Disneyland Paris - Walt Disney Studios

On our first morning, we woke up bright and early for our first taste of Disney park magic at the Walt Disney Studios. While we were doing our pre-trip planning, I was looking at the Studios’ ride line-up and was kind of under the impression that it was a half-day park. I wasn’t wrong. The week we were there, Studios was the EMH park instead of Disneyland Park, and the first morning, we did everything but Crush’s Coaster (it was broken) and the shows in less than two hours. We were there on a very cold and rainy Monday in November which undoubtedly contributed to the lack of lines, but I still don’t think it would be a full-day park.

I love empty parks

Disneyland Paris - Disney Village

Our initial introduction to Disney Village was chaotic and involved a lot of power walking, but when we got a chance to take it in more slowly later on, I found it quite enjoyable. We had spent way too much time eating and touring Pointe du Hoc and were afraid that we were going to miss our 9:30 reservations for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the Disney Village, which I was hoping would present a delightfully cheesy picture of the American West. I was not disappointed.

Disneyland Paris - Sequoia Lodge

This is important to know about me: I am a huge Disney nerd. My family visited Disney World frequently when I was a kid, I worked there for almost two years during and after college and grad school, and I’ve gone back multiple times as an adult. I’ve always dreamed of going to all of the Disney parks worldwide, and one of the reasons I chose to go to France alone in November was because I knew none of the friends I’ve traveled with before would want to spend time at Disneyland Parc. Then my mom and sister and brother jumped on the bandwagon and it turned into a 2/3 family vacation.

We wanted to stay on site to make the most of what we figured was a once-in-a-lifetime trip there, so we chose the Sequoia Lodge. I’m a huge fan of the Wilderness Lodge at WDW, as well as the real National Park lodges out west that it’s based off of, so I was pretty excited since this seemed to be a close approximation of those. The lobby was pretty and well-themed, but lacked some of the grandeur that the Wilderness Lodge has.

We took some family pictures by the lobby's Christmas decorations.

American Normandy

A friend who had visited the area a few years ago strongly recommended getting a rental car to explore the beaches. Unlike other parts of Europe that I’ve visited, there isn’t any great public transportation around there, so a car is really important unless you plan on doing one of the big bus tours that we crossed paths with. I’m not typically a huge organized tour fan because I like having the freedom to explore at my own pace and spend more or less time at a certain location depending on how much it interests me. This was my third Europe trip in the last three years, all of which have involved driving, so renting cars over there doesn’t really phase me.

Our next stop was the American cemetery near Omaha Beach. We were somewhat surprised to find metal detectors and baggage screening at the entrance to the main building, but we got through quickly since it wasn’t crowded when we were there.

We didn’t spend much time in the museum area because it was our third D-Day-focused museum in the last 18 hours. We did take the time to watch a fantastic short movie in a theater on the lower level that followed the stories of a few of the people who were killed in the Normandy campaign. I’m not usually much of a softie, but I was a little choked up at the end.