Home

[Poppy The Monkey]

Hi everyone,

As some of you know I visited DLRP last week, and had a fantastic time.

I had a meeting with parade organiser Daniel Harding from the entertainment department on Wednesday and hopefully will start work in the DLRP characters and parade department in April.

But at the moment I was a meer visitor and some of my highlights, lowlights and observations are below.


HIGHLIGHTS

CARNIVAL!!! - it is fantastic this year, much better than last years the dancers and characters are fantastic and the interactions are much better and fairer - everyone is able to join in!

Characters - So many, everywhere you went there was a load of characters including rare ones like Clopin and Esmerela and Genie. We saw Clarise on Thursday in Fantasyland and even Mike was out in the Studios.

Cleanness - The parks were spotless and even the urine smells in the Adventureland caves have gone.

Carnival Music- No sign of Ricky Martin this year thankfully! But instead some great Disney tracks like late last carnival season, this year they were playing loads of old DLRP tracks too. Like "Merci from Disneyland Paris", "The Year to Be Hear", tracks from "en scene vous plait", "The 1997 Hunchback parade" and even the original "Carnival" parade song from 1994. And loads more - it was great to hear them in the park again!

Sequoia Lodge - The first time we have stayed here and we will be back - it is a great hotel!

VIP FASTPASS - A nice family who had to leave 2 days early, gave us 4 VIP fastpasses on the way to the train station, we were just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

Disney Village - Looks really good at night now.

Cruella! - see the descriptions on the photos

Loads more highlights but I carn't think at the moment


LOWLIGHTS

Out of control teens - we visited the other hotels on Wednesday night, but when we got to Santa Fe and Cheyenne it was terrible, a huge gang of about 100 teens were hanging around the bridge and Cheyenne drinking beer and blasting music on a portable CD player.

There was not cast member around so they had total run of this area, and it was really bad. We saw an older couple with their grandkids and 2 other families actually walking away from the Santa Fe with their suitcases. The other hotels were still as magical as ever thankfully.

Carny and Val -The Carnival "presenters" or "shriekers", they would be okay if they didn't shout about everything, and constantly repeat themselves - honestly I counted them telling us the "Carnvial Finale is on at 5.30" 9 times in 1 minute at one point!!

Losing my camcorder - God knows where that went!


OBSERVATIONS

So many more dancers in the parades on Thursday (average 3 per float Wednesday and 8 per float Thursday) were the big wigs around do you think?

In the carnival there was many mentions of "The Magic Kingdom" instead of Disneyland Park. For example after the carnival finale the announcer says " We hope you had fun at the carnival finale, do enjoy your evening in the Magic Kingdom".     Will we be seeing another park name change for the 15th Birthday??

Music from Parade of Dreams was used on Thursday morning for the arrival of the princesses, the princess float fanfare without the "welcome to our family" lyrics was played when the princesses swapped over. However strangely this wasn't used on Friday.


Here are some photos of the trip with descriptions....

http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumIn ... 2082362&f=

[Patrick]

Cool trip report, so great to see the Carnival has got even better again and so nice to see characters are still fun, is it a villain trademark to go and moan with people still being in the park or something :lol: , plus great to hear they are using old music from the resort, sounds increidbly fun .
Sorry to hear about the downside of teens at the cheyenne and santa fe, I think I know why, since I talk to someone on msn who goes to a college and studies ICT weirdly last week they took them on a holiday to Disneyland Resort Paris, so I suspect many college's must have gone the same week with that annoying result.  (Probably the worst place to end up taking so many I suspect British teens lol).
The presenters sound like some cast members from TDL about their wonderful stupid dances they have during parades like halloween :lol: , also great to see photos, they are great, thanks for showing them , hope you get to start in April in the entertainment department :wink: .

[Kristof]

I'm sooooooooo jealous!!! You saw Mike!!!! I'm hoping on every visit that he would be out...  Can't believe I missed him by one day.  :cry:

Do you think they're "testing" out the costume again for that planned Monsters Inc. photolocation?  :?:

[Kinou]

I'm sooooooooo jealous!!! You saw Mike!!!! I'm hoping on every visit that he would be out...  Can't believe I missed him by one day.  :cry:

Do you think they're "testing" out the costume again for that planned Monsters Inc. photolocation?  :?:

that's highly possible IMO.

[Anthony]

Thanks for the report, loved the photos - especially those ones with Cruella!  I would never have recognised it was the same person!  I bet that was a really cool moment when you recognised each other... :lol:

Just shows what an amazing job the parade CMs do - from a realistic Cruella to a Little Mermaid dancer!  You'd better start taking tips!  :wink: