A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: Day 8 – Disneyland Paris Park Hopping Part II

On the way back to the hotel we see the hotel for the first time form the front at night, and it is stunning.

I scheduled the meet and greet this morning for 7:00PM today so we leave Walt Disney Studios and head back to the room to rest just a little beforehand. Once it’s time we go downstairs to the kids club where our appointment is at. Upon check in, I find out I apparently scheduled it for tomorrow at 7:00PM, but they were really nice and let us do the meet and greet today anyway AND schedule another one for tomorrow as well. I schedule another one for 4:00PM tomorrow.

The wait was short, not even 5 minutes. Prior to entering we were asked if we spoke French or English which was nice so the princess didn’t have to figure out what language we spoke on the fly. Of note, the princess you get is totally randomized, and you don’t know who it will be until you arrive. We were then called to the room and see that it was Cinderella.

Lucy really wanted to see Belle but she was still very excited nonetheless to see her. Cinderella thankfully spoke great English, and we got to take our time as this was a scheduled meet and greet.

We asked how Gus and Jacques were doing, and if she’d lost any glass slippers lately. We love meeting the face characters as they are so great at staying in character and coming up with fun responses.

Afterwards, we headed to Disneyland to get dinner and walked to the quick service Pizzeria Bella Notte. Lucy was craving some pasta and this was one of the few restaurants with it on the menu so she ordered some rigatoni. It also had something on the menu I had not seen since the early 2000s. They had the Mickey shaped pizza!!!!

My brother and I used to order these all the time at The Electric Umbrella in Epcot, but they stopped serving them mid 2000s and went to regular circle pizza. I was so pumped to see it again. Kendall and I split one, and amazingly it tasted incredibly similar to the Orlando version as I assumed it would have a different or more European taste.

After that excitement we headed over to It’s a Small World to see what differences there were compared to the US version.

We definitely noticed from a space perspective it didn’t feel as open. It also had more characters injected throughout like Arial and others.

Right across from It’s a Small World was Lucy’s favorite ride in any Disney park. The Tea Cups. So we did it. Twice. I personally am not a huge fan, due to the fact that as I have aged, I do not tolerate spinning rides as well anymore. Lucy absolutely loves it though so we always do it if we have time…. or even if we don’t.

We then headed over to Big Thunder Mountain. We bought a Premiere Access as we had limited time at this point as we needed to stake out a spot for the drone show, The Electrical Sky Parade, and the nighttime spectacular, Illuminations. This is a totally different show from the IllumiNations that Epcot used to have for those that were wondering. And for those wondering, yes, the only difference in the name is the capital N in the Epcot version.

Big Thunder Mountain here is notably different then the ones in the US and it is absolutely incredible.

We were lucky and got the first row on the train. This version starts off going into a tunnel underground that goes under the river and you reappear on an island. The ride is faster and has sharper turns than the Magic Kingdom version. Riding at night also decreases visibility due to multiple tunnels and almost feels like a mini Space Mountain at times. We all absolutely love it, and wish we had the time to do it again.

It’s now time to start staking out a spot to watch the drone show as it’s about 45 minutes before the show so we head toward the castle. I always love walking through the parks at night as they are so beautifully lit. I see the Rivers of the Far West, the Disneyland Paris version of the Rivers of America, and it makes me a little sad knowing that soon it will be gone at Magic Kingdom.

Being about 45 minutes early, we manage to get a pretty good spot to watch the nighttime show.

The Electrical Sky Parade is an awesome drone show, and had the classic Electrical Parade music. It also had some added Christmas theming which was festive.

The formations were very impressive, and the show lasted about 10 minutes and was well paced.

We really liked how it broke up the show so it wasn’t 25 straight minutes of fireworks and projections. I can understand weather is an issue with drones and without the drone show, the B mode of just projections and music would be incredibly weak. Seeing it with the drones was definitely unique and made for a great ending to our night. A fun fact, the voice that sings the theme song for Illuminations, was a classmate of mine from Russell High School, Amanda Wilcox Patterson.

