ONE of the tin soldiers' shoes is falling off. He is singled out from the parade and marched off to a "cast members only" area for repairs. Nothing less than perfection is tolerated at Disneyland.
And there's nothing more perfect, more magical than Disneyland Paris after dark.
Except that is for Disneyland Paris after dark, at Christmas time.
We're here to sample all that the theme park, which is now into its late teens, has to offer over the festive period.
At twilight, the whole park turns into a twinkly fairytale. Everything is done on a giant scale here.
The Christmas tree towers 24m, from ground to star, and weighs more than 24 tons. It takes near to 500 light bulbs to illuminate, 590 baubles to decorate and 23 people to put it up.
As for the iconic symbol of Disneyland, Sleeping Beauty's pink castle, that is ablaze with around 400,000 lights. It takes technicians a full three nights to lay the Led lighting curtains on the castle towers, roofs and turrets.
Replica fashion womenAt the end of the Once Upon a Christmas Dream Parade, Santa Claus appears, heralded by toy soldiers (minus the one with shoe problems), to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.
Later in the evening, riding an almost deserted old-fashioned carousel when most visitors have gone home - if you're staying at a hotel on site you get to stay later - is magical.
But the part that really gets me in the festive spirit is the snow. Yes, Disney can even make a white Christmas happen on cue. As we walk down Main Street, which stretches from the entrance to the park up to the castle, snowflakes start to fall.
If it hadn't been for the fact that the snow starts and stops precisely at the start and end of the street, I would have genuinely believed it was snowing - the flakes even feel damp as they drop into your hair.
My little girl and her friends run up the street Fake Christian Dior Watches with eyes upturned in amazement, hands outstretched as they try to catch the falling snow.
It's the perfect end to an unbelievably jam-packed day.
Breakfast doesn't exactly get the day off to the best start, not because it isn't delicious. It is, the scrambled eggs are particularly scrumptious. But the queues are something I wasn't expecting.
There are two restaurants serving breakfast at the Hotel New York on the Disney site - and there are two 25-minute queues. We soon learn, however, that being slightly less lazy and getting down to breakfast at 8am rather than 9am is the key to avoiding any wait.
After that, it's a 10-minute stroll through the Disney Village (where many of the restaurants and shops are based) to the entrance gates to either Walt Disney Studios Park or Disneyland Park.
We choose the latter, making a beeline for daughter Katie's favourite is Peter Pan's Flight. You fly in pirate ships over the rooftops of London for a journey into Neverland.
She also loves Pirates of the Caribbean in Adventureland (the park is divided into four distinct areas), where you cruise through a pirate attack on a Spanish fortress, and the Toy Story-inspired Buzz Lightyear Laser Blasts in Discoveryland, which takes you into outer space to shoot rogue aliens.
For bigger kids, there are the likes of Big Thunder Mountain rollercoaster and