This year Jon and I spent Halloween weekend at Disneyland Paris again. 

We decided not to do the MNSSHP at DLP this time, but still go to the Soiree Halloween, which is on Halloween Night itself. The other event we decided to do was a "new" event at the Studios Park called Terrorific Night 2. As you can see from the name, it is not entirely new, it is the second one. But the first one was 2 years ago, and was a much lesser affair than this year. This year's event was an newer, improved and expanded version, basically meaning it was a new event. This was the first time Jon and I had actually done it anyway. I shall talk about those shortly... First I'll mention Halloween around the park.

As well as the Soiree and the Terrorific nights, of course DLP has normal daytime Halloween things too. This year was a bit different though. They had moved some things around, and changed some of the regular things that they normally do. Decorations virtually vanished from Main St and the Hub altogether, bar some new Mickey shaped pumpkins. The decorations over in Frontierland in return, exponentially increased!! Frontierland really did become Halloweenland this year. They also decided to put random pumpkins around Fantasyland too, for the first time. Over in Frontierland all the former Main St decorations appeared all over the land, especially in the Cottonwood Creek area near the back. As far as Characters go, Jack and Sally returned this year, as did the pumpkin people, both to Frontierland. But instead of the villains appearing at the Hub as they have done previously, they now appeared by the Phantom Manor. Villains this year were the same standard fare as previous, with one notable exception - Dr Facilier made his regular park hours meet n greet debut - the only Disney park to have him out full time. Villains we saw out were: The Witch, Maleficent, Shan Yu, Governor Ratcliffe, Frollo, Jafar, Captain Hook, Prince John, Sheriff of Nottingham and of course Dr Facilier. There may have been one or two more, but I don't recall who. I have to say seeing Dr Facilier around the park was amazing, and he was such a cool guy too. Very friendly, very interactive and very much into the role. The Snow Witch was as hilarious as ever also.

Last year some of the Fab 5 friends appeared in their Halloween best in Frontierland, but this year they moved to Fantasyland. They included: scarecrow Goofy, devil Donald, and ghost Chip n Dale. Mickey was on Main St at his usual spot, and Minnie aboard the Party Train. Scarecrow Goofy and Devil Donald also appeared throughout the day on the Party Train with Minnie, along with some pumpkin people and some PIXAR friends. Although this year the Party Train did not have it's Halloween makeover which was no big deal, but I did wonder why.

There was also a brand new post-parade. DLP normally does pre-parades for the seasonal times of year, but this year have decided to go "post" instead of "pre" for some reason. They added two brand new floats for Halloween, and they were awesome! Dr Facilier was given a really cool bayou boat. He was aboard it along with Ratcliffe, Shan Yu and Jack Sparrow. Although Jack Sparrow does meets in the park normally, he is never seen in any parade, so that was cool too. The other changes were that Cruella now had a car which was Dalmatian patterned, and the there were a lot more pumpkin people than last year, who now also had props which they danced with, and did more than just walk along behind.

They also had a new Halloween show on the Hub this year. Last year they didn't have one, but instead adapted the last main show of the day to include the villains, which was ok, but nothing special. Last year they also had some really weird show in Frontierland that was like some sort of sing off between Maleficent and The Queen. This year it was just the main Castle show, but I have to say that was far superior and more than made up for the loss of the witches show!

In Disney Village, they had some weird entertainment involving balloons... not sure what to call it but the French liked it! Apparently (or so we heard) Buffalo Bill's dinner show had a Halloween theme to it for a limited time too, and at Billy Bob's, which is a bar and restaurant / entertainment venue, they had some sort of Halloween monster magic show. They also had some roaming performers that included some pumpkin people, but not the normal ones seen in the park- they were the old style ones from a couple of years ago - and some giant stilt walking tree creatures, which although may sound weird, were actually very cool!

At the Disneyland Hotel, the Magical Moment that happens daily had a Halloween theme, with the music being Halloween music, and the characters being in Halloween outfits - which were different from in the parks too! Also the other hotels had some other entertainment, but we heard that it might have been something along the lines of the balloon animal people in Disney Village, so we didn't check those out.

This Halloween Season also saw the return of two Star Wars characters to Discoveryland. Darth Vader and Chewbacca started test runs on this trip, and have since been added to schedule for daily meets. Star Wars characters cannot normally be met in the Parks, with the exception of at Star Wars weekends at Hollywood Studios. DLP also does not have the Jedi Training Academy like the US Parks, so the Star Wars characters cannot even be seen normally. We heard from a Cast Member that they would be around until at least January.

This entry is getting a little lengthy now, so I think I will stop here and will make separate posts later this week about the Soiree and Terrorific Night.

Dan.