Disneyland Highlights

The initial plan was to blog about every day in Disneyland. HA! That plan has gone the way of the Dodo. I looked at the pictures we took and realised that they aren't that many. It's tough to take pictures when your fingers feel like frozen sausages. So I'm just going to blog about the highlights. *cop out*

:: Highlight 1 ::

... has got to be meeting Mickey Mouse. DN just loves this mouse. The wonderful thing about staying in a Disneyland hotel is the meet-and-greet in the hotel. No queueing in the bloody cold and getting all miserable waiting to see a man in a mouse suit. At least here, we could queue in relative comfort.

EVERY time he met Mickey Mouse, he squeezed his nose!


:: Highlight 2 ::

The snow was so NOT a highlight for me. When I saw the snow, I was like, "Ah... @#**%!! This is just great." PF and DN felt otherwise. They really thought it was great.

:: Highlight 3 ::

Ooooohhh... this has got to be DN's favourite ride in all of Disneyland. He got to drive a car on a track and he just loved it. We almost didn't get to try this at all because it was shut (because of the snow) the first two days we were there. The queue was long though. UGH. We sought refuge in a gift shop for half an hour after the ride just so I could thaw my toes.


:: Highlight 4 ::

Hmm... this is more a semi-highlight than a highlight. We had dinner at an American style diner and DN's menu came in the shape of a car which fitted Bear to a T!


:: Highlight 5 ::

Er... another semi-highlight. I put this in because DN looks so funny in this picture! He's posting a postcard back to Singapore.

:: Highlight 6 ::

... has got to be the kiddie meals in Disneyland. All of them came on Mickey plates with removable ear bowls, heh heh. Here, DN is eating a fried fish fillet with rice and stir-fried vegetables. He also had a small bowl of salad (corn nibblets, lettuce, cherry tomato, cheese cubes) and a bowl of fruit for dessert.


This was his favourite meal - Mickey pasta with tomato sauce, mini-salad and a fruit bowl with chocolate sauce for dipping. DN ate ALL the pasta can you believe it?


So I bought 1kg (yes, you read right, 1 kg) of Mickey pasta to bring back home. What do you think DN does when I cooked his first Mickey pasta dish out of Disneyland?


Yes. He refused to eat one bite of it. -______-"

Disneyland :: day one

I highly suspect there's a corelation between the proximity of one to a train station from which one is to depart in the early morning and well, erm, complacent pig-headedness. Because our hotel is just 20 seconds away from King's Cross St Pancras station, we collectively fluffed about in the hotel room until 7.45am when PF and I went, "!!!!!" and flew about the room packing bags, baby and ourselves up. Our train was an 8.30am one and you have to check in 30 minutes before departure. I don't know why, but we ALWAYS make it just in time. We seem to be constantly collapsing in relief on trains and planes. Not good. It's highly stressful and causes hairfall, so please don't try this at home kids.

I'm not going to say anything about the 3 hour train ride except, "Gee, I just LOVE taking long rides in a confined space with a toddler who hasn't really learned all his social cues yet. Can't wait for the train ride back."

We reached the Marne-la-Vallee Chessy station at about 12.30pm and my first thought was, "Oh crap. Maybe Disneyland wasn't that good an idea. I hope it gets warmer tomorrow." Of course it didn't. It got colder in the days to come instead. @#$$@!! I swear, someone up there is trying to get me for lying about my weight (and height!) and sneak-packing food at buffets.

DN was okay though.

We boarded the shuttle to our hotel (that's what it looks like below... yup, it's a themed cowboy hotel) and tried to check in but were 2 hours too early, so we collected our park tickets and headed straight to Disneyland.

We got there with 20 minutes to spare before the daily parade started. DN was truly truly bored just hanging around and waiting (for nothing, it seemed to him), but we managed to secure a pretty good spot along the road so we weren't going to budge. Here's Mr What's-The-Big-Deal before the parade started...

and Mr This-is-the-best-day-of-my-life during the parade. Seeing this smile almost made my frostbitten toes worth it. Erm, okay, maybe not.

After the parade, we went on the Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast ride and that marked the first of our 4 days of QUEUEING. That's what they fail to tell you on the Disneyland website, and that's why 1 day is never enough because you spend half of it in a blasted line. I found myself doing quite a bit of mantra-chanting over the next 4 days, "All for the baby. All for the baby. All for the baby." Thankfully, we didn't have to queue for It's A Small World, and DN really liked this one! He started dancing in the boat towards the end of the ride.

Can you spot what's wrong with this picture?

Yes! The exposed ceiling boards and floodlights! I know it looks dark in the picture but the entire place was brightly lit with flourescent ceiling lights. I think someone forgot to turn the working lights off. Tut tut.

When we got back to the hotel, I discovered tons of photos like these in the camera. Yes, photos and photos of duck butts. My husband had taken it upon himself to take millions of pictures of the ducks that were floating around at It's a Small World. Unfortunately, he only managed to capture their butts. These were fast ducks!

After It's A Small World, we hopped onto the Peter Pan ride and then a carousel.

And that was day one. :) We survived!

Dummies Guide to Baking with Toddlers

Haha, I cheated! I bought this instant croissant pastry from the supermarket for about £1.60. Since we're only here for a short while, it doesn't make sense to buy all that flour and butter for 1 batch of croissants. Okay okay, it's also because I'm a lazy bum!

It's really easy. Just peel off the cardboard packaging, untwist the roll and out pops your croissant pastry, all ready for rolling. It's all perforated too. So thoughtful!

DN had a ball rolling the croissants. I demonstrated one for him and he rolled the rest. Never seen a toddler so pleased with rolling before.

DN kept wanting to check on the croissants in the oven. They took about 20 minutes to reach a nice golden brown colour. We each had one for breakfast, with strawberry jam, lemon curd and smudge. :)

DN ate 2/3 of his croissant, with jam and lemon curd. Guess who had 1 and 1/3 croissants? -_-

The reason why I wanted to bake croissants with DN is because we're going to the land of croissants tomorrow. Oui oui! There is a special offer going on now at Paris Disneyland - stay 2 nights and get the 3rd night free. Free? Free? Did someone say free??? *push old people and little children out of the way*

I need to stop doing this. I need to stop buying everything that's on offer. Things are on offer for a reason! It's the dead of winter! Unless you're a penguin or an eskimo, no one goes to Disneyland in winter! You get off any ride looking like a popsicle! If I don't do something about this nasty habit, before long, I'll be carting home things like Betamax players or BROS t-shirts because they were on sale.

Anyway, we paid £358 for 3 nights in a Disneyland hotel, 4 days of park tickets for 2 adults (DN is free), 3 breakfasts and 3 lunches/dinners for the 3 of us. The thing that sealed the deal was the £59 offer from Eurostar. That's £59 per adult to Paris Disneyland (return). Mickey Mouse, here we come (all frozen and cold).