Bienvenue à La Belle France - Sept/Oct 2020

discat73

Earning My Ears
Joined
Oct 11, 2014
13 months before your departure date isn’t too early to start a trip report, right? I hope not because I just took advantage of the Super Early Bookers special to book at the Disneyland Hotel for 3 days/2 nights!!! My first international castle!!!! I’m so excited!!!!!

Who?

I’m Lizzy, 45, work over-achiever by day, slightly obsessive planner by night. Disneyland (the original) is my happy place but Disney World usually has to satisfy my Disney needs since I’ve spent the past decade on the east coast.

My travel companion and general partner in crime is my DH, Jake, 52. He likes rides, snacks, and the benefits of obsessive planning. He does not like talking about trip planning, particularly Disney trip planning.

When and Where?

The plan is to spend three days in Paris followed by three days at Disneyland. We will then finish up with three or four days in either Normandy or the Loire Valley.

I love trip reports and spend a lot of time reading them since they often have the little everyday details that I like to know when planning a trip. I’ve never actually written one, though. But I hope people join me as I need company for the next thirteen months (particularly since it has only been six hours since I booked and DH has already banned me from talking about it until January)!
 
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Pre-Trip Repot Index

The Report- Index
  • 9/23: Overnight Flight to CDG
  • 9/24: Paris by boat and bus
  • 9/25: Paris
  • 9/26: Paris
  • 9/27: Paris
  • 9/28: Disneyland Hotel, Half Board
  • 9/29: Disneyland Hotel, Half Board
  • 9/30: Disneyland; Loire Valley
  • 10/1: Loire Valley
  • 10/2: Loire Valley
  • 10/3: Return Flight
 
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Hi discat, I'm in the same boat you are...we will be in France next September 2020 and already booking and planning. I booked the 25% discount and half board package in February 2019 and started planning and reading RT since then! We will be in Disneyland the same dates and after doing some research I hope maybe we can see the start of Halloween Season on 30th September before leaving. That would be fun!
 
Don't blame you for planning that far out! We did the same for our trip. Rouen & Versailles are awesome!
 


Hi discat, I'm in the same boat you are...we will be in France next September 2020 and already booking and planning. I booked the 25% discount and half board package in February 2019 and started planning and reading RT since then! We will be in Disneyland the same dates and after doing some research I hope maybe we can see the start of Halloween Season on 30th September before leaving. That would be fun!

The fun part is that it provides a whole year of planning delights! I can’t decide whether I’m looking forward to it bring Halloween season or not. On one hand, I love the Halloween season at Disneyland and would be excited to see it in Paris. On the other hand, I’d also really like to see the standard decorations since I’ve never been. Either way, I’m ridiculously excited. Only 366 more days before take off! 😀

Don't blame you for planning that far out! We did the same for our trip. Rouen & Versailles are awesome!

Your trip seems amazing so far! I currently can’t make up my mind whether we should do Versailles (I’ve been but DH has not) and then the Loire Valley for the third and final portion of our trip or whether we should go north for Giverny, Rouen, and the Normandy coast. DH won’t leave our dogs for more than ten days so doing both is sadly not an option.
 
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Ahhh, my poor neglected little trip report! Life got a bit overwhelming and I had to put my way-too-early trip planning on hold. I’d have so much more free time if work didn’t suck up all the hours in the day!

But I’ve actually made some progress (unfortunately with the help of a week in bed with the and now have lots of news to report. Itinerary decided! Plane tickets purchased! Hotels booked!

After weeks (OK months) of deliberation, I decided that I really wanted a fourth day in Paris. DH absolutely refused to budge on total trip length and I knew that I would never be satisfied with only two full days for Normandy so the Loire Valley is officially destination number three!

Updated Plan:

9/23: Overnight flight to CDG. I toyed with the idea of spending my hoarded frequent flyer miles on business class but just couldn’t do it. Need to keep saving those because Australia is on the radar and that is a MUCH longer flight. But I did reserve seats in the tiny economy section on the upper deck of the giant Airbus! And the airplane dork inside of me is very excited about it.

9/24: Arrive Paris. Current reservations are four nights at the Hotel Malte. Good, central location in the 2e. Very close to Les Halles for catching the RER to Disney. Nice reviews. The hotel reservations are likely to change six times between now and September but we will see. I thought I had allocated a pretty generous budget to this trip (outside of the Disneyland Hotel splurge) but I’ve found that flights, hotels, even my dog sitter are running about 10% more than expected and many of the Paris hotels could easily push this much higher. Plan for the day is likely still a boat/bus tour and early to bed.

9/25: Paris. Possibly a day trip to Versailles.

9/26: Paris

9/27: Paris

9/28: Board the RER for Disneyland Paris and two nights at the Disneyland Hotel! We will get as an early a start as possible but will most likely miss the early magic hours. Hope to get a reservation for Inventions 30 minutes after park close.

9/29: Disneyland Paris. Need to decide what to do with our other premium voucher.

9/30: Disneyland Paris in the morning followed by picking up rental car and driving to Amboise. Struggling with the timing on this one. I wish rental car pick up times didn’t have to be so specific! I’d like to have time to tour Clos Lucé before it closes but also don’t know how much of the day to devote to Disney. Current thought is to reserve the car for noon or 1:00. Hotel for this day and the next will be the Hotel Au Charme Rabelaisien in Amboise.

10/1: Current plan is Chenonceau followed by a quick tour of the Park Mini Chateaux and finishing the day with Villandry.

10/2: We will start the day with the Amboise market followed by either Chaumont or Cheverny. Final chateau will be Chambord. Plan is then to head for CDG, drop off the car, and check into an airport hotel for the night. Currently have Citizen M reserved. Our flight isn’t until early afternoon but I’m not sure that staying somewhere else would really gain us anything since we would need to be at the airport around 9:30 to return the car. If we get in early enough, we may take the RER into the city for one final taste of Paris.

10/3: Bid adieu to France (sniff) and fly home. Reunite with the pups!

Next steps are to think a bit more about what we want to do with our Paris days, whether we will want a museum pass, and most importantly, what patisseries, boulangeries, and fromageries we simply can’t miss.
 

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