Main Street Anaheim

So I finally made it: after so many years visiting "the prettiest copy of them all", always wondering what the original was like, I finally happened to look at th 50 years old castle, wander through the narrow streets of New Orleans Square and take a stroll on Main Street. My rate? This park is a gem, a true work of art, full of warmth, kindness, delicaties. Nothing is overstated, nothing screamed, everything, every building rather than stating its presence first say hello, then kindly introduce itself. Take for example, Main Street U.S.A.

Compared to the Disneyland Paris version, the building here are less decorated, less higher (at least they seem to), less flamboyant in colors. Some would say the only difference is a tighter budget, I would say it's much more. Disneyland's Main Street is still a town street, less urban, much more close to an ideal, to a dreamed place, slightly smaller than reality, weirdly easier to grab. Don't know if it was all made on purpose or if it was the a genius ingenuity that had it made this way... still Disneyland Main Street U.S.A. has a heart no other Main Street has.

Take a stroll, judge by yourself... and don't forget to grab an ice cream with you!

Unusual point of view!

This pictures is probably the best I took during my three day stay at Disneyland. Hope you think the same!

Castle Galore!

Here's some more pictures of the Sleeping Beauty's Holiday Castle at Disneyland (her main residence is of course in back in France at the Disneyland Resort Paris ;-)

Back from Disneyland!

Here's some pictures I took just a few days ago, during my holiday in Los Angeles!




Here's some pictures I took just a few days ago, during my holiday in Los Angeles!

A Castle Backyard

As I already said before, guests rushing from ride to ride, blindly believing in the fastpass-is-better mantra, sadly lose those details that really makes Disneylands all over the globe so much different from any other theme park. This time, we'll talk about the wondrous "backyard" of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Paris.

Guests with a faspass attitude will probably rush through the castle to get first in line at Snow White's or Pinocchio's ride and, after riding it, with their heads plunged on the park map, rush to the end of Fantasyland to catch the line for Peter Pan's ride.

Stop. Take a breath, and turn.


Your eyes are just looking at a gem, kindly reserved to the ones who still think a vacation is not just a checklist of fun (!?) things to do. The "unuseful" details put into this side of the castle never fail to amaze me. For instance, look at that wooden stairs, those stone set in the tower. Breathless...


Let's enjoy a closer look. Look at the brown tower and the golden spike over it. Wonderful!


These pictures feature a grey sky and this time time I must say the castle looks beautiful with it, just as good as the silver parisian roofs. Good job, Imagineering!

A room in New York

Some of you asked for some pictures of the interior of the hotel. Well, unfortunatley I don't have pictures of the restaurants and the New York City Bar (too busy enjoying them all!) but I managed to take some pictures of my room, wich has a very nice backside story. We had booked a lake view room but when we entered our room we found the housekeeping still working in it. Almost instantly a manager came, apologised and gave us an upgrade to a room with a an even better view! That's service! Here our room:


Here's the stunning view from our spot in the sky. Disney's Newport Bay Club is in the background on the left. At the bottom, the ice rink.

A closer view of the Lake Disney and the huge structure of the Newport.
Here's the view from our first room: we could see the Disney Village with the old imposing steel pillars, wich I miss so much, and...

a very ynique view of the Disneyland Hotel, the peak of Big Thunder Mountain and the top Indiana Jone and the Temple of Peril!

Time to rest: let's go to New York!

Disney's Hotel New York hasn't always been my favorite disney hotel at Disneyland Resort Paris: I used to like Disney's Hotel Cheyenne and Disney's Newport Bay Club much better, maybe because of their easier to understand and very well designed theming. The New York just featured a very distinctive post-modern look at it lacked that disney touch: no disney New York, no instantly recognisable icons, just a quite cold interpretation if the skyscapers theme. I just feeled and feared it would have aged very soon and become a sad reminder of the time Euro Disney Resort was built.

Well, I was wrong. I stayed once at it because the Disneyland Hotel was too expensive and my boyfriend and I wanted something better than the Newport, wich we chose the time before and found crowded beyond imagination. I was skeptical at first, but I must say I found it just perfect. It's true, it lack disney characters and a cartoonish look but I discovered that was not a minus! It made us enjoy an adult environment while still staying at disney.

Let's take a look.
Here's the left side of the building, much shorter than the central structure. Ok, I find the benches quite old (it reminds me all the flashy stars-and-stripes shirts and denims we all wore in the 80's... and I'm living in Italy!), but I like the court, the grass and the tall trees (they're not dead, it just wintertime in Paris...).

Here's the main building. What can I say? It's post-modern definetely, but got better with time, as lot of post-modern architecture unfortunately didn't. Just in front of the main building, there's an ice rink, hidden in the picture by the bushes at the center of the picture.

Here's a closer look of the bush! Well, I wanted to show the right wing of the hotel, featuring the restaurants where we have our breakfast.

A detail...


And a grand total (no, the picture's different from the second I posted). I especially like the red plants at the base of the (dead) trees, definetely consistent with the squared and triangled look of the building. I like it, it still surprises me. Your thoughts?