The Ryndex

Sandra did a good job, didn’t she? I can’t top that, and I’m not going to even try. Here’s the summary for some other stuff and things.

So after Sandra, there was Katrina. Well, not really after Sandra, but kind of overlapping, and she kind of overlapped with the next guest, Shannon. Except that Katrina went to Spain, so when Shannon arrived, Katrina wasn’t exactly here and they didn’t exactly overlap. So we went to the Opera.

That’s Shannon, I mean. Katrina at this point was still in Spain. We (Katrina and Sandra and I) had gone to the Opera a few weeks before. The Opera Garnier, as everyone well knows, doesn’t put on operas, only ballets. It was a good ballet. Then Shannon went to London.

Katrina is an old friend from Medicine Hat. Her family moved next door to my family when we were both really little, and we’ve spent countless vacations together — Las Vegas, Victoria, and tons of camping and card parties. It was really nice to be able to spend some vacation time with her again (even if I had to go to work for most of it).

I should have put some of Katrina’s Spain pictures up here. It looks like this Spain place is pretty cool. I should have been there with her.

Shannon, on the other hand, is a very new friend. She’s also from Canada, and we met on one of the filthiest web sites on the internet. That’s what we have in common. Her mom was supposed to email and threaten me, presumably to ensure I wasn’t one of those those sociopathic internet fiends that moms hear about. I was kind of disappointed that she didn’t, because I was going to have my mom reply. Hooray for moms!

So, we all went to Notre Dame. Katrina and I had a beer, and then we went to see the Eiffel Tower. They’ve upgraded the tower so that it glitters with thousands of little strobes for the first ten minutes of every hour. I played with the exposure settings on my beloved Canon S230 digital camera until I came up with a decent photo.

And then some other stuff happened. Katrina went back. Shannon and I saw a kangaroo and joey. You know, stuff and things.

Then we went to Disneyland or something.

My recollection of Disneyland in California is a bit hazy, but Disneyland Paris seemed strikingly familiar. The all-American Main Street, USA opened before the rest of the park, so we took a few morning photos of a partially deserted park.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #1: Sleeping Beauty’s castle is pink with square trees, instead of light grey or blue or whatever it is normally.

The Cast Members kept the crowd under control with a velvet rope as a scratchy recording welcomed all the boys and girls to the Magic Kingdom in several languages. They asked us not to run when they finally pulled the cord aside. There would be plenty of Magic for everyone. So we made a break for it and they gave us heck.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #2: The classic Space Mountain, as I recollect, is a sterile white futuroscope. In Paris, it’s brass and green retro-classic Jules Vernes. You aren’t warned that there is a loop in the ride.

We went on some of the new rides that cropped up during the last ten years — there was a heavily subtitled show Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, and Dumbo the Flying Elephant was reprised as a rider-controlled rocket. By “reprised”, I mean that the Imagineers hoisted the same ride mechanism up a metre, shredded some of his fibre-glass clones and reinjection molded him into rocket shapes painted with pagan astrological symbols under a ripoff of a Dark Crystal prop. From the design, it was probably cross-marketed as an afterthought with that Atlantis movie we never heard so much about.

I was going to mention that Atlantis: The Lost Empire starred a Canadian (Micheal J. Fox), but decided it was too gratuitous. If you’re Canadian, you probably already filed this fact away, and if you’re not, you probably don’t care.

Dumbo is a he, right?

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #3: There isn’t a TomorrowLand, but a DiscoveryLand.

The Tarzan show was fun. The kids really got into it.

We figured out the FastPass system, which didn’t exist the last time I was at Disneyland. The most popular rides have special FastPass reservations. You pick up a ticket with a time indicated on it, and continue your day (at less crowded rides, restaurants and shops). At the reserved time, you can go through the FastPass line, which is significantly shorter than the normal line. You can only get one FastPass reservation at a time.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #4: One of the most popular rides in Paris was Peter Pan, which was pretty much the only ride we didn’t go on. The line was forty minutes long, even at the time of day when you could walk onto Pirates of the Caribbean. What’s up with that?

It was a holiday long weekend in summer, but it wasn’t too crowded. The longest we waited was twenty minutes, and that was for the Big Thunder roller coaster (one of the best rides at Disneyland Paris, partially underground and an excellent view of the Phantom Manor).

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #5: In Autopia, you spent forty-five minutes waiting around a traffic circle while the other kids honk at you, and gas costs three times as much. Just kidding. I don’t remember Autopia from the Disneyland California, and I forgot that they are real little cars, simplified for the kids. Gas fumes and all. I dared Shannon to drive with her eyes closed and we nearly caused a pile up.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #5 (for real): The exterior of It’s a Small World is colourful. I prefer the Paris version to the white and blue version of California.

Canada was represented, which I don’t remember from California. My strongest memory of It’s a Small World is from when I was seven years old, so it just might be that I hadn’t learned to associate Polar Bears and Totem Poles with Canada yet. Hockey Players plied their trade on top of a Haida-inspired wedding cake and Royal Canadian Mounted Police were also tastefully displayed beside the Moose.

I recently read a short novel called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (read it online for free!), which prominently features the Haunted Mansion. It is an excellent story — a great science fiction premise in a great location. I had a new appreciation for the Haunted Mansion, and was eager to see it again.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #6: There isn’t any Haunted Mansion, but there’s a Phantom Manor.

Both the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Phantom Manor were very faithful to the originals, but neither were exact copies. We ate our dinner at the Blue Lagoon, the restaurant inside the Pirates attraction.

We stayed for the Fantallusion parade and fireworks. We took our spots an hour before the parade started, and it turned out to be a very good idea. The best spots were right on Main Street. We followed the float with a burbling Minnie Mouse (I was screaming “I love you Minnie!”) so we could get close to the castle for the fireworks, and then they made us go home.

So we went home, falling asleep on the metro.

Disneyland Paris is different than Disneyland Classic. It’s smaller. You can easily spend just a single day there, see everything and some of your favourites twice. It’s good. I didn’t feel rushed or stressed.

For Shannon’s final weekend, we went to visit Vaux-le-Vicompte, another chateau close to Paris. You can’t easily get there on public transport, so we hijacked Antonio and Anna, and their car. And some picnic food.

It was probably the ideal picnic. We found a little field far from everything with a creek and stone bridge, a shady tree and horses. There weren’t any cars or buildings in sight. We ate picnic spaghetti that Antonio and Anna had prepared — it was cooked with egg and tasty ham into a finger food.

Vaux-le-Vicompte was great. Evidently Louis XIV thought so as well — it was his jealousy over this chateau (built by his finance minister, Nicholas Fouquet) that prompted him to build Versailles — and throw the finance minister into jail for fraud.

And I think I’ve seen this statue once or twice before…

Well, that’s about all I have to say about that. Bye Shannon! And stuff.