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[dagobert]

Disneyland Paris 10th – 15th  February 2010

Sorry for being a little bit late, but I was skiing the last days and so I had no time to write it.

Last Monday we returned from our recent trip to Disneyland Paris. It was our fourth trip and we enjoyed our time there, although it was not as perfect and magical as the last times.

I want to start our trip report with the hotel: Disney's Sequoia Lodge

After staying three times in the Santa Fe hotel, we decided to try the Sequoia Lodge, because we wanted to stay on site. What a bad decision. The Sequoia Lodge is really a very beautiful hotel, but our room was not. At first we wanted to book a Montana room, but we thought that the money is not worth to stay in the main building, so we took a standard room which is located in one of the lodges. Nevertheless when we checked in we got a Montana room in the main building and we were pleased to get a better room.

Although our room was (somewhat) clean, it was not as nice as the refurbished rooms at the Santa Fe we had during our previous trips. The TV wasn't working very well and our wardrobe with the TV was also a little bit broken. Maybe our expectations were just too high, but we really thought that the quality of the room would be better and maybe the other rooms in the SL are better. The nicest room in a Disney hotel we had, was the one in WDW's Pop Century Resort and this is a value and not a moderate hotel, like SL.

We didn't try the pool, because it wasn't open in the morning and in the evening when we returned from the parks, we were too tired. Instead we had some drinks at the Redwood Bar, which is very cosy with the open fire place.

The breakfast was also okay, but not very different to the Santa Fe breakfast. I think SL offered more cereals, fresh fruits and the restaurants are nicer.

So next time we will stay off site, because the Disney hotels and the Extra Magic Hours are really not worth the money. Maybe we will choose one of the Vienna International hotels, because we have already stayed in one in Prague and it was a lot better than the SL for less money.

Here are some pics of the hotel and the breakfast:

Photos have been removed!

More later or tomorrow!

[dagobert]

This and that:

The Castmembers:

In general most of the CMs were friendly and polite, but we have also encountered unfriendly persons, for example the manager of Walt's who brought us to our table. He asked us if we speak French or English. So we told him, that we only speak English. Nevertheless he talked the whole time in French with us. Not very nice.  

I know it was off season, so there are not many international guests, but many CMs at the counter service restaurants had problems with English and spoke only French. That wasn't such a big problem, because they used cards with food pictures to show them what you want to order.

The Merchandise:

Euro Disney SCA is always complaining that people don't spend enough money in the parks. It is not really possible with this bad selection of merchandise to spend more money. In each shop the offer the same. The Mickey's Magical Party merchandise didn't appeal to us and if you are not a girl (Princess products everywhere) it's really hard to find some nice merchandise. The selection of pins was also very small and attraction pins are rare. At least I got a few.

So here is what we bought:

Photos have been removed!

More of our trip report will follow tomorrow. Now I'm going to watch "Public Enemies" on DVD.

[Malin]

I can understand your frustration with the Sequoia Lodge, Disneyland Paris Hotels have really gone down hill and except for location and perhaps the swiming pool, I really don't see a difference between Santa Fe and Sequoia Lodge. And I agree despite my criticism of WDW the hotels do offer a much richer and awarding experience to the Paris Hotels. Although I would still pick a Disney hotel over one further away.

And if you have a problem with Cast Members not speaking english, I recomend you avoid making any trips out to Tokyo Disney Resort any time soon. As this is all normal behaviour, although Disneyland Paris does a quite a few English speaking Guest visiting its parks each year.

Anyway enjoying the trip report so far

[dagobert]

I can understand your frustration with the Sequoia Lodge, Disneyland Paris Hotels have really gone down hill and except for location and perhaps the swiming pool, I really don't see a difference between Santa Fe and Sequoia Lodge. And I agree despite my criticism of WDW the hotels do offer a much richer and awarding experience to the Paris Hotels. Although I would still pick a Disney hotel over one further away.

And if you have a problem with Cast Members not speaking english, I recomend you avoid making any trips out to Tokyo Disney Resort any time soon. As this is all normal behaviour, although Disneyland Paris does a quite a few English speaking Guest visiting its parks each year.

Anyway enjoying the trip report so far

Thanks for your answer. At the moment I can't afford a trip to Tokyo so this will not be a problem. Most of the time we hadn't any problems with CMs. When they didn't understand us they called someone else. As I mentioned before it was also no problem in the counter service restaurants to order, because they used these food picture cards. Many CMs were even able to talk in other languages, too.

At least the restaurant manager of Walt's should be able to speak English in an international theme park. He asked if we speak French or English and so we told him that we only speak English. So I think he was able to speak English and he talked to other guests too, who were obviously not French. Maybe he didn't like us, because I asked for a table at the window when he seated us.

[captain rocket]

Hi, I have stayed at the two Vienna International hotels several times and in my opinion they are better than all of the DLRP hotels with the exception of The Disneyland Hotel. Disney seem to have lost the plot with their hotels and Just do not offer that extra special service that would make the prices worthwhile. With regard to early magic hours, If you could plan two visits within 12 months then an annual passport may be worthwhile and would get you discounts in the parks. I have an AP and for the last two renewals have been offered 18 months for the price of twelve which I can only guess is a discount offered to us guests who live outside France and cannot afford to visit that often! I live in the UK.
I look forward to the rest of your report.

