In the last week of August we went to Disneyland Paris. Overall, it was a very good, if tiring, holiday. The first thing I really enjoyed was being able to catch the Eurostar from London and within a couple of hours walk out of the station in France, turn right and straight into the park.

The whole park is a very polished operation and despite my usual corporate cynicism, I did find myself being excited by the whole experience… possibly contagiously from the children. More than any amusement park I’ve been is before they really due try to amuse you at every turn, not just on the rides. One slightly odd detail was the incessant music being played wherever you were in the park; sometimes this worked better than others.

We stayed at one of the (cheaper) Disney hotels, which was nicely themed and entirely adequate given that we really only stayed there when we were sleeping. One of our main concerns was that as we were all sharing a single room, getting to sleep was going to be awkard. However, we were up at 8am each day, into the park around 9am and not back home until after 10pm, so we all flaked out immediately as soon as we got back.

The queues weren’t too bad (with the notable exception of an hour and fourty minutes for Crush’s Coaster) and some judicious use of the Fast Passes allowed us to get on almost every ride in the five days we were there. Ben’s favourite ride was Star Tours, which we went on three times. It has a delightfully 80s overtone that fits very well with “classic” Star Wars. Jessica’s favourite the Buzz Lightyear ride because she loves the “Ooo! The Claw!” aliens. Again, that ride got three goes. By the end of the three days we were pretty worn out and it was definitely time to head home.

The only downside was the food. This was very expensive and rather samey, although we rarely ventured above the fast food level, so perhaps if you’re flush you get a better experience.

I’d definitely recommend going if you have young children, for them it really will be magical. That said, I don’t think we’ll go back for a good few years, partly due to the expense and partly because we feel we’ve really “done” it and going back wouldn’t live up to this year’s experience.

However, it took me a couple more weeks to get round to writing this post, so… Is Twitter killing this blog? Well, perhaps not killing it but certainly slowing it down. I can certainly vent minor, trivial thoughts to Twitter, which I might have previously spun into a post here. Also, now that there’s a small band of friends on Twitter, I’m enjoying the banter there… far more feedback there already than here.

In addition, life is fairly settled currently, so there doesn’t seem to be much to write about. And then there’s Ben’s DS. I think I’m catching up for several years of missed computer games. I’m at 97% on Lego Star Wars Saga. I think if I can grind my way to 100% I’ll have definitely maxed out and be able to leave it alone for a while.

Now if Moore’s law holds, this means our grandchildren will get computers with 16 terabytes of RAM. That’s something like 2000 DVDs loaded in memory. Err…!

My main concern was that Ben was going to do nothing but play on it, so we set him a daily limit. This can be confiscated for bad behaviour, increased for good behaviour and all those other parent-style tricks. I’ve been pleasantly surprised, however, that he’s got a very balanced approach and he’s yet to challenge over having extra time.

His favourite game is Lego Star Wars and now I have a whole new set of problems to face as a father, such as how to trip up an AT-AT with a tow-rope on the Empire Strikes Back level. It’s a hard life…

With the Lego sets, the Lego Star Wars game and a trip to Legoland, it was a “very Lego-ey birthday” in Ben’s words. I won’t go into how we lost Ben for half an hour in Legoland, suffice as to say losing your child at any time is one of the scariest experiences you can have.

The trailer does look good. My problem is with the name. I was going to complain that the plural of quantum is quanta but that’s the wrong way round. The real issue with Quantum of Solace is that it’s far too close to The Phantom Menace and we all know how that turned out.