Halloween | Disneyland Paris

Happy {late} Halloween! 

We weren't sure how the French celebrated (or if they celebrated) Halloween, so we took the girls to Disneyland Paris the weekend before. 

Disneyland did not disappoint. 

Halloween decorations! It made me so happy to see Jack O'Lanterns everywhere

 The decorations were beautiful, of course. I loved seeing all the pumpkins and sunflowers everywhere.

I grew up in Southern California where going to Disneyland (in Anaheim) was at the very least a yearly event and often more than that. So I was very interested to see how this Disneyland compared.

The castle was gorgeous. It was still the Sleeping Beauty castle, but with a few differences. You could walk up onto a balcony and see out and there was also a little passage under the cave where you could go see the dragon (pretty neat, but not so much for younger kids. Aaron waited with the girls while I ran and checked it out). It also had some thorns out in front of it (facing Fantasyland).

Alice in Wonderland Labyrinth

The set up was very similar to California's Disneyland with the exception of no Critter Country. You can check out a map here. There were a few differences and a few different rides. The very first thing we did was an Alice in Wonderland themed labyrinth. London loved trying to go through all the little doors and seeing everything.

It was neat seeing some of the attractions in French: "Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs"

Adventureland was pretty awesome here. They had some great entertainment as shown in the photo above, but also, the whole land was decorated and put together really well (and different from back home). Below you can see that they really tied in Aladdin with their theme. They also had an island in the middle of it similar to Tom Sawyer's Island, but it was more Pirate themed and connected to the mainland by various bridges. We didn't get a chance to play around on it, but it looked awesome!

The Haunted Mansion was a lot scarier than back home! I think the storyline was about a bride and groom about to get married, but then the groom never showed up and the bride died of heartbreak or something. There were lots of creepy skeletons around. We took the girls on it and poor London had a blanket covering her head most of the time. Luckily she handled everything very well and after the ride ended, she made sure to say that the ghosts were silly on that ride... It was a good ride, but I'd be a bit cautious of taking young children on it.

Space Mountain was alright, but I prefer the one back home. This one has a couple loops and gave me a bit of a headache.

Tomorrowland was very similar to California's. We had fun walking through and seeing everything.

So, neat story: London dressed up as Tinkerbell for Halloween this year and we let her wear her costume to Disneyland for the day. The first ride we all wanted to go on was Peter Pan but the line was 45 minutes long so we got a fastpass and came back later. When we showed up, the workers told us that since we had Tinkerbell with us, that we could use the fastpass line every time without having to get another fastpass! Pretty neat. Everyone was so nice to London and told her how cute she looked. We made sure to go on the ride again before we left and sure enough, they let us go right through the line with no problems. It was great, especially since it was always one of the longer lines during the day (and a family favorite).

The longest wait we had was for the Dumbo ride. No fastpass and it seemed like every kid in the park wanted to go on it. Of course London insisted on going on the "elephant ride" so we waited for almost an hour in line. Luckily that was by far the longest wait we had all day.

The castle was lovely all lit up at night!

One interesting thing was to see how they had indoor shopping here. It was kind of neat seeing different little changes to help deal with the wetter weather here.

A couple last thoughts: 

Everyone spoke great English which was very helpful. 

The Mother's Room was more like a Parents' room. There was no private place to breastfeed Adeline (most people use formula here). While I've gotten pretty good at nursing Adeline in public, I was still a bit disappointed about this, especially with how nice the Mother's Room is in California.

There's so many people smoking. Everywhere. Even with tons of "No Smoking" signs around, tons of people were walking around with cigarettes. Something to be prepared to see and smell.

There are different ticket prices depending on whether or not you live in France. It is way cheaper if you live here in France versus if you're a tourist. 

Overall, I would recommend checking out Disneyland Paris if you're in France for awhile. Our whole family had a great day and we personally had a lot of fun comparing it to our Disneyland back in California. :)

For more information, check out Disneyland's website (French, but you can change the region/language depending on where you're coming from).