Disneyland Paris closes its night with the nighttime spectacular, so we then head back to the room. Since we are jet lagged, and not sleepy, we figure now is a good time to do some laundry as there isn’t much else to do. Kendall stays back with Lucy in the room getting her showered and to bed. I load up the laundry into a luggage and walked to the Hotel Cheyenne which is about an 18 minute walk away as they are the only Disney Hotel with a laundromat.

Obviously the main negative to being team carry-on is having to do laundry while on vacation. Given you are only doing 1-1.5 loads at any point in time it really doesn’t take long to wash and fold. For us, the advantage and time savings of not having to check a bag or wait for a bag, worry about lost luggage, and never worry if the uber or taxi will ever have enough space for the luggage far outweighs doing laundry. You just move so much quicker with just a carry-on.

I’m about to go into way more detail about laundry than I ever thought I would in a blog article but stick with me on this because this is a true comedy of errors. So I make my way to the Hotel Cheyenne. I eventually make it to the resort, and I must say it was very well themed as a cute little ole’ western town.

I arrive at about 10:54 PM which was right before the general store closed. Normally hotel laundromats are open 24/7 and this is no different. However, this laundry does have some significant quirks. From reading online, the laundromat here requires tokens. The general store is the only place that sells these special tokens. So to do laundry you need to buy the tokens before the general store closes, and the general store closes at 11:00PM. So I make it JUST in time to buy these special tokens. I don’t know any laundromat that doesn’t just let you pay for the washer and dryer in the same place as the washer and dryer but that’s just how they do it. I buy two tokens to wash and two to dry and head to the laundromat.

The laundromat is a small separate themed building in the middle of the resort. There are only two washers and two dryers.

There are amazingly people still drying their clothes this late, but thankfully there are two washers available. I use both washers for expediency and that goes uneventfully. I then take one load and stick it into the dryer and start it up. I then take the second load and load it into the dryer set the dryer setting and insert my token to start the dryer.

Unfortunately, instead of hitting the start button, I hit the power button, which turns off the dryer. This effectively causes me to lose my token. I now have no way to dry the second load of laundry because I am out of tokens and the general store is now closed. In the US, and pretty much any laundromat I have been to you are buying time for the dryer. You can open and close and restart the dryer as long as there time is remaining. Because I have been trained to think that way, I open the other load and stick the second load in and try to restart the dryer.

Welp, you know where this is going. Opening the dryer effectively killed my token on that dryer as well. So now it’s a little before midnight and I had no way to dry our clothes. I search the laundromat extensively for a token hoping someone dropped one and it rolled underneath the washer or dryer. I check underneath the vending machines, washer, dryer, and pretty much every crack or crevice. Alas, no tokens. I did find about 1.60 Euro in change though so that was a plus. The whole time I am crawling on the floor I am screaming at myself in my head about who designs such an absurd convoluted payment system for a laundromat? We can send a man to the moon, but this is what we come up with for a laundry system????

At this point I accepted that I was just defeated by a laundromat and put our wet laundry into the suitcase. Since it is past 12:00AM at this point I decide to call an Uber instead of making the long cold walk home. Disney Resorts are incredibly safe, but knowing my luck on vacations I’d get mauled by a raccoon and get rabies or something.

I walk through the lobby and it’s pretty empty and stop for a pic as it’s just so pretty.

I get back to the room, and decide to try and hang dry the laundry. There is a towel warmer in the bathroom that gets very hot so I decide to load up as much clothes on that as possible, and then just hang the rest of the clothes around our bathroom hoping it would dry by the morning so we don’t have to burn time to go back to the laundromat to dry our clothes on our final Paris day.

I cannot begin to express my frustration at this point. I literally am just running endless questions about the laundromat in my head. Who devises such a convoluted laundry payment system? Who designed it so you lose your cycle if you open the dryer? What type of madness is this?

I then hit the sack as it’s well past 1:00AM and fall asleep while pondering the many mysteries of laundromat design.

Day 8, December 26th, 2024 Step Count – 20,403 Steps

Total Step Count – 131,115

Continue to the next day here.

Read about the previous day here.