My last post ended as we boarded the Eurostar for Disneyland Paris. The assistance was great and we had seats at a table, so far so good.
Food always causes problems, but as I had ordered a GF meal I thought it would be ok. I got a GF chocolate oat bar, a yogurt and a pot of jam! Sadly my diet is dairy free too so this wasn’t really suitable, not to mention disappointing when everyone else had bread and croissants too. The meal was included in our tickets. We spoke to the the person sorting the food and he said he would try and find me something in the buffet car. Eventually he returned with a bag of gluten free pretzels, which were nice, but that was my lunch and i couldn’t eat all of them as they are dry and salty. I decided to eat the oat bar too, but it was so chocolaty I really didn’t like it, but needs must when you are hungry and need energy to keep going.
We had looked into food options in Disney before we left home as we had heard that it was difficult to eat GF, but we didn’t realise quite how bad it would be. We knew Planet Hollywood had a GF menu and we headed here on the first night. There was a decent choice, but mainly salads, although they were good and generous salads, the only dessert was sorbet. of course the choice of non GF food is amazing.
In the park during the day there are only fast food outlets and nowhere to buy snacks except ice creams and cake. You also can’t eat your own food in the park. There isn’t anywhere in the parks or nearby to buy anything anyway. During the day the only option for me was a very poor fast food salad, lettuce, tomato, cucumber and a little bit of cheese or chicken, with no dressing.
Breakfast in the hotel was pretty good, they bring out a GF basket filled with bread, biscuits, cakes etc. The buffet included fresh fruit and cooked food, but no GF cereal. I ended up having a lot of fruit and the GF bread, and taking some of the bread and cake from the basket for later in the day 😮
All the hotels have an evening buffet, but the GF choice was very limited and the meal was a fixed price which we couldn’t afford.
If you stay in the park to watch the evening parade there is a mad rush for the eating places after so that evening we decided to head for Earl of Sandwich. The only gluten free choice, you guessed it salad! The salad was ok, but when your family are tucking into huge sandwiches, hotdogs, chips etc it’s rather soul destroying. The second time we ate in the Earl, I was cold and fed up, so asked if the soup was GF to go with my salad. They said soup was GF, but when it arrived it had huge croutons in it. I was so upset and tired and hungry that I just threw the croutons on the tray and ate the soup. This was getting so upsetting. I has said before we arrived that I didn’t want food to become an issue, but on top of losing my Dad and being exhausted it was too much and more tears were shed.
We did have a few snacks that we had taken with us, but they could only be eaten in our room.
Our final food disaster was in Paris. We decided to have lunch in the restaurant up the Eiffel Tower, having asked and checked with kitchen that there were GF options we got a table and ordered drinks. When it came to it the only GF option was fish and veg, I can’t eat fish it makes me sick, so I ended up with a very expensive plate of vegetables, whilst the others of course had a delicious meal and dessert.
Anyway enough of food. We had a good time, although it was hard and exhausting.
Being in a wheelchair has it’s advantages as you can get a priority pass for the rides which saves long queues, which is brilliant. Emily would have got so frustrated with long queues and it would have been more exhausting for me. You do upset a lot of people though as you are effectively jumping the queue and there are a lot of people who qualify for the priority pass as well as people who have booked fast passes. For meeting characters you are given a time to go back again rather than queuing, but sometimes there are no slots left so you have to get there early.
I think we saw most of the parks and went on many rides, but not the very fast or scary ones, the worst we did was Thunder Mountain, definitely a one off experience! Emily would happily have just gone around all the time looking for the Characters and meeting them and getting autographs, she has a book with them in and has photos with them and we are hoping to get a scrapbook made too, to preserve the good memories rather than the issues around food and losing my Dad. One morning we had Breakfast with Characters which I think was highlight for Emily.
Selfie in paris
Up the Eiffel Tower
Boat on the Seine (or in my case Insane)
Thunder Mountain
