Walt Disney Studios Park part 2
We're now home safe and sound from Paris, but my goodness the flight home thoroughly zombified us. Last night, I would have said for sure it was not jet lag, but regular old sleep deprivation. I still think it might be that, but we did manage to not be total zombies just long enough to get our work done. At about four, we nearly lost the ability to stay awake, and since that would be about 1:00am in Paris, I have to allow for the possibility that we're still operating on France time and therefore are, indeed, jet lagged. Anyway, we'll go unconscious later and hopefully feel better tomorrow.
But first! We still have a lot of trip reporting to do! For now, we continue our report of Walt Disney Studios Park. Let's see, if I remember correctly, we had just finished exploring Avengers Campus. According to the photos on my phone, the next thing we did was watch Stitch Live!. We had a sneaking suspicion this was going to be a lot like the Stitch Encounter at Tokyo Disneyland, which had us a little nervous about it, because we didn't want to watch the boring old English version--we wanted to watch it in French! But the Stitch Encounter is an interactive show, which means Stitch talks to members of the audience, and Athena wasn't confident enough in her French, and I barely know any French, so we weren't sure it was such a good idea to watch the French version (the showtimes list if it's going to be in French or English). We did it anyway.
We were right that the show is very very similar to the one in Tokyo Disneyland, but fortunately for us, the guy who acts as moderator between Stitch and the audience had us do a show of hands of who speaks French. Only about half the audience raised their hand. They get tourists from all over Europe, so you hear all kinds of different languages at the Paris Disney parks. We heard English and French, of course, and also Spanish, Italian, and German.
Our favorite part of the show, when we saw it, was when Stitch had the Captain (the moderator) take the microphone to a guy who, according to Stitch, was wearing a green plastic bag. (It was a rainy day, and a lot of people were wearing the plasticky-looking rain ponchos.) When Stitch asked the guy his name, he said his name was Antoine, but he's from Spain and only speaks a little French...so Stitch started talking to him in Spanish! ...Not a lot of Spanish, but it was still cool. He called him "mi amigo Antonio." It was adorable. And of course, when Stitch got caught stealing a spaceship, he blamed it on Antoine from Espagnol.
After the show, we headed to the Toon Studio / Worlds of Pixar area of the park, which, as you may have guessed, has a lot of Pixar-themed attractions. There is, however, one Aladdin-themed attraction which was closed for refurbishment, but the point is, just across the street from that attraction is a speaker that appears to be dedicated to Alan Menken music. Every time we passed by there, it seemed to be playing something either from Pocahontas or Hercules. It was our favorite speaker in the whole park. XD
We went on the Cars Quatre Roues Rallye (or Cars Race Rally (by the way, I'm looking up the attraction names on Wikipedia, because we only went to the park once, and I'm still a zombie, so I can't recall them that easily)) and Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin, both of which involve going in circles at varying speeds and in different styles.
I had to laugh when we got to the area where they have the Ratatouille ride. They have this beautiful little area of the park set up to look...like Paris. We were in fake Paris in real France! ...On the other hand, all of California Adventure was originally fake California inside real California, so it's not without precedent. As for the ride itself...well...we hated it. They use trackless technology, which, considering this and Mickey's Runaway Railway, seems to be the Walt Disney Company's excuse to just shove a bunch of ride vehicles in front of a movie screen and call it a ride. ...Okay, that's an oversimplification. They send a batch of vehicles in front of one movie screen, stuff happens, then they move you to another movie screen, and repeat until the ride is over.
The concept for the ride is really cute, though! Basically we're all rats who have signed up to help Remy make a special dinner, so we go to the restaurant and there are humans there who are like, "Ew, rats!!" and we have to run for our lives. The trouble is that most of the "running" involves staring at a screen, and it's just hard to feel like we're really "there."
