Kira Looks For Extra Colors: Paris Part 2: Nuit des Horreurs

Halloween Decorations in the Main Street Square

We managed to enter the Halloween Soiree just as the sun was setting, appropriate for Halloween, but an hour later than we had hoped to. Disneyland always puts an incredible amount of detail into their decorations, and this was no exception. There were orange and yellow flowers, Mickey pumpkins, cartoon ghost statues to take your picture with, Villains out and about, scarecrows on stilts with lanterns, strange creatures, and briar patches shaped like dragons.

The Castle (Sleeping Beauty)

One of the interesting differences in Disneyland Paris compared to Anaheim is the corridors on the outside of the Main Street shops which feature a "Worlds Fair" theme (from the American perspective of course).

Worlds Faire Corridor Halloween Night

The Worlds Faire Corridors the next day

As we were hoping to get reservations at Chef Remy's in the other park that night (Charlotte was dressed as Colette! How could we not?!), we only took a quick look around the basics of Disneyland before hopping over to the other park: Walt Disney Studios Park. Basically, it's California Adventure but "behind the movie scenes" or "making of" style.

Kind of a Buena Vista Street/Movie Set Theme

DO YOU SEE THE GUY. He should give you a sense of SCALE so that you actually believe me when I tell you this is their entire Radiator Springs mountains/plateaus display. Do you feel spoiled now Anaheim goers? Do you remember how big ours looks? Charlotte and I couldn't stop laughing.

Of course, Chef Remy's was on the other side of the park, so after making our way through several areas we would get to visit later, we made it to the Ratatouille corner. Because what better place to feature Ratatouille than in Paris?

Buzz guarding Toyland. You can kind of see the woman on the left side of the picture to give you a sense of scale.

Gusteau's in the background! Threes stars! (Or if you're Jeff, 2 and a 1/2)

Ratatouille

The ride is off to the right, the restaurant to the left.

We weren't able to get a seat at the restaurant that night (it was fully booked), so we made a reservation for the next night. We were severely disappointed the next night, however, when both our phones reverted back to UK time and made us an hour late, forcing us out of our reservation. They weren't able to accommodate us, even after we went to the help area at City Hall to examine other alternatives.
On the bright side, we did make it through the Ratatouille ride once! They did a great job with the set, as usual, but the interesting thing about this ride is it takes Toy Story Mania to another level! No, no game for us to play, but the ride did take you in front of some very large screens with a bend in them that made you feel as though you really were scooting along the floor of a kitchen, the size of a rat. Talk about an immersive 3D experience!

We ended up going back to Disneyland and eating in Toad Hall, where we were introduced to the full extent of the Parisian Disneyland menu: breaded chicken burgers, fries, fish, and "salad". I kind of expected more diversity in Paris.

Toad Hall Panorama

Here are some of our explorations Halloween night:

Space Mountain and the Nautilus

The Mad Tea Party "Tea Cups" Pavilion, from a distance

Adventure is out there!

Adventure Land/ Arabia (VERY cool)

Dome in Adventure Land

What smoky dome is complete without a camel bench?

Can I have one PLEASE?!

http://youtu.be/gQjor3wO2T0

The coolest parts of Disneyland Paris at night were the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse (which definitely seems bigger at night, looks really fantastic with all the lights in the tree, is much bigger than but really similar to Tarzan's treehouse, and gives a great view of the park), Adventure Land (very Aladdin-themed, and really cool. It's much larger in the Paris set up than in the Anaheim), and the Dragon's Lair (I mean COME ON THEY HAVE A DRAGON).

Behind the castle they had set up a briar patch shaped like a dragon, around which many of the hardly-seen Villains congregated.

Briar Patch Dragon from the back left.

Briar Patch Dragon front left

In Frontier Land we encountered some interesting winged creatures on stilts, but by far the best costumes we saw were some Ghost Busters we had unknowingly already seen on the train into Paris: they had been running around the platform trying to figure out where to store their large suitcases (three guesses as to what was inside). One of them had a Deadpool shirt on and Charlotte and I would have bet he still had it on when we saw them in costume in the park, just making everything about their costumes more awesome.

Winged creature on stilts

Fireflies?

Who you gonna call? Deadpool!

In general Parisian costumes seem to be zombie and Dia de los Muertos themed. Lot of white face paint, dark eyes, fake blood... sometimes odd contact lenses. It seemed oddly generic compared to American halloweens. Still, they could have gotten quite the zombie horde together.

And finally, how could we finish off a day in Disneyland without:

FIREWORKS

Listening to the short story half in French (Wendy)
and half in English (Peter Pan) was a little strange.

They did a great job projecting animations onto the castle, including making all the spires into rockets themselves!

BOOM!

A LONG TRUDGE BACK THROUGH MAIN STREET

Halloween Decorations!

AND GETTING STUCK AT THE BUS STOP.

Seriously though. There were so many people at the bus stop when we got out of the park, and so many of those people had no idea how to form an orderly line, that Charlotte and I gave up and decided to wait for a second, probably less crowded bus, like civilized people. We were hoping that the kind of people who were pushy enough to crowd the bus entrance like that would be gone on the next bus so we could actually get on it. No such luck. Not only did the guy who had to be physically removed from the bus, restrained from starting a fist fight, and investigated by the police end up on the second bus with us, so did a HUGE number of other people who didn't know how to form lines. I mean, we did talk to some nice British teenagers who were staying or working in Paris before entering Uni, but by that point it was 2am and we were tired and I had been forced to purchase a pair of Chip and Dale fuzzy slippers to make myself even remotely mobile due to the large and painful blister my shoes for my Wendy Darling costume had cut into my heel and neither Charlotte nor myself was interested in making new best friends at that point. Here's a picture of Charlotte to illustrate this point: