Although our homestay family spoke only basic English and my French is pretty limited, one thing that Leila was able to communicate to me was not to book our disneyland tickets before we got to Paris and that she would get us a good deal on the tickets. Unfortunately, this all fell through for some reason or another at the last minute and I found myself online late the night before we went looking for tickets. Especially after the massive line-up at the Eiffel Tower, I wanted to avoid the entrance line at all costs. The website instructed me to print out the email tickets, but I was unsuccessful in linking either my iPhone or Laptop to Leila's printer in the morning. For some reason, my email was receiving my messages, but I had not been able to send any for the past few days. Leila assured me that as the email on my iPhone had a bar-code on it, this would be sufficient proof of purchase.
Whilst we were getting ready to leave, Sequoia was struggling to put on a Paris fob-chain bracelet that she had bought the day before as a souvenir. My hands were quite full, but she was really struggling trying to do it up with one hand, I tried to assist her. Unfortunately, I had our GPS (George) in my arms and whilst I was struggling with the bracelet, he tumbled out of my arms and cracked on the floor :-( Fortunately, Omar had given us really simple instructions on how to get to Disneyland the night before, so I was confident that we would get there without a problem.
So, we excitedly set off to Disneyland, arriving there about 35 minutes after we set out.
 |
| Entrance from the car |
When we got to the gate, I was informed that I needed to have a paper copy of the ticket to be able to use it. I was told to leave the children at the gate and then escorted to a little office inside. Firstly, my iphone would not connect to their printer. Then I tried to gain access to my Bigpond email account. For some reason, my password would not work. I tried my entire repetoire of passwords with nil success except to find myself locked out of my account. I then proceeded to the chat area of the bigpond website to request my password to be reset. I conversed with someone (perhaps in Australia) and they informed me that they could not give me my password on the chat area but it had to be text messaged to me. I gave them the phone number of the lovely disneyland lady who was doing everything to assist me. However, our beloved major telecommunications company of Australia was unable to send the text to an international phone number. I then, in desperation, got them to text it to my friend Steve back at home. Unfortunately, when I went to phone Steve, his phone was switched off or out of service, so that was a dead end. I tried to log on to the chat area again to have them resend the password to my parents, who by then I had contacted (on the Disneyland lady's personal mobile phone), but after 10 minutes, I still had not been connected to anyone and abandoned this avenue.
Well, by this stage, I went back out to the kids to let them know what was going on. Pretty soon, it became obvious that it was all too hard and I really needed to get this sorted immediately. I decided that the kids had waited for long enough so I would pay the entrance again. However, we decided to just get the one park ticket and our helpful lady arranged for a special price for us. (Original tickets for two parks cost $A219 and we paid the second time 90 Euro and I also gave the lady 10 euro for the use of her phone. The kids by this time were pretty demoralised and quite frankly were asking to go home. However, I overruled and to sweeten the deal, our helpful lady, Ameli, gave us a special pass to skip the queue for the best ride at Eurodisney, Space Mountain!
The fun finally began!!!! We proceeded to the exit of the ride and, skipping a line that was probably at least and hour and a half long, we got to choose where we sat (Pheonix chose the front of the coaster, of course, with me in the seat next to him and Sequoia rode right behind). All I can say is WOW. The ride immediately thrusts you up to the top of the building and then after a very pregnant pause, flew you around with 'outer space' spinning around you through the loop-the-loops and the corkscrews. It was absolutely amazing!!!!
We then headed off to explore the rest of the park...
 |
| In the whole debacle of the dropped GPS, Pheonix left his coat in the room at the house, so had to spend the day looking like a spaceman in my oversized coat that fortunately had been left in the car
Due to the sheer volume of people at the park that day, and the previous day's hours spent waiting in line, we saw only a few of the rides and attractions, but we all really enjoyed the Alice in Wonderland Curious Labrynth...
|
After some lunch and a wander, next stop was the train...
We continued to wander and look at some of the exhibits and then watched the parade, which Pheonix particularly enjoyed. Being so close to Christmas, there were carols playing in the background and bubbles that fell like snowflakes throughout main street....
There were beautiful lights throughout the grounds.
It really was quite a beautiful and magical day, despite the crowds and debacles....
We set off home in all confidence, as we had found our way there with surprising ease. Unfortunately, when we were very close to home, we somehow took a wrong turn and then proceeded to get more and more lost... without our beloved GPS in hand, we had no way of knowing where we were or where we were going....
Before too long, we really were hopelessly lost and I knew we really were in big trouble when we found ourselves outside the Moulin Rouge (close your eyes, kiddies!!!!)... I was quite terrified that we were going to find ourselves on that 8 lane roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe and I would spend the rest of my natural life going around and around and around, never to be heard of again.....
My mobile phone had not been in service all day, even though I had topped up the credit on the roaming sim the night before. After driving around forever, I stopped and turned my phone on and off a few times, and as a last minute reprieve, I got signal and was able to call Leila to let her know that we were lost. I then was able to bring up a map on my phone (data download) and with Sequoia navigating, after perhaps an hour literally creeping along in peak hour Paris traffic (it took us 10 light changes to get through one set of traffic lights and we even witnessed a slow-speed low-impact bingle between a bus and a taxi), we finally found our way home.
It took us 4 hours to get there!!!!!
I almost cried when we trumped up the stairs at our homestay and bless Leila's heart, she stayed up waiting for us and served us our meal at the crazy hour of 10.30 pm.
I really miss George :-(
Paris is a beautiful city, and I am glad that we got to see so much of it, but that was definitely not the best way to visit Disneyland, I'm sure. Well, it is what it is, and the kids and I really did have fun, so we will just put it all down to part of our adventure!!! :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment