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[gingajen]

We got back from our half term trip last night and already I'm having major withdrawal symptoms!
I booked this trip nearly a year ago with some redundancy money I had received. I had a bargain - I think - as it cost us £1380 including the tunnel for 4 night/5 days in the Disneyland Hotel.
Anyway, our trip....
We set off at lunchtime on Valentines Day. We were staying over night in the Folkestone Premier Inn as our crossing was at 7:20am. We had booked cinema tickets to see Shaun the Sheep with the kids at a beautiful, old fashioned cinema in Folkestone (The Silver Screen Cinema) which was lovely. We had a very quick bite to eat and then it was off to sleep ready to get up early on Sunday.
The crossing was uneventful, we all slept! Part of the agreement with my husband to allow me to book this trip, was that we visit Paris before going to Disney, so off we went. Our Sat Nav took us past the Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur, this area was horrendous! We have been to Paris many times over the years, but this area shocked us! We parked easily off the Champs Elysee and decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower and find somewhere for lunch. This area was much nicer, but there was definitely an atmosphere in Paris that we have never experienced before and that would make us think twice about returning for a while. Never the less, we found a quaint restaurant to have lunch in and then walked back to the car. Finally MY holiday was about to begin.
We drove towards Disney and each time we saw the Disney Resort signs we got more excited. We drove past all of the other Disney Hotels until we reached 'The Pink One'. The man at the gates checked our names were on the list and let us through. We then proceeded to drive the wrong way, towards the Park car parks. We have a real knack for getting really close to our destination, and then getting lost. A quick U-Turn later and we were pulling up to the hotel. The helpful Cast Members took our luggage out of the car - at this point I cursed myself for using our old battered suitcases and not investing in brand new shiny suitcases! Our car was valet parked, I am so glad I made the kids keep the car clean. And then we checked in. We were asked if we would like to overlook the car park or the Parks. Guess which we chose! The CM then gave us all of our vouchers (we had bought half board plus vouchers) and sent us to our room.
We were all super excited, even more so when we open the door. It was beautiful. We were on the 4th floor over looking the exits to Disneyland Parc, which was handy as it meant that we had a 20 second walk from the exit to our hotel after dreams because there was an entrance to the hotel right next to the exit!
We had to be at BBWWS by 6:30pm and knew that by the time this was done, the parks would be shut, so we decided to use our hotel FastPass and go on Ratatouille. I normally never, ever go into the Studios before the main park, but knew how popular Ratatouille was so had to break my rule.
Ratatouille was really good. Even at 5:30pm, the main queue was 75 minutes and it was never any less than that!.
We quickly went back to the Disney Village to take up our seats in BBWWS, which was as good as we all remembered and the food filled us up again. I have never known such filling food!!
We walked back to the hotel and decided to have a night cap in the Cafe Fantasia. The atmosphere was really lovely, with Disney songs being played on the piano and people winding down after a busy day enjoying their selves. We went to bed happy and relaxed, looking forward to the next day.
We went to Disney last year during February half term and it was quite quiet so we had expected it to be the same. We were wrong! It was really busy (in my opinion anyway), it was on par with visits we have made over the main Easter weekends!
We got up and dressed by about 8:30am and walked to breakfast. The queue was HUGE, all the way back towards the stairs.So we decided to go into the park for EMH and try again later. We did Buzz and got our first photo on our PhotoPass - a huge thank you to MRSYA for the voucher - and then we did Peter Pan. We had a quick meander through a couple of shops and then went back to the hotel to try breakfast. There was still a queue, at 10:15, but we were seated quickly enough and had our fill of pancakes and bacon and eggs. My daughter developed a strange obsession with the Actimel yoghurt drinks, and had lots over the course of the holiday.
We went back into the park and did PotC, we dragged the kids to IaSW. We went over to Frontierland with a view to go on the family favourite. I just mentioned to my husband that it seemed quiet when I noticed that the train was stuck on the hill. So we went to PM instead.
We are lucky to have been to DLRP a few times over the years, and we felt relieved that, because we had been on all of the rides before, we could take our time and not have to race around trying to do everything.
Our children, especially my 9 year old daughter, have never been really bothered about the characters. Last year she flat refused to have her photo taken with me and her little brother and Woody, Jessie or Stitch. Whether she felt she was too old for it last year and was embarrassed, and then realised that she didn't care if other people thought she was too old to be excited about the characters this year or not, but they were both mad about them this time! We bought autograph books for the first time ever! I was so proud  I was pleased that we had booked Inventions later in the week. Ironically I had almost changed the reservation to somewhere else when I realised it was a character lunch because I thought it was expensive for something the kids weren't bothered about
We got in the long, long queue to meet Minnie, which wasn't going anywhere fast. We had a reservation for Walts at 3pm so we had the leave the queue.
The food was lovely, and it was so relaxing to have a proper sit down meal instead of the counter service meals. Not that there is anything wrong with the counter service, I actually love the Croque Monsieur at Blockbuster Cafe and the Mickey pizza's, but it was nice to have a time out. We came out in time to have a go on Star Tours and Indiana Jones and get a lovely spot in Fantasyland for the Parade. The kids loved it. It was such a joy to see my daughter enjoy being a kid again, not acting like a grown up like all these 'tweens' seem to be doing.
We then went back over to BTM, which was thankfully working again, but with a huge queue, so we used our Hotel Fastpass to bypass the queue and had our first go on BTM, we all love, love, love this ride, Just before 7, we got our Pause Gourmande and found a spot for Dreams. It was just as fab as we remembered and we had a great view.
We were super tired and it was a relief to have such a short walk to our hotel. There was quite a queue for the lifts though, does anyone know if there are any stairs other than the main staircase in the lobby?
We soon fell asleep, listening to all the happy people leaving the park.
I'll do part 2 later, as I know you're all probably falling asleep after reading this text heavy report!

[littlebitofpixiedust]

Enjoyed reading your report so far   
The "pink hotel" is beautiful, I loved when we stayed there 2 years ago. We had terraced rooms and loved listening to the music in the evenings!

Lovely that you got a room with a view too as did we, only wish I could afford it every visit. We stayed at the Santa fe same time as you but still loved it. We're of to HNY in may (3rd time) and oct sequioa lodge (lost count how many stays here!)

I look forward to reading your next days, we love, love inventions too! And book on every visit, not just about characters but the atmospheres lovely. Haven't yet had a drink in cafe fantasia maybe something to do on our upcoming trip though as it sounds fantastic

[Disney Matt]

Loving it so far
Can't wait for Part 2!!!

[DLPWonders (Banned)]

Great tripreport! I'm excited to read the next part!

[murphyslaw]

Love reading trip reports, can't wait for your next installment 

[moonloo]

Great Trip Report and yes you got a brilliant deal!! We stayed in the pink hotel last March but its back to the Santa Fe for this years trip. We are thinking next year might be our 5th and last trip so would love to do the pink hotel again, will be desperatley looking for the amazing deal that you got!!!!
Looking forward to part 2! 

[gingajen]

Part 2...
I woke everyone up early the next morning to get to breakfast at opening time, which I thought was 7:00am. We got to the breakfast room for 7:00 only to find that breakfast started at 7:30 oops. I wasn't the only one to have made the mistake though as there were several people already there. We were let in a few minutes early as the queue behind us was once again growing. Another yummy breakfast. We decided to go back to the room rather than go to EMH, and got to the Studios at 9:30. Once the gates opened we made for Crush, along with 50% of the other visitors! The other 50% ran to Ratatouille! Luckily we were near the front when Studios opened so we weren't too far back in the queue for Crush. Once it opened we had about a 20 minute wait. I do love this ride.
After crush we noticed that there was only a small queue for Mickey in Toon Studios so we had photo's with him and then joined the larger queue to meet Buzz. We tried to get on ToT but all of the fast passes were gone so we went to Armageddon instead, followed by Studio Tram Tour. Then it was time for lunch at Bistro Chez Remy. There are no words to describe the sheer amount of detail here, it was incredible. We had booked the latest sittings they offered at 5pm and it was quite quiet in the restaurant. We had the friendliest waiter and I really wished I could remember his name, but he was fab and really encouraged our children to try out their limited French on him. The food was AMAZING. Even the kids didn't moan, which is a miracle with our two! I had the cod fish, with mash, Ratatouille and a beurre blanc sauce and my husband had the steak, which he said was the nicest steak he had had in France for a long time. My daughter had the meatballs and chips and my son had the linguine. My tiramisu was the winner for pudding, I still dream about it now and the kids eclairs were beautifully presented. We can't  praise this restaurant enough. If our family tradition wasn't to have our last meal at Disney in Annette's, we would have gone back on Thursday without a doubt.
We had a leisurely walk back to the main park with a view to use our hotel fastpass on BTM, but the fast pass queue was shut! We were gutted as the passes are date stamped and we had purposely kept it back to ride BTM in the dark so this pass was wasted. We checked the queue time and it was a 40 minute wait, which would take us past park closing time. We decided to go for it. We chose the left queue which no one was using, to the point where we thought it may have been closed, we walked to pretty much the top of the stairs, much to the annoyance of the people on the right who had queued for so long. I felt really guilty, but we hadn't queue jumped! Anyway, BTM in the dark was lovely and we could see Dreams.
We walked back to the hotel listening to Dreams. We planned to let the crowds die down and then go in the Village to do a spot of shopping, but we were all tired so decided to call it a night. I'm not sure if the cold weather takes it out of a person more, but we were always exhausted by the end of Dreams and that started at 8pm! When we went a couple of years ago in May, we were in the park for the start of EMH and stayed there until Dreams at 10pm. I honestly don't know how we did it!
I woke a couple of times in the night and every time I would walk to the window to see if I could see anything going on in the park. I noticed that the pretty lights on the Hotel are switched off at some point during the night and that Orbitron seemed to be going long after the park had closed.......
I'll write part 3 tomorrow hopefully as I have now got to start the process of getting the kids ready for school in the morning after a fabulous week off! Wish me luck x

[gingajen]

Great Trip Report and yes you got a brilliant deal!! We stayed in the pink hotel last March but its back to the Santa Fe for this years trip. We are thinking next year might be our 5th and last trip so would love to do the pink hotel again, will be desperatley looking for the amazing deal that you got!!!!
Looking forward to part 2! 

I honestly don't know why it was so 'cheap'. But I am thankful. I took voluntary redundancy last year and amazingly, I found I had this amount of money left over after paying off all of the boring stuff    It seemed the sensible thing to do to book it. I think it will be a very, very long time before we could afford to do this sort of trip again. I also turned 30 in January and this trip was my way of dealing with that trauma

[stecal]

Great trip report and i 100% agree on the tiramisu in Chez Remy i wasn't going to eat there but i had spare vouchers and decided i needed a steak  so glad i did the food was lovely especially the tiramisu

[Mrsya]

Fab trip report so far! Thanks for the shout out too - that did make me smile. Hopefully you got lots if fab pics? X