Last week we went to Disneyland Paris, to see the Lion King and Jungle Festival for one more time. We saw it during our last trip on the end on June, but we only had one day to see the entire season, so we wanted to give it a good look and see everything with our own eyes.
Weather
The weather was absolutely amazing especially in comparison with the cold and rainy weather in The Netherlands. We still got to enjoy Disneyland Paris with sunny and warm summer weather, without it being too hot like on our last trip when it was almost 40 degrees celsius.
Halloween Decor
We noticed some Halloween decorations were already placed in Frontierland: the pumpkin people and some ghosts. Although they weren’t lit up at night yet, because the Halloween season hadn’t started officially yet. There were also some pumpkins placed near Castle Stage and they were building a new backdrop on castle stage for the new show that will include Ursula.
Also in Fantasyland right behind the castle, they were setting up the giant rose bushes which are right behind the castle, where you can meat Mailificent during the Halloween Season. But that means that once you walk through the castle you won’t see the beautiful view of Fantasyland but a huge wall. And the first couple of days we spent in Disney you couldn’t go to the second level of the castle, but on the last day (Saturday) you could go upstairs but the balcony was still closed.
Even though we get that it’s impossible to set up the entire Halloween decorations in one night, the halloween decorations where confusing because the Lion King and Jungle Festival is Indian themed and feels completely like Summer, so once the shows ended and you would stroll around the parks, you forgot the Summer feeling and got right back into the Fall.
Food options.
The second things we noticed right away where changed in a couple of menu’s. Like at Fuente Del Oro and Hakuna Matata.
We can get into the parks pretty early thanks to our Annual Passes, but that also means you have to eat breakfast early and you’ll get hungry earlier on as well. So around 10:30 am we wanted to eat something and noticed that every restaurant and even the bakery were still closed! All the restaurants opened at 11:00 am.
And we said all the restaurants, but it was really hard to find a place to eat, because a lot of the restaurants were closed for renovations and other restaurants were only open for lunch. So a lot of people were disappointed because we all had to stand in long lines to get our food and some guests even left early to eat outside of the parks.
Because of the warm weather people wanted to have ice cream, but both of the ice cream places were closed, so they put people with a little cart in front of the ice cream places to sell cold drinks and regular popsicles. It was so weird to look at.
Lion King and Jungle Festival
Disney already announced that his amazing colorful season will return next Summer and we are so happy about that.
Like we said we already saw a bit of the season in the beginning of June, but now we had more time and had a better look at all the beauty. The Jungle Book Jive is an amazing parade / show, with colors, dance, happy music, lots of dancers and characters. This is a real must see, if you can try to stay at the hub in front of the castle for the best views.
This time we also saw the Rthym of the Pride Lands, a beautiful show, full with wonderful music from the Lion King movie and outstanding dance performances.
We love everything about this season and we are so happy it’ll return in 2020!
Merchandise
We visit the parks very often and notice that the merchandise doesn’t really change. They add some things for the seasons, but that’s basically it. But this time we went the Arendelle Aqua Collection had been released so we run to the parks and made some pictures of the new merchandise. We saw a lot of people walking around with the new Spirit Jersey and also notices quite some blue ears around the parks.
100 Characters Night Annual Pass exclusive Event
Since we own an Annual Pass for Disneyland Paris we were aware of this incredible event that would happen during our trip. Unfortunately we didn’t get hold on a couple of tickets and after a while we decided to bring a friend along on our trip so we couldn’t go to the event at all. But we noticed quite some things.
The park is usually closing up Fantasyland up to an hour before the nighttime spectacular because of the fireworks, so we weren’t surprised to see that at all. But when we strolled though the parks looking for things to do and see we noticed that a lot of area’s, stores and restaurants were already closed, so after a little while we had to stand on Main Street at 8:30 pm (30 minutes before the fireworks) because the entire park was closing up so they could prepare for the event. Also during Illuminations all the stores at Main Street closed an 30 minutes after the fireworks ended all the guests were “friendly” asked to leave the parks and after a little while they started to work people out of the parks. Once we left the parks we noticed the color of the lights changing and we saw a huge line all the way from the entrance to the security at Disney Village and than the line went back again towards the entrance. We saw people dressed up in the most wonderful costumes and the atmosphere was amazing.
We tried to get last minute tickets, but as we knew beforehand, they were sold out.
The next day however, we saw all the amazing content showing up at Social Media of the event and wow, it looked spectacular. Once we arrived at the parks for our Magic Time we noticed lots of confetti at Main Street, which didn’t bother us at all and noticed straight away that it would be a busy weekend. In fact is became so crowded that we decided to leave early that day, because there were crazy queue times and all the restaurants where packed.
Overall we had a great time and can’t wait to be back in 4 weeks! 😀
What are your thoughts on the merchandise in Disneyland Paris?