Hello Friends!
Thanks for joining me again to hear my thoughts on the inaugural Fandaze Party at Disneyland Paris.
In this post, I am going to do a review of my evening at the event. I will be doing a more in detail blog of our full package in the very near future.
So, let’s talk about everything Fandaze …
First, let me share my expectations going in to this event. Realistically, I thought that I’d possibly meet 3/4 characters, see all the shows and parades and do our package meet and greet during the party. This was based purely on the fact that we knew NOTHING going in to the event. We didn’t know how long the parades and shows were, we didn’t know the amount of guests attending, how many panels were booked etc … so I was conservative in my expectations and this faired me well.
I hate to start my review of the evening on a negative, but for me, the worst part of the night was getting into he event. We met our friends at 5pm at the Fantasia gardens entrance to Fandaze, our queues were sorted by package, green/orange passholders and non package snake lines. We were obviously near the front as we had arrived so early. This part of the process was fine and ran smoothly.
Once inside the front of Studio One we were held at the door to the Studio One hanger. The plan was obviously that we would watch these strange men with cameras for faces walk around .. but everyone just wanted to get to their priority location! The doors opened to Studio One for us to all be herded down to the Stage to watch the opening ceremony.
It soon became evident that people had other priorities and a queue formed on the right for people (mostly) wanting to go for pins and character locations first. This was a shambles. Everyone was held there in a massive scrum until the show finished then a small gateway to the left was opened and everyone herded through it, it was quite a tussle and as it went past the Kuzko queue that filled up super quickly, we initially joined it but then saw Roger Rabbit roaming and decided that we would rather meet him.
The free sets were only stopping briefly to grab photos and unfortunately the CM who took our photos didn’t do the best job, but we met him and that was something Mark had definitely wanted to do so was a big tick off our character list!
We walked past heroes and villains alley at this early point in the evening and the queue was very long. We had taken the decision before the event to likely avoid this experience as the fact it was multiple meets in a small area made us think it would likely be a bit chaotic, turns out we made the right decision.
We then went around to Toon Studios. My priorities for the night were Rescue Rangers and Talespin and Mark was excited to meet Darkwing and Launchpad. We joined the end of the queue for Max and Goofy knowing that we were likely to get near the front for the change over. We queued for around 20 minutes and met Darkwing and Launchpad – which was amazing! They loved seeing themselves on my dress and were super interactive even in the short time we had 😊
We then crossed over into the next queue and joined the end for Talespin characters, this queue was not long, had we paid more attention we could have met them sooner as people were letting other pass as they were waiting for Rescue Rangers – if we hadn’t been having such fun chatting with friends then we prob would have only queued for 5 mins! That’s ok though, we were having fun! In total we probably waited 20mins for Rescue Rangers and this meet was again incredible! I had the characters on my dress and once again had fab engagement!
We re-joined the queue for Talespin and again probably waited 20 minutes or so to meet them. This might have been my fave meet of the night, they were so much fun! Dancing and playing before the guests came in and then engaging with us all in a super fun way. I loved this meet! 💜
We then headed to get a parade spot for dance your ducktails, on the way we bumped into the lovely Catherine Powell who was absolutely delightful. I am so honoured and flattered at the compliments she gave me on my ears and my dress and was shocked that she wanted to have photos taken with me. This was such a highlight of my evening.
Dance your ducktails … what an incredible show!! High energy, fun, colourful, exciting and duck filled. I LOVED it. Is anyone else feeling the need to make themselves nephews dungerees? 😍
The Max show was the next stop for us and what a show stopper it was! Now, I’ll be honestly, I’ve not seen the goofy movie, so when the first song started I was concerned that I wouldn’t know the songs and the show might be wasted on me … but once other characters started joining Max/Powerline the show came to life for me 😊 The production of this show was incredible, the outfits, the choreography, the characters, the water and fire effects … it was all AMAZING!
Now was the start of the next sets, it was obvious that some of the park had cleared out by this point as it felt a lot less crowded. We decided to go meet some big hero 6 characters as we hadn’t seen them before and it’s a film we both love. We joined the Wasabi queue line just before it opened and were the first guests to meet him.
We then crossed next door into the Fred line and waited the 30mins until his set, in this time Mark went and met Honey Lemon and took photos with several of the meet the Robinson’s characters who were roaming near our queue-line. The queues were once again really friendly and nice with everyone chatting and letting each other back in after popping to see the roaming characters with no issues. We then headed to join the queue for GoGo and probably waited about 15 minutes in her queue.
After this it was nearly time to dance with the Ducktales guys again! We got our spot and Mark ran off to meet Clara Cluck as she had NO QUEUE. This was also the case with Lady Yaya so they were additional last min bonus meets.
This time for the parade I had established the moves and was boogying away which got amazing interaction from the dancers and made it so much more fun than watching from behind a camera. Apparently I appeared on the live stream at one point so I can’t wait to watch that back and cringe 😂 I would LOVE for this parade to be added to one of the season as it is so high energy and awesome. I was blown away.
We then had an appointment as part of the package that we purchased, I don’t want to go into this too much as I will cover it fully in my next post but this photo should tell you how incredible it was …
Following this meet it was time to get a slot for parade, we decided to walk down past rock n rollercoaster to a quieter part of the park to catch the parade on the end of its route. What fun the parade was, the array of characters was reminiscent of the 25th anniversary and it actually allowed us to interact with so many characters that we hadn’t had the chance to meet which was incredible! It’s the closest I’ve got to Sully ever .. though I’ve still not touched him😂 I got hugs from Peter Pan and so many high 5s and quick poses for photos on front of me It really was amazing! A special shout-out has to go to the main mouse who was incredible in the car and pulled some awesome poses for us!
That was our experience of the night and I am super super happy with it.
Were there some organisational fails on the night? Yes. However, due to the decisions we made and the characters we wanted to meet, this did not impact us and therefore our experience was incredible. I understand that doesn’t take away from the disappointment of those who did experience these organisational fails, but hopefully DLP will learn from these and make improvements/remove the failed elements next time.
Unfortunately due to some spiteful comments I have received on social media I feel the need to clarify the following. Myself and Mark paid for our exclusive package ourselves, in full. We did not receive any perks outside of those listed in our package, which we paid for. We waited fairly in lines like every other guest and were not fast passed any queues.
Would I book again? In a heartbeat. Would I book the same package? Possibly not, but I’ll cover than in my next blog post.
This event was groundbreaking for DLP and for me personally, a huge success and highly enjoyable experience. It is exciting that as fans we are being offered such exclusive and privileged opportunities – a character worldwide debut at DISNEYLAND PARIS?! That’s phenomenal stuff! Teething problems are to be expected, long queues for certain experiences were to be expected and there will always be people who are unhappy in any situation, I just hope that the majority of people had a positive experience like we did.
I’m writing this in the car on the way home with the Fandaze blues 😭
Lots of Love
Alyssaxx
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