Thursday, July 24, 2008

Better Late than Never


At the beginning of July I headed to Disneyland Paris for my quarterly team meeting. Spent the day doing normal business stuff then we headed to the park for fun. It was all a bit surreal to me, it was like I stepped through a space machine and was transported back to the US. Everything in the park was American, I can only assume that is for branding purposes they want all of the parks to look and feel the same. As a result you enter and are walking down Main street, USA (although you're in Paris) all the restaurants & bars in Disney Village reminded me of those at Downtown Disney in Orlando: Rainforest Cafe, Planet Hollywood, a Chicago style steak house, a country western bar, disco, and a sports bar.
Going on a weekday evening there weren't many queues at all the longest wait we had was 20 minutes. This enabled us to hit all the high-speed/action/roller-coaster type rides there and go on Space mountain 3 times. The speed with which we got through the park was probably helped by one of my co-workers who knew where everything was so we were able to quickly go from 1 attraction to another.
Over dinner we had an interesting conversation about housing. In France apartments are sold or rented not based on the number of bedrooms but rather the total number of rooms (excluding kitchen and bathroom). For example an apartment with a living room and bedroom would be listed as a T2. Some apartments in France come with what is called an "American Kitchen" this refers to a kitchen that is open to the living room but with a bar or island separating the two.

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