“Can
we do all the rides?” asked Rory. “Apart from Space Mountain, because I’m
too small.” Good. The subliminal indoctrination by his parents had worked.
“You can go on Thunder Mountain and you might get into Star Tours, but
we’ll have to see,” I said reassuringly, cursing the AA Essential
Disneyland Paris for not listing children’s height restrictions.

The Disneyland Holiday Special runs daily
between April and September, all the way from Waterloo to the gates of the
Park. Five minutes before boarding, every child in sight was carrying a
free Disney bag full of colouring books and stickers, Disney employees in
red dungarees and white polo necks were working the crowd and the Disney
three-piece brass band played us on to the train. Rory was in a fever of
impatience.

On arrival, I was surprised to see my
normally robust nephew take one look at Minnie – there to greet us in all
her polka-dotted splendour – and charge off the other way. I think it was
at this point that my meticulously laid plans began to unravel.

We had failed to eat the packed lunch I
had made. This was to prove a crucial error. I hadn’t realised how little
a seven-year-old can carry, so I ended up lugging the bags. Worst of all,
French schoolchildren were still on holiday and most of them were in
Disneyland.

I have always been unsympathetic to
people whingeing about Disney queues. The thing to do is to cruise about
the Park, watching for those inexplicable moments when the line suddenly
dwindles away for no reason. Well, I now know that you cannot do it with a
child in tow. Their legs are too short.

I thought I would wow him with Big
Thunder Mountain, the one roller-coaster he was tall enough to do. There
was lots to look at in the queue: barrels of gunpowder, boxes of dynamite
and the train itself, rattling by full of screaming passengers to the
music of the Wild West. Although it was an hour’s queuing for a ride of
less than 10 minutes, he loved it.

We exited on a wave of excitement and
rushed off to Peter Pan, but he took one look at the rippling snake of
people outside and flatly refused to wait. Ditto Dumbo, The Adventures of
Pinocchio and The Haunted House. I sat him down on a bench and looked him
in the eye. “Ror, this is Disneyland. There are lots of queues because
everybody wants to see everything. We either have to queue or we might as
well go home.” Deep sigh: “O-kay.”

Equilibrium restored, I was fascinated by
what interested him. Alice’s Curious Labyrinth – a maze punctured with
tiny doors – was a hit, but the Mark Twain steamer was ignored. He wasn’t
interested in parades, but the Haunted House drew him like a magnet. It
began to drizzle, and then rain.

Suddenly I spotted It’s a Small World
with only 20 people outside and dragged him in to gaze at thousands of
child-dolls from across the world twirling, dancing and singing. Rory was
enthralled. So much so that we went around again. And again.

That’s the other thing I had forgotten.
The repetition. We went back to Thunder Mountain; then to the Haunted
House (45-minute queues each). Then the Haunted House again. We were on
our way back to Thunder Mountain when he hit crisis point: “I’m tired. I
need a break.” I looked at the wobbling lower lip and then at the queues
for loos, for caf�s, for fast food and drinks. It was raining hard and
there was nowhere to sit down.

Just feed him every two hours, my
sister-in-law had said, like a baby bird. I made a snap decision to leave
the park, find some food and go back to the hotel. “I’m so tired, I’m
limping,” wailed Ror, dragging one foot theatrically along Main Street.

We ate in the Disney Village outside the
gates and found Jean-Claude the taxi driver, who took us to the Hotel
Formule 1 at Esbly (�16 per night for both of us – a bargain compared to
staying in the resort, I’d thought) a quarter of an hour away, and agreed
to pick us up the next day. The hotel was a success, being all automatic
with lots of buttons to push, but we didn’t sleep well.

I lay gazing into the darkness, worrying
about my temperamental unsuitability for parenthood. Rory had a nightmare
about the Haunted House and shot into my bed at 2am, babbling about moving
portraits. In the morning, Jean-Claude dropped us off in weak sunshine, to
join a 15-minute queue for left luggage and a 10-minute queue for tickets.
First stop was Space Mountain (“just to see if I’m big enough”). He
wasn’t.

I decided to go for sitting-down things:
a 360-degree movie, which he loved, and then a show in the Videopolis
amphitheatre. We arrived 40 minutes early, bought some Sprite and sneaked
some cake out of our bag (picnics are not allowed in Disneyland, but we
had had enough fast food). In a trice, the Mouse Police were there, in the
form of a woman who said: “No eating here, madame”. Panicked, Rory knocked
his Sprite on to the floor, where it foamed and fizzed like something out
of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “Rory!” I yelled, like one of those old
harridans you see in supermarkets, “You idiot!”.

“It’s all my fault,” he said sadly,
trying to mop it up with a single tissue. I was mortified. “Oh God, Ror,
I’m sorry. It’s my fault for being grumpy.”

From then on, things improved. We went to
Star Tours, Adventure Island and the Swiss Family Robinson’s Tree House.

We went on Thunder Mountain again, and
the Haunted House, before going shopping for his brother and sister. After
that, we had time for one last ride. “Thunder Mountain,” he said. So we
queued. Again. For an hour.

I know every nut, bolt and plank of that
ride. I know that, according to Rory, there is a Disney roller-coaster in
the States which has 700 loops and that The Little Mermaid is Disney’s
greatest classic because it came out 50 years ago, even before I was born.
I know that I spent a total of four hours queuing for just 28 minutes on a
runaway mine train.

We got back home and my brother asked
with well-rehearsed pretence: “How was London?”

Instead of falling into his arms, sobbing
that he had been dragged off to France for the weekend by Cruella de Vil
Rory lit up like a Christmas tree: “Soph took me to Disneyland, not
London. I went on Thunder Mountain four times and the Haunted House three
times and it was really scary!” I listened in bewilderment. What about the
rain? What about the queues, and the waiting for food, and no Peter Pan?
“He’s had the most fantastic time,” said my brother, “I can’t thank you
enough.”

There you are. That’s the magic of
Disney.
 

here.
The views expressed and any mistakes in this review are those of the
writer and not of DLRP Magic!