We’re back! (sort of). We’re back at the gites anyway, recovering from our manic few days at Disneyland Paris. We stayed at hotel Cheyenne this time, a nice cowboy themed hotel which was much better than Hotel Santa Slum where we have previously stayed.

Disney standards however were not up to their usual high standards unfortunately… The rooms are in need of renovation with peeling wallpaper, televisions that don’t really get a signal even on the internal information channels, dodgy electrics which make fizzy sounds, and flickering lights – perhaps that’s all part of the American Western theme?? They also forgot to put any towels in our room on the last day… tut tut. The rest of the trip was very memorable though. We started off well going straight to Pirates of the Caribbean. It was a bit dark, but Poppy enjoyed herself:

There were of course two slightly adjoined families taking part in this trip, the Shinglers and the Hewitts/Nguyens. Myself and Thai decided to leave behind the under-height ones and their baby sitters to test out a couple of the more interesting rides in the park. Starting with Space Mountain, we queued for about 20 minutes before wondering why the ride was quiet…. yup, it had broken down. The next day we tried our luck with with Big Thunder Mountain and that broke down after about a 30 minute wait. Hmm, our fortunes did pick up as we managed a ride on Rock’n’Roller Coaster and Space Mountain eventually. Anyhows I’m blaming Thai for them breaking down – I’m convinced he had a word with the park management as he was a bit nervous .

Back to the kids and Poppy enjoyed herself lots, taking her autograph book and shoving it in the face of every character she could find.

Or even just shoving her face in chocolate mousse.

We managed to see lots of performances and shows including the night-time parade, a Playhouse Disney live show, and best of all, a ‘Welcome Princess Frog-Snogger’ parade as viewed from the windows of Walt’s American Diner on Main Street. Our table had prime viewing over Main Street as the parade passed below us, and despite young madam’s protests that she wanted to be down on the road watching it, she liked watching it from that vantage point really.

And speaking of that meal out, it was well posh innit. I had a burger (more on burgerage later) topped with peppers and foie gras. Now…. I’d never had that before so thought I’d give it a go. I’ve given it a go and I’ll cross it off the list. My best description is to liken it to eating a slice of tenderised slug. The burger and lattice fries were amazing though as was the chocolate cake and brownie ice cream I had for dessert. Sadly the chef wouldn’t cook the pigeon who was sat on a nest outside the window. Shame, it was quite plump.

Shooting Wobots, or “Buzz Lightyear’s Laser Blast” as it is correctly known was the holiday’s most popular ride for all concerned I believe with babies Joseph and Tyson becoming obsessed with Buzz. I managed a decent score of around 139000 when sitting with Poppy, however with Joseph controlling the direction lever my score plummeted to just over the 100000 mark. Poppy’s high score was just over 3000 – a definite improvement over the last trip to Disney. Joseph’s other highlights included It’s a flippin’ monotonous small world, and the Dumbo ride (on which I thought I saw the mother-in-law but it turned out to be a false alarm).

And finally, I give you the saddest news of all. You may remember my fascination with the culinary genius that was The Pizzaburger. Well, some eejit at Disney has decided that they no longer need to sell such a product and have converted the perfectly perfect Buzz Lightyear’s Pizza Planet restaurant in to an all you can eat pizza, pasta and salad buffet. R.I.P. The Pizzaburger:

I made up for that disappointment by eating five none-pizza’d burgers in two days. With chips. And Ice creams, and an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Lucky Nugget Saloon. And Chicken Tikka strips with rice at the Hakkuna Matata Restaurant. And a few hundred complimentary breakfast pain-au-chocolat. With Nutella. Oh, and there was the extra few chocolate brownies I sneaked out of the Lucky Nugget wrapped in napkins and placed carefully in the pushchair. And the coconut chicken I had on the first night too. Mmmm, that was in the Blue Lagoon restaurant next to Pirates of the Caribbean. Can anyone work out how far I need to run to burn that lot off?