Disney Day 4

We weren't really at Disney today, but I had to do something on the four hour drive home from Paris, so I blogged. I decided to share what I learned this trip... 1. French breakfast sucks. This morning we went to the McDonald’s off the highway for breakfast and discovered that apparently crappy breakfast is a France thing and not isolated to Disney Village. They had the same two lousy choices, egg muffin or pancake. I guess French people just have coffee and cigarettes for breakfast? Speaking of coffee, look at these miniature drinks we got served, and THIS is the large! Seriously, that is the juice from half an orange and a drop of coffee!

2. French toilets are gross. As soon as we crossed from Germany into France the rest stops are totally different. German rest stops are nice and clean, you might have to pay 50 cents to pee, but at least you know the cleaning lady was just in there and wipes everything down between users. The freakin gas station had a squatty potty, not the rest stop, THE GAS STATION. The Disney bathrooms at least had real toilets with toilet seats (a lot of French places just have the toilet bowl with no seat, so you don’t sit on them), but they smelled bad, the floors were gross and there was trash and paper everywhere. People here just made no attempt to clean up after themselves. Nasty. 3. Smokers stink. I get that this is Europe and everyone but the dogs smoke like a chimney, but at least in Germany people follow the no smoking rule where it is posted. Not here in France. Theme parks and places like that are no smoking in Germany and the orderly, rule abiding citizens of Germany comply. At Disney Paris the whole park is no smoking and there are a few smokers areas within the parks that are marked on the map and with signs at the locations. I don’t know why they have these places, when we walked past them there was never anyone there and people smoke all throughout the park where ever they want to. In line, waiting outside the bathrooms, at the parades…everywhere. And the Disney employees just stand there and walk by and never say a thing to them, so apparently they condone this and could care less. Very annoying. 4. People are getting more ignorant by the day. Soon the whole planet is going to be headed to hell. We witnessed people do all kinds of rude, ignorant, obnoxious things. Assisting their kids in pushing their way to the front of the mob to meet characters and pretending not to notice the other 50 people who have been standing there for 15 minutes already. Blatantly skipping people in line. Now I get this is Europe and the concept of a queue is kind of lost here, but Disney tries pretty hard to make the queue lines obvious and organized. People disregard them and go under things, over things and come up with all kinds of crap to get where they don’t belong in line. The fastpass. They way it works is the sign tells you a time frame that you can come back and ride the ride without waiting in the line, if that time works for you then you swipe your ticket and it gives you a ride ticket with your time window to ride printed on it. People would take that ticket and immediately go to the fastpass line and hand the ticket to the checker when it was nowhere near their time to ride. They would throw their hands up and pretend to not understand what the worker was saying when she wouldn’t let them through. I don’t care what freakin language you speak, times are universal and printed in big numbers on the ticket. Stop trying to take advantage and wait your turn asshole. The parades. People line up early to make sure their kids can see the parade and be up front. It’s called planning ahead. I’m sorry that I am taller than your kid and you got here 5 minutes before the parade started and thought you could push your kid up to the front to stand on top of my kid and see the parade. Poor planning on your part does not affect me and I am not above politely stepping in front of your child to reclaim my spot that I have been occupying since 30 minutes before the parade. The worst part is people do all this in front of their kids. Where is the example setting here? No wonder kids are so obnoxious these days, look at their parents. Don’t get me wrong, we had a fabulous time, we made family memories that will last a lifetime. The lousy breakfast and dirty toilets are not that big of a deal. Rather than get upset at all the stupid people and the lines we’d just shake our heads, make fun of them and laugh about it through the second hand smoke we were breathing. After all, we are in the most magical place on Earth and how can you possibly have a bad time wearing silly hats and mouse ears while a 9 Euro container of popcorn hangs from your neck?