Halloween in Paris

Happy Halloween! The French don't really celebrate it like we do. In fact, no country really does (though apparently Britain is trying to catch up). Kids don't go trick-or-treating, and while there are a handful of bars that decorate for Halloween and some people dress up, it's just not the same cultural juggernaut like it is in the US.

So with that in mind, we decided the best way to celebrate Halloween would be to go to the biggest American cultural influence in France: Disneyland! They have a Halloween party on Halloween night, where you buy a special ticket and can enter the park at 5pm, they then kick out everyone else at 8pm, and then the park stays open until 1am. This party isn't just done at the Paris park, but also the LA and Florida ones too. We actually went to the LA one last year and had a lot of fun, so we were looking forward to seeing both what Disneyland Paris was like, and how they handle Halloween. 

We had a lot of fun too! We took the RER train out there, and it's way way out there, so we didn't arrive about 5:15. The tickets had all sold out, so there was a massive mob of people waiting to get wristbands (which lets you stay in the park past 8pm) in a very un-Disney like unorganized mess. But after the 30 minutes it took to get through that, we could finally enter the park! It's somewhat smaller than even Disneyland in LA, but it has most of the same main attractions, though as we discovered there's some major differences once you actually ride them. Also Tomorrowland is renamed as "Discovery Land", and Main Street USA still opens up the park and looks just like it does in the other parks (English signs and all).

They didn't do as much decorating for Halloween as Disneyland LA did (we were really impressed by that, and highly recommend checking it out if you live in the LA area), but there were a number of pumpkins and things around, so it did feel like Halloween. The first surprise though was when we got on the Indiana Jones ride. In the US it's a dark-ride adventure in a "jeep" that's fairly tame (from what I remember, it's been 14 years). In Paris on the other hand, the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril ride is a looping rollercoaster! Same with Space Mountain, it's a full-on loop+barrel roll steel coaster in the dark!

The Phantom Manor aka, Haunted Mansion, was mostly the same, except for the last half which was WAY darker and scarier (lots of rotting skeletons), and an old-western scene thrown in. There's apparently a gigantic backstory that the Wikipedia article dives into, but that we didn't catch at all. Disney also didn't completely redecorate it in Nightmare Before Christmas style like they did for Halloween in LA, so that was a bit disappointing. But while in line we met a couple from Milwaukee who had been to every Disney park in the world (this one being their last one to complete the list) so it was fun talking to them in the very long line. It was the first native English conversation we'd had so far.

Star Tours was also an interesting mixture of French and English, with C3PO speaking in French while we waited in the queue. He is a protocol droid though "fluent in over six million forms of communication" so it'd be more surprising if he didn't speak French. Overall most of the park was a mixture of languages, and it was by far the most English I've heard since we moved here thanks to all the British tourists. And they had the same incredibly annoying Halloween music playing over and over in English as there was in LA. Actually there was all kinds of Halloween music playing throughout the park, all in English.

Also there's a lot more smoking in the park, even though it's supposed to be in designated areas only, and the best was Smurfette chain smoking in line for Space Mountain.  Oh France!

The only negative thing about the night was that the last train to Paris left at 12:18am, so we had to cut out early to make sure we caught it. But we plan on going back to Disney for the Christmas season, and to ride more rides since we didn't get to go on too many due to the really long lines.

I posted photos here. I also lost my lens hood somehow (probably on the Indiana Jones ride) so I'll have to figure out how to replace it. 

Also I forgot to mention that November 1st is a national holiday due to All Souls Day, so it's a 3 day weekend. This means that people always get the day after Halloween off. It would be pretty awesome if it was like that in the States.