It was okay, though, because that same area of the park is where they had a bunch of little food stands set up, each one representing a different region of France (if you count Belgium as a region of France...). These food stands made us happy for a few reasons. First, they had the Savoie booth next to the booth that had macarons, and the Savoie booth is the one that had the cheese dishes, so it was like they put Plagg and Tikki together! Another reason we loved these booths is that the Belgium booth had super yummy waffles that had little sugar clumps in them, and you could get them covered in Nutella without having to pay extra! Oh my goodness, we had so much Nutella at Disneyland Paris... And the Brittany booth had a wide variety of crepes, including ones with salted caramel, and those were delicious, too.
After we finished up in fake Paris, we moved on to the Toy Story area and noped out of the RC Racer ride. It looked like it pretty much goes straight up, and straight down, and straight up, and straight down, and we were both like, "I think I can live a full and happy life without going on that ride." So we didn't.
We kept going to what felt like a remote region of the park, where we discovered Cars Road Trip. You guys, this ride is so stupid, but it's stupid in the best way. It's technically supposed to be a road trip along Route 66, where you see all the cheesy tourist attractions, like the world's biggest lug nut. I do kind of think they could have come up with a more interesting biggest thing than a lug nut, but whatever, it's stupid, and that's okay. The ride is hosted by Sally (who speaks French) and...the girl from Cars 3, I think? (We never saw Cars 3.) (Whoever she is, she speaks English.) They talk about a bunch of other cool things to see on Route 66, that we never get to see, which is a little bit annoying, actually, but then we make a stop in Cars-tastrophe Canyon.
You guys. This scene was taken straight from the Universal Studios tour. The utter lack of originality is astounding. As we pull up to our stop, Sally and the other car talk about how there are earthquakes in the area, and we're looking around and thinking, "At Universal Studios, you're in a subway, but other than that, this scene looks awfully familiar..." There was a big rig tanker full of gasoline, so right away we knew that was going to blow up (the back of it was already scorched, so that was a pretty big tip-off, too), and there were some little streams of water in the background, so we figured there was going to be some flooding... Sure enough, it all happened! The main differences between that and the earthquake scene at Universal Studios is that there was no need for electric lighting, so there was no blackout, and we were aboveground and outside, so there was no ceiling collapsing. To make up for that, they actually poured water over the tram, so that was a bit of excitement that you won't find at the Universal Studios version. The other difference is that the earthquake at Universal Studios feels more authentic, like the people who made the ride are used to earthquakes, having lived in Hollywood.
So while I do have mixed feelings about Disney stealing ride concepts wholesale from other parks, one of those feelings is amusement, and I can't stop laughing at it.
After that bit of excitement, we go to see what new monument Mater has built out of junk, and it's the I-Fuel Tower! Duh du-duh duh, duh duh, DUUUUH duh duh! And that was stupid in the best way, too. Our one nitpick is that the voice actors kept pronouncing the hyphen in I-Fuel (so there was a pause between I and fuel), and we feel the hyphen should be silent. XD
We decided the line was too long for the Army Men parachute ride, so we never ended up going on that one, but we did go on Crush's Coaster. This was a very interesting little roller coaster. The concept is that you're riding the EAC, so you ride in these cute little cars that look like turtle shells, and they rotate--that's the scary part. It's kind of difficult to describe what it feels like, because it's not like the cars spin; they just rotate with the curve of the track or something? It's a really cool idea...but it was just a little bit too intense for us, so we only did that once. (Plus the line was long, so we definitely weren't going to wait for it again.)
We also saw two other shows! The first show we saw was Together: A Pixar Musical Adventure. In all honesty, we weren't sure it was a good idea for us to watch it, because sometimes Pixar stuff makes us grumpy. In fact, while we waited for the show to start, I did find myself to be quite angry. See, along the ceiling of the theater on either side, they have these screens set up. Like, six screens on each side, I think. They used those screens for a little pre-show trivia to keep guests entertained while they waited for the show to start, and that was cool. What was not cool is that they treated each set of six screens as if it was just one whole screen, so there was a grid of thick lines interrupting the pictures for all their trivia slides. I feel like it shouldn't have been that hard to have a trivia format where the images projected onto the screens didn't have to be interrupted by the divisions between the screens, or like they could have worked with those divisions. I don't know. It just made me mad.
