Goofing Around – Man United’s Soccer
School

A weekend in Disneyland
Paris with my eight-year-old son, Joe: great! Trying out the
Manchester United soccer school for kids, opened with much hoo-hah and
even Eric Cantona: fantastic! I’m really excited. Joe is pretty cool
about it – he’s an Arsenal fan.

But the friendly, highly
enthusiastic Man Utd training staff have a warm welcome, even for
young Gooners in their Arsenal away shirts. The training centre is a
few minutes’ walk from Disneyland Resort Paris. There’s a big
Astroturf pitch equipped with everything budding young van Nistelrooys
could wish for. You can practise hitting free kicks round a dummy
wall; dribbling round life-size cardboard cut-outs of Man Utd players;
and there’s even a laser gun that measures the speed of your shot.

We both loved our
session, and emerged with certificates signed by Sir Alex himself that
confirm we can dribble like Giggsy (though I did get tackled by that
Wes Brown cut-out), shoot like Ruud and pass – shouldn’t that be
crunch? – like Keano.
The question is, why go all the way to Disneyland to play football? If
you’re a cynical type, you’ll see it as a huge corporate merchandising
venture. The more romantic might say it’s where Fergie’s theatre of
dreams meets Walt’s vision of making dreams come true. Whatever, when
I asked Joe what he’d do if we had an extra day, the rides or the
footie, he went for the footie without hesitation, so I reckon they’re
on to a good thing.

That’s not to say he
didn’t like the rides. The hopper ticket gives you the run of what are
actually two enormous fun-parks, Disneyland Park and Walt Disney
Studios (the entire megalopolis is a fifth the size of Paris, it says
here), in all their busy, corny, thrilling glory. You have to queue
for everything – but on the big rides there’s a system called Fastpass.
Say you want to go on Space Mountain, you stick your ticket in a
machine and it gives you a Fastpass ticket with a time on it. You
return at that time and get ushered through a side entrance to the
front. Brilliant! It’s like organised sneaking-in, and I loved it.

The rides vary from the
cutesy It’s A Small World, a musical global cruise featuring hundreds
of smiley singing-and-dancing marionettes in naff national costume
(France is can-can girls, of course), to the truly monstrous Space
Mountain, where you are strapped into a rocket on rails and
projectile-vomited at 45mph in universal darkness, give or take the
odd planet.

Between these extremes
there are dozens of options. But for Joe and me, the unanimous
favourite was Pirates of the Caribbean, in which you sail through a
full-scale pirate attack on a fortified South Seas town, as enacted by
100 or so amazingly lifelike, life-size dummies.

As for other stuff:
there are plenty of accommodation options, from self-catering up to
the flagship Disneyland hotel. We had a very comfortable stay in the
Hotel New York, an impressive art deco-style mock-up of a New York
skyscraper.

Then there was the odd
little adventure that required no ticket. As we were leaving the
Disneyland Sports Bar after the Arsenal-Man Utd FA Cup match, I
realised my digital camera and mobile were missing. Donald Duck! I’d
been robbed. I reported it to the sympathetic officials at Disneyland
city hall – and the next afternoon sat in the local police station
gobsmacked, as a smiley cop handed me back my camera and phone. They’d
caught a pair of pickpockets with my stuff, and traced me via a
picture I’d taken of Joe at the soccer school. Amazing. It felt a bit
like an elaborate ruse orchestrated by Gendarme Mickey to convince me
of Disneyland’s magical qualities.

We headed home on the
marvellous Eurostar. Pure luxury at up to 186mph, although it feels
about half the speed of Space Mountain – there were no scary plummets
or switchbacks at all. I almost felt like complaining.

Way to go

Further Information: Eurostar (08705 186186, eurostar.com)
direct to Disneyland �99 rtn (adult) and �50 rtn child (four-11
years).