Paris

I don’t know where to start today. Ollie,Audrey, Tabby and I were up at 7.00am breakfasted by 8.00am and on the train by 8.30am to Nation the station we catch the train to Euro Disney. We arrived at our destination at opening time. The nightmare started here. There were so many families queueing to go into the venue it was not a sight that stirred up any enthusiasm. When we finally received our official tickets to enter the venue a whole new world opened up. The set up of Disney is designed for the wow factor. The buildings are spectacularly American. The fact that you have spent $125 for a day pass most of the buildings are shops designed to relieve you of another few hundred. The simplest measure of Disney's worth. The first place to look for a simple valuation of a company is the price that the stock market puts on it. Disney currently has about 1.61 billion shares outstanding. With a share price of around $94 per share, that puts Disney's market capitalization at roughly $150 billion.Sep 8, 2016.

In the merchandise sector, each shop has a very different atmosphere in terms of friendliness and encouragement. Many procedures are treated like a military operation where you are considered to somehow be a threat to the company in terms of stealing money from the tills. The counting of money at the end of the day can be very stressful, as if you are not 'even' on your till by even 0.05 euros, you will receive feedback and warnings. Hardly any choice in shifts.

Got a daughter who dreams of being a princess? Take it from someone who's worked as a real princess at Disney World--the job is not all it's cracked up to be. A former Snow White actress from Disney theme parks—called a "face character" in Disney parlance—is anonymously dishing behind-the-scenes policies and drama in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), summarized on Business Insider. Among the juicy tidbits from the Disney princess confidential:
—You've got to have the right body type. While princesses are between 5'4" and 5'7", Tinkerbell, Alice and Wendy must be more petite—between 4'11" to 5'2".
Princess age out quickly. Most are played by women between 18 and 23. A 27-year-old princess would be considered over the hill—ouch!
There's some serious princess primping. Getting the look—costume, makeup-wig -- takes about an hour, with frequent touch-ups throughout the day.
Princesses deal with stalkers. This particular actress dealt with a creepy fan who was convinced she was the real Snow White, and threatened to kill the imitators. Security!
It's hard to make it a career. Princesses make about $13 to $16 an hour, which works out to a starting salary of around $27,000, with little chance for a significant raise.

I found Euro Disney to be a complex place for families. True it was school holidays in Europe and England so the place was swarming with families from every country in the EU and beyond. The American mind set for these venues has nothing to do its families enjoying themselves and kids coming away fulfilled,it is a cut throat business to make big dollars. Sell, sell, sell. Hard sell too. A belle princess dress will put you back €69....a fridge magnet €10 a tee shirt or pair of mini mouse ears €20. Nothing is free. Apparently at peak times queues can wait up to two hours for a thirty second ride.

Our biggest nightmare happened at Disney. Not the prices,the queuing, the extortionate prices for food and gifts, no the worst nightmare a family could have we lost a child. Or more to the point he lost us. We had been so careful of keeping together,talked out plan A B and C but Ollie lost us.
For twenty minutes our world stopped. Thankfully Ollie is an intelligent eight year old and his survival skills kicked in. He did all the right things. He found a family and told them he had lost his family,the family found an official Disney employee who took Ollie to the lost child centre and all he had to do was wait for us to retrieve him. Meanwhile we noticed him missing,informed a member of staff and the whole retrieval operation was set in motion. Thankfully within twenty minutes we were all reunited. A valuable lesson was learned from this episode,write your phone number on your child’s arm or put a note in their pocket. So that if this happens to your child,someone can contact you. A small thing but crucial to your state of mind and a quick reunion. After my fall in Bristol I have worn flat shows when on walking marathons,but that did not stop me from nearly falling down a flight of slippery steps in a dark adventure cave.

So how would I rate the day,overall out of five I would give it two. Theme parks are no longer value for money,they are large, overcrowded, expensive, noisy, unfair in their ride times and reflect the greed of the American machine which grinds away without any heart or dignity.
We as a family enjoyed leaving the park to those that enjoy that type of commercialisation but it is not us. Goodnight diary.Read more