A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: Day 9 – Laundry, Parks, and Planes

“Having an empty laundry basket is the best 5 seconds of the week.”

Today we woke up around 9:00AM to start getting ready to check out of our room at 11:00AM. Our flight to Hong Kong was not till 11:25PM so we had the whole day to relax and putter about on property. We debated doing some sightseeing in Paris, but given we were going to have to drag our luggage around we decided to just stay on Disney property. We have been around Paris before so didn’t feel strongly about doing sightseeing this trip. Our room came with another park day so we figured we’d hit the parks one last day to just burn some time.

First things first though. My number one concern was did the laundry dry, as that would definitely impact our schedule for the day. I check the laundry, and, well, that was a no. Unfortunately, it was about 80 percent dry which meant we were going to have to take a trip to the laundromat to finish drying it. We pack up the room, and leave right at 11:00AM to go eat some brunch. We keep one luggage with the dirty laundry and we drop off the rest along with our backpacks at bell services to store for the day.

We then start walking to Hotel Cheyenne. In order to get there we need to walk through Disney Village, which is Disneyland Paris’ version of Downtown Disney. There are ample food options here and on the way we see Annette’s which is an American Diner themed restaurant, and decide to eat there.

The line isn’t long at all, but it still takes 25 minutes for us to get a seat and we get seated around 11:35 AM.

I love the lack of a tipping culture in Europe. I like knowing that the price on the menu is the price I pay. That being said, from my experience, because of that service does tend to be slower and not as attentive in Europe than the US. I totally understand that a meal in Europe is much more social, and you linger more, and take your time. It’s not the rushed experience we have in the US. However, there is a point, where the slowness and lack of attentiveness is just excessive, even by European standards.

As a reminder, we sat down at 11:35AM. Well, we didn’t leave till 2:00 PM! This is standard American Diner food that we ordered. It was a sampler platter with some wings, quesadilla, mozzarella sticks and nachos and a milk shake and Lucy ordered a hot dog kids meal that came with ice cream.

This was not a 5 course meal at a 3 star Michelin Restaurant. It was a sampler platter and a hot dog. It was the sloooowest meal I think I have ever experienced. It took about an hour and a half to get our food, and once we got our food we immediately asked for our check. We waited an hour AFTER asking for a check and at one point we even sent Lucy to ask for the check again 30 minutes after initially asking for the check. She was told it would be a bit before they could get us our check. We pestered them for our check every chance we had and they would not give it to us. I believe it is likely is due to the fact that there is no incentive to turn over a table. The faster you turn over tables the more work you do and as a server you don’t make any more money. We had no cash on hand so we couldn’t just drop some Euros and leave. I was about to get up and go find an ATM, and ironically that’s when the check finally came. This was particularly frustrating as it ate up so much of our time on our final day in Paris, especially when we still had to go dry our laundry and wanted to stop by the parks one last time.

We then continued our walk from Disney Village to the Hotel Cheyenne. On the way we pass by Disney’s Hotel New York – The Art of Marvel. This just used to be a New York themed hotel and over the last several years it was converted into a Marvel themed hotel.

It looked to be a very nice hotel, but we really wanted to stay at the Disneyland Hotel due to it’s location and desire to stay at all the Disneyland Hotels in the world so we ended up there. It was nice to see the hotel during the day, and how well they did to theme it to an old western town.

I went to the general store, and they gave me some free dryer tokens after I explained what happened yesterday. Ironically enough, Kendall finds a free dryer token just sitting on top of the dryer in the laundromat taunting me after the debacle with the tokens last night. We dry our clothes without any further issues, and hopefully this is the last major laundry debacle this vacation.

We take the shuttle back to the Disney Village area as a change of pace. Unlike the Disney World buses these were the extra long buses that flex in the middle like a big city bus.

We then went back to hotel to drop off our luggage of DRY clothes with bell services and head down to the the princess meet and greet we scheduled yesterday for 4:00PM today. Today it was Aurora. She seemed very well rested from her naps.

We enjoyed chatting with her about the Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.

Afterwards we headed over to Walt Disney Studios as we still wanted to do the Cars ride and eat some dinner.

Lucy wanted some pasta at the Avengers Campus at Stark Factory, a quick service restaurant.

Inside they had a life size Hulkbuster inside which was pretty cool.

For the first time the vacation we also saw a drink machine that required a QR code to allow you to dispense a drink. It was a one time use code and afterwards you could no longer activate the machine with that code.

We enjoyed the pasta and we finished it all.

We were planning on doing the Cars ride, but it was golden hour, which is the best time for pictures for a photographer so we chose to get some pics instead while the light was good. The light was very reminiscent of all scenes in Top Gun which just always conveniently happen to take place at dawn or dusk.

