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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Last day at Disneyland Paris - Italy and France trip Day 12 part 2

We're in the middle of our last day at Disneyland Paris.

We decide to do a quick snack for lunch at the cowboy corral. T and I split chicken fingers and fries while Ruston and Jacob each get chicken fingers and a salad.

We like the high-chairs for kids here.  Theresa suggested we get one like this made for our kid.

We’re close to the railroad, and that’s another thing on our agenda today. The Frontierland station is close by and fairly crowded.

Waiting for the train back home at somewhere other than Main Street is always a gamble. You don't know how many people are going to get off, so it can take a while. It ends up taking until the 3rd train about 30 minutes later before we get to board.

The seats in the cars here aren’t like any we’re used to.  Instead of benches that are either facing the side of the train, or facing forward, each car has 4-5 U shaped benches.  We’re put in a section with a family of 5 with a boy sprawled across a bench sleeping. We squeeze on as best we can.

Luckily they get off at the next stop and we have the bench to ourselves. For future reference, the best place we saw to get on was the Fantasyland station. The entire station waiting made it on. The worst might be Main Street, which surprised us. Barely anyone got off there and the line to get on was huge.

Remember what I said earlier about Ruston wanting to get after "it's a small world" with a toothbrush. This was just a little gross. There must be a whole ecosystem in the water here.

They got to lay out on the benches when no one was sitting with us.

We continue our journey and see Space Mountain in Discoveryland.


Main Street station is next, which as I said above was very crowded.

After Main Street Station we go through the classic Grand Canyon diorama. I had the completely wrong lens on my camera for it and everything came out blurry, so no photos of that. Afterwards we pass behind Phantom Manor and see a few hosts and hostesses waiting for us to pass.

We pass behind the geysers behind the Rivers of the Far West and arrive back at the Frontierland station. We've done the full loop, but we figure we've seen quite a bit of Frontierland already, so we'll get off at the next stop in Fantasyland.

Just like the Disneyland Railroad goes through Splash Mountain, this railroad goes through Pirates of the Caribbean.

We can look down and see the treasure scene.

Finally we reach the Fantasyland Station, or as we read it the Santasyland Station.

First thing we're seeing in Fantasyland is Toad Hall.


Except here in Paris, Toad Hall is a counter service restaurant instead of a ride.


Next is a visit to a Sleeping Beauty castle that you can tour and walk the outside walls. Each of us got our photos on the outside.



Inside they have some really beautiful stained glass windows.




Back outside on the castle walls, we look down over Fantasyland.

There certainly aren't any efforts to hide any of the pyrotechnics for the show tonight.




We don't really go on any of the dark rides in Fantasyland, but at the exit of Snow White, there is a pretty elaborately themed shop.

Inside they've got the dwarf's cottage and everything.

We then make our way to Phantom Manor.  This has become one of Ruston’s favorite rides. There is a large group of loud kids right in front of us in line.  We decide to hang back a little bit on the porch until they’ve got though.


Welcome to Phantom Manor.



We don't have too long before our dinner reservations at 6:30pm. We wander our way back through the park and take a seat at a table near the Liberty Arcade pathway behind Main Street.

Ruston saw that Casey's Corner offered peanuts as a snack and was intrigued. For around 3 Euro Ruston was thinking he'd get a plate of fresh roasted peanuts. So what did he get for his $4.10? This tiny bag of peanuts a little bigger than what you might get on an airplane. It was a bit disappointing. Let's hope dinner is better.

Earlier we made reservations to Walt’s, a fancy sit-down restaurant on Main street. It was for 6:30, but we show up at 6:10 and they’re able to accommodate us.

Inside the place is classically decorated with elegant furnishings. The only thing out of place was the hostess who is wearing a pair of glow with the show ears.  A little odd inside here but okay.

I did not like seeing the ears on the bust of Walt at the base of the stairs. For trying to be such a fancy place, that really brought it down a peg for me.

There. That's better.

We walk up the staircase and pass a few tributes to Walt, like this Time magazine cover from 1954.

Plus an small animatronic bird in a cage, similar to the one that inspired Walt to create audio-animatronics.

We're seated in the Nautilus room.

Our menu. It's a bit pricey, but we're hoping to be wowed.

We get seated at our table and luckily have a great view of Main Street. I'm hoping we have a great view of the parade from here.

I order the Menu Grand Classique which includes a starter, entree and dessert for 40.99 Euro ($56).
I start with a plate of heirloom tomato slices (shocking I know), and mozzarella balls.  I actually enjoyed the tomatoes, and T and Ruston who shared with me said they were tasty too.  Guess I like tomatoes now.

T and Jacob both get the starter and entree combo for 29.49 Euro ($40) and get a Caesar salad as their starter.

I like the china here.

We enjoy each others company and talk about our favorite things we've enjoyed during our visit to the park.


At 7:15, the parade starts coming down Main Street.  Our food arrives just as the parade reaches us, so of course we ignore the food and watch the parade. Flora, Fauna and Merryweather lead off Disney Magic on Parade!

This parade was done so much better than the Disney studios parade.  Actual floats that were pretty elaborate and lots of characters.  The ones up high even made it a point to look up at us and wave.

I got a kiss blown to me from the Blue Fairy.















Everyone was enjoying looking out the window at the parade, and we really did have an amazing vantage point.






Now that is a much better parade. It lasted about 10 minutes, had lots of characters and good music.

This video isn't mine, but shows off the parade really well.
Time for the food. Ruston joked that we should send it all back to the kitchen for being cold. I went for Walt’s burger, which has foie gras which I’ve never tried before and I'm curious. Mine was fine but not exceptional. I didn’t taste much flavor in the duck liver.  It was mostly just a squishy texture.
Ruston gets fettucini with vegetables and enjoyed his.
Jacob and T get NY strip steak with potatoes and side salad. T’s steak was a very poor cut of meat and almost all gristle. I think when she was done there was 2/3rd of it on her plate still.  When the waiter came by and said, “It was nice?” I told him T’s steak was not nice at all. I was thinking they might comp it, but no luck.
Service was painfully slow.  I had a dessert with my fixed price menu and it literally took 20 minutes from them clearing our dinner plates to bringing dessert out.
In all, I was not impressed by Walt’s. The decor looks good, but the service and the food was a little disappointing. It was a bit of a letdown. T said she’s give it a 3 out of 5 stars for a regular restaurant, then she’d bump it down to 2.5 out of 5 stars for the price.  We asked if we could ride the elevator down to the lobby and were given the okay.  Kind-of like the glass elevator Club 33.
That's where we'll end this part. In the next post, we'll close out our last day at the parks.

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