass a beautifully decorated outdoors area and as we moved closer we got a better look at all of the Christmas decorations that had been put up.

The first ride on our list was the Big Thunder Mountain followed by the Haunted Mansion. Big Thunder Mountain was incredibly squeaky and sounded about 50 years old, but both rides were equally hilarious. Then we went on Indiana Jones which was a pretty fast roller coaster ride that throws you upside and generally just does all of those crazy things that you'd expect a good roller coaster to do. I'm a huge adrenaline junkie when it comes to rides, but I genuinely thought I'd gotten whiplash from that one as I struggled to move my neck when we got off. Knowing I only had three days in France and there was no time to be wasted, I couldn't let a potential injury slow me down. We headed to one of my favourite rides, Space Mountain. I had a bit of a panic because it has those restraints that don't pull down over your head properly, but all my worries were gone when we were in the dark, passing planets and going through the light tunnel - which is by far my favourite part of the ride.

We stopped for lunch and by this point I was completely flagging. We had been up since 3:30am, wandered round half of the park and put our bodies through some pretty thrill-seeking rides. We got the bus back to the hotel and freshened up a little before heading back to the park once more.

We knew that because it was Christmas, and because it's Disney, everything would be lit up in the evening but we had no idea just how amazing everything would look. We waited around for the fireworks display in the evening which took place around the castle and honestly it was crazy good. It even featured "Jingle Bells" being sung in six different languages - AMAZING. By the time the display had finished we were crazy cold and headed into the village for some food. The village is a lot nicer in the evening I think, purely because of the lights. We had pre-bought a half board option which entitled us to eat in the park, but we had forgotten the vouchers and so we didn't get to look around the village much on the first day, but we made up for this on the Sunday. We ended up heading back to the hotel and eating in their restaurant. Our vouchers were still included at the hotel restaurant, which was an all you can eat buffet, and honestly it was a great ending to one hell of a long day.

Check back tomorrow to see what the Disneyland Studios are like.