...And I'm noticing that it's getting late, and we're still zombies, so I need to stop typing now so we can go to bed.
Today I'm thankful for making it home safely, having a great time in Paris, waffles with sugar clusters, the stupidity of Cars Road Trip, and our schedule not looking too deadly.
But first! We still have a lot of trip reporting to do! For now, we continue our report of Walt Disney Studios Park. Let's see, if I remember correctly, we had just finished exploring Avengers Campus. According to the photos on my phone, the next thing we did was watch Stitch Live!. We had a sneaking suspicion this was going to be a lot like the Stitch Encounter at Tokyo Disneyland, which had us a little nervous about it, because we didn't want to watch the boring old English version--we wanted to watch it in French! But the Stitch Encounter is an interactive show, which means Stitch talks to members of the audience, and Athena wasn't confident enough in her French, and I barely know any French, so we weren't sure it was such a good idea to watch the French version (the showtimes list if it's going to be in French or English). We did it anyway.
We were right that the show is very very similar to the one in Tokyo Disneyland, but fortunately for us, the guy who acts as moderator between Stitch and the audience had us do a show of hands of who speaks French. Only about half the audience raised their hand. They get tourists from all over Europe, so you hear all kinds of different languages at the Paris Disney parks. We heard English and French, of course, and also Spanish, Italian, and German.
Our favorite part of the show, when we saw it, was when Stitch had the Captain (the moderator) take the microphone to a guy who, according to Stitch, was wearing a green plastic bag. (It was a rainy day, and a lot of people were wearing the plasticky-looking rain ponchos.) When Stitch asked the guy his name, he said his name was Antoine, but he's from Spain and only speaks a little French...so Stitch started talking to him in Spanish! ...Not a lot of Spanish, but it was still cool. He called him "mi amigo Antonio." It was adorable. And of course, when Stitch got caught stealing a spaceship, he blamed it on Antoine from Espagnol.
After the show, we headed to the Toon Studio / Worlds of Pixar area of the park, which, as you may have guessed, has a lot of Pixar-themed attractions. There is, however, one Aladdin-themed attraction which was closed for refurbishment, but the point is, just across the street from that attraction is a speaker that appears to be dedicated to Alan Menken music. Every time we passed by there, it seemed to be playing something either from Pocahontas or Hercules. It was our favorite speaker in the whole park. XD
We went on the Cars Quatre Roues Rallye (or Cars Race Rally (by the way, I'm looking up the attraction names on Wikipedia, because we only went to the park once, and I'm still a zombie, so I can't recall them that easily)) and Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin, both of which involve going in circles at varying speeds and in different styles.
I had to laugh when we got to the area where they have the Ratatouille ride. They have this beautiful little area of the park set up to look...like Paris. We were in fake Paris in real France! ...On the other hand, all of California Adventure was originally fake California inside real California, so it's not without precedent. As for the ride itself...well...we hated it. They use trackless technology, which, considering this and Mickey's Runaway Railway, seems to be the Walt Disney Company's excuse to just shove a bunch of ride vehicles in front of a movie screen and call it a ride. ...Okay, that's an oversimplification. They send a batch of vehicles in front of one movie screen, stuff happens, then they move you to another movie screen, and repeat until the ride is over.
The concept for the ride is really cute, though! Basically we're all rats who have signed up to help Remy make a special dinner, so we go to the restaurant and there are humans there who are like, "Ew, rats!!" and we have to run for our lives. The trouble is that most of the "running" involves staring at a screen, and it's just hard to feel like we're really "there."
It was okay, though, because that same area of the park is where they had a bunch of little food stands set up, each one representing a different region of France (if you count Belgium as a region of France...). These food stands made us happy for a few reasons. First, they had the Savoie booth next to the booth that had macarons, and the Savoie booth is the one that had the cheese dishes, so it was like they put Plagg and Tikki together! Another reason we loved these booths is that the Belgium booth had super yummy waffles that had little sugar clumps in them, and you could get them covered in Nutella without having to pay extra! Oh my goodness, we had so much Nutella at Disneyland Paris... And the Brittany booth had a wide variety of crepes, including ones with salted caramel, and those were delicious, too.