Tower of Terror looked gorgeous with the light.

We stopped for a quick family pic as we had not yet taken a family picture at this park.

We hadn’t done any shopping yet while in Paris, so we went to the World of Disney in Disney Village.

We don’t have much space for any souvenirs, but did plan our packing such that we did need to buy a sweatshirt at minimum to have enough clothes to get through the vacation. Lucy got a Stitch sweatshirt and water bottle.

It was time to start looking toward moving toward the airport as it was after about 7:00PM. We went back to hotel and I dropped Lucy and Kendall off while I returned the wheelchair. The beauty of being at the Disneyland hotel is truly its location as it is not even 75 meters from the door of the hotel to the wheelchair rental in the park. I was so proud of Kendall and how well she walked here. She managed to walk the whole first day here, and we often parked the wheelchair in an area and just walked around the majority of times and just used it for long distances. This was definitely a landmark moment since the accident.

We picked up our luggage and went to train station.

There are trains running to the airport every 30 minutes, but the next available train was 8:51PM for 9:00PM arrival at CDG which only gave us 2.5 hours before our flight. There were earlier trains, but they must have been sold out as I could not buy a ticket for them. Two and a half hours was ample time because we weren’t checking bags, but we always try to get there earlier if possible as you never know what will happen, you know like potentially getting denied boarding despite having a perfectly acceptable itinerary. We end up taking an Uber to the airport, and we arrive at 7:40PM. The airport is pretty dead with no lines or crowd anywhere.

We already have our boarding pass this time so we don’t need to stop at check in counter. These days I do anything I can to avoid that counter as only bad things ever seem to come from those stops. Despite having a boarding pass I still feel uneasy at passport control as it takes much longer than expected. At one point the customs officer calls to another person in French and nearly gives me a heart attack. All I could think about is “What is it this time?” Thankfully, via my rudimentary high school French I understand enough to know that she is going to eat after us, and sure enough she got up and closed her booth after she was done with us.

After passport control, we get to security and the lines were none existent. This is by far the slowest I have ever seen CDG, but it’s also the first time I’ve ever had an 11:25PM flight out of CDG as well.

We head over to the lounge as we get access because we are flying business class on Air France.

The lounge is massive, and very slow as well. It’s obvious they are getting toward the end of the day as most of the food and drink are gone and the were very slow to restock.

We all took showers as this would be our last chance for a while. The showers were very modern and spacious.

Our laundry was still unfolded and disorganized from the laundromat so we took this time to reorganize our clothes.

The lounge was beautiful, super modern and trendy.

There was even one class structure that looked like a warp core from a starship from Star Trek.

To Kendall’s dismay the complimentary spa was sadly closed.

They had a number of drink stations like most lounges, but interestingly no bar.

The food selection wasn’t great, and Lucy just had some bread. Kendall had some cheese and I had some bread and some beef item. We were going to get another meal on the plane so I knew we didn’t have a to eat a bunch here.

We chill in the lounge for a while and with about an hour till boarding we head over to our gate. Today we were flying on a year old A350-900, with the newest business class seats Air France provides. We booked the bulkhead row as they have just a little bit bigger footwell for me and Kendall, but for Lucy the space she gets is absolutely massive. We board on time and Lucy see’s her sky suite. It is massive, and has more space than even some first class seats.

Her footwell was so big she could sleep in it.

Heck, it was so big I could fit in it.

She was super excited, but it still wasn’t big enough to dance in. They also gave a very impressive children’s kit. Normally these kits are just crayons and an activity book. Sometimes they come with a cheap toy as well. Air France’s was definitely above average in that they actually came with wooden toys.

Our seats were more than ample but nothing like Lucy’s.

We then take our traditional pretake-off picture.

The plane took off on time and we settled in for our 12 hour flight to Hong Kong. Despite all of Lucy’s space she decided to visit us several times from her pod. We played a couple games of Spot It! before they started serving dinner.

They started the dinner service quickly after take off.

I chose the Beef Chuck with peanut sauce.

I initially thought this was the whole meal along with some bread, so I at least tried to eat a little of everything minus the salad as I thought this was it and thought the thing on the right was the beef option. Little did I know the main course was still coming up. The stuff in the picture was not exactly to my taste. Thankfully, they eventually brought out the main course and it was pretty tasty and tasted like braised short rib.

Dinner was done by 1:20 AM Paris time. Shortly after Lucy passes out as does Kendall.

They set up a small little self service bar area in the galley, and dim the cabin lights.

I then get ready for bed and put down my seat and fall fast asleep.

Day 9, December 27th, 2024 Step Count – 15,360 Steps

Total Step Count – 146,475

Continue to the next day here.

Read about the previous day here.