After we finished up in fake Paris, we moved on to the Toy Story area and noped out of the RC Racer ride. It looked like it pretty much goes straight up, and straight down, and straight up, and straight down, and we were both like, "I think I can live a full and happy life without going on that ride." So we didn't.
We kept going to what felt like a remote region of the park, where we discovered Cars Road Trip. You guys, this ride is so stupid, but it's stupid in the best way. It's technically supposed to be a road trip along Route 66, where you see all the cheesy tourist attractions, like the world's biggest lug nut. I do kind of think they could have come up with a more interesting biggest thing than a lug nut, but whatever, it's stupid, and that's okay. The ride is hosted by Sally (who speaks French) and...the girl from Cars 3, I think? (We never saw Cars 3.) (Whoever she is, she speaks English.) They talk about a bunch of other cool things to see on Route 66, that we never get to see, which is a little bit annoying, actually, but then we make a stop in Cars-tastrophe Canyon.
You guys. This scene was taken straight from the Universal Studios tour. The utter lack of originality is astounding. As we pull up to our stop, Sally and the other car talk about how there are earthquakes in the area, and we're looking around and thinking, "At Universal Studios, you're in a subway, but other than that, this scene looks awfully familiar..." There was a big rig tanker full of gasoline, so right away we knew that was going to blow up (the back of it was already scorched, so that was a pretty big tip-off, too), and there were some little streams of water in the background, so we figured there was going to be some flooding... Sure enough, it all happened! The main differences between that and the earthquake scene at Universal Studios is that there was no need for electric lighting, so there was no blackout, and we were aboveground and outside, so there was no ceiling collapsing. To make up for that, they actually poured water over the tram, so that was a bit of excitement that you won't find at the Universal Studios version. The other difference is that the earthquake at Universal Studios feels more authentic, like the people who made the ride are used to earthquakes, having lived in Hollywood.
So while I do have mixed feelings about Disney stealing ride concepts wholesale from other parks, one of those feelings is amusement, and I can't stop laughing at it.
After that bit of excitement, we go to see what new monument Mater has built out of junk, and it's the I-Fuel Tower! Duh du-duh duh, duh duh, DUUUUH duh duh! And that was stupid in the best way, too. Our one nitpick is that the voice actors kept pronouncing the hyphen in I-Fuel (so there was a pause between I and fuel), and we feel the hyphen should be silent. XD
We decided the line was too long for the Army Men parachute ride, so we never ended up going on that one, but we did go on Crush's Coaster. This was a very interesting little roller coaster. The concept is that you're riding the EAC, so you ride in these cute little cars that look like turtle shells, and they rotate--that's the scary part. It's kind of difficult to describe what it feels like, because it's not like the cars spin; they just rotate with the curve of the track or something? It's a really cool idea...but it was just a little bit too intense for us, so we only did that once. (Plus the line was long, so we definitely weren't going to wait for it again.)
We also saw two other shows! The first show we saw was Together: A Pixar Musical Adventure. In all honesty, we weren't sure it was a good idea for us to watch it, because sometimes Pixar stuff makes us grumpy. In fact, while we waited for the show to start, I did find myself to be quite angry. See, along the ceiling of the theater on either side, they have these screens set up. Like, six screens on each side, I think. They used those screens for a little pre-show trivia to keep guests entertained while they waited for the show to start, and that was cool. What was not cool is that they treated each set of six screens as if it was just one whole screen, so there was a grid of thick lines interrupting the pictures for all their trivia slides. I feel like it shouldn't have been that hard to have a trivia format where the images projected onto the screens didn't have to be interrupted by the divisions between the screens, or like they could have worked with those divisions. I don't know. It just made me mad.
...And I'm noticing that it's getting late, and we're still zombies, so I need to stop typing now so we can go to bed.
Today I'm thankful for making it home safely, having a great time in Paris, waffles with sugar clusters, the stupidity of Cars Road Trip, and our schedule not looking too deadly.