[dagobert]

The Food:

Claudia, my girlfriend, is vegan which means she doesn't eat any animal products (not meat, fish, dairy or eggs). So we tried to contact the Disney Dietitian Service, a service that was very helpful in September 2008, but this time they didn't even answer our emails. Last time they told us that we should tell them where we want to eat and they will contact the restaurants so that they can prepare something special. But not this time. They told us that the only meals Claudia could have are vegetables in oil. Great! However we thought that they can help us in the restaurants, like they did in WDW. No they did not and most of the restaurant managers just wanted to get rid of us. Nevertheless the fast food was okay and Agrabah Café, our favourite restaurant in DLP, serves really good food.

Park Maintenance and Attractions:

I would say that the attractions were in a very good condition, especially Phantom Manor. Did it get a refurbishment during the last year, because we have seen effects we haven't seen in 2008? DLRP has some problems with the floors, especially in front of DV and in WDS Front Lot, where many tiles are missing, I think they broke because of the cold weather and haven't been replaced until now. In general the parks were very clean and we haven't seen any overloaded dust bins, like in recent years.
Some buildings really need some refurbishment, but I hope when the weather is warmer these things get repaired. Disney Studio 1 is still under scaffolding. During our stay the castle bridge and a building on Main Street got a refurbishment.

Some attractions like Autopia or the Studio Tram Tour were closed all days, except Sunday, because of the cold weather.

What also annoyed us, were the different opening hours of the attractions. Some opened at 10 and others at 11 o'clock. Some closed at 6pm or at 7pm and others at 8 or 9pm.

Extra Magic Hours:

We had them every day in the morning and we tried to make full use of the EMHs. We were a little bit disappointed by them, because only SM:MII, Buzz Lightyear, Peter Pan, Le Carousell de Lancelot, the Tea Cups and Dumbo were open every day. That's also a reason why it doesn't matter to us that we will not stay in a Disney hotel anymore. However we used them every day and enjoyed the opened attractions. I think they didn'z open more, because it was off season and so there weren't so many guests in the park.

I will post our arrival day and some pictures later!

[dagobert]

Hi, I have stayed at the two Vienna International hotels several times and in my opinion they are better than all of the DLRP hotels with the exception of The Disneyland Hotel. Disney seem to have lost the plot with their hotels and Just do not offer that extra special service that would make the prices worthwhile. With regard to early magic hours, If you could plan two visits within 12 months then an annual passport may be worthwhile and would get you discounts in the parks. I have an AP and for the last two renewals have been offered 18 months for the price of twelve which I can only guess is a discount offered to us guests who live outside France and cannot afford to visit that often! I live in the UK.
I look forward to the rest of your report.

We are also thinking about getting an AP for our next visit, because I think it is cheaper to book the VI hotels on ther Austrian website and to buy an AP, than booking the hotel with the park tickets.

Do you get a higher discount with the AP than with the Shareholder's Club Card, because we have one?

[dagobert]

Day 1 – Arrival

We started our journey to DLRP at 6:30am and we drove from Salzburg via Munich, Stuttgart and Strasbourg to DLRP. Unfortunately the weather wasn't very nice, it snowed a lot in Germany. So after a long 10 hours drive we arrived around 5pm at the Sequoia Lodge. We checked in and after we dropped our luggage off in our room, we went to the Disney Village, where we checked out the merchandise. Many people on the forum were disappointed with the merchandise, so I was not really surprised by the bad selection.

At first we had a drink at the Sports Bar and afterwards we had dinner at the Rainforest Café. We have only been once at a RFC in Chicago and it was okay then, but nothing special. However, we had a very pleasant experience in the RFC this time - our waitress did everything to make sure that Claudia gets a nice vegan meal, she checked several time with the kitchen. The result was a really tasty stir-fry over rice. I had the Veggie Burger, which was also very good. The quality of the food was better than in Chicago. So I think next time we will eat there again.

After dinner we had another beer at the Sports Bar and then we went back to the hotel, where we had to check out the Redwood Bar and Lounge. We loved this bar, because as I've already said before, it is such a cosy place with the open fire place. After a last beer we went to bed early, because we were tired.

Photos will follow!

[dagobert]

So here are some pictures of our arrival day:

Photos have been removed!

If I have time, I will post our first day in the parks in the evening.

[dagobert]

Day 2 – First Day in the Parks

After getting up we had breakfast at 7am. We chose the earliest breakfast time, because it was always quiet and relaxing before all the families with their little ones arrived. Breakfast was served in both restaurants, the Hunter's Grill and the Beaver Creek Tavern. We are not big fans of the Nescafe products so we always had tea and on the way to the parks we stopped at Starbucks to get a real cup of coffee (Starbucks also carries soy milk, so that made Claudia happy).

After breakfast we headed to the park to make full use of the EMHs. Our first ride was Buzz Lightyears's Laser Blast followed by Space Mountain. Since there weren't more attractions open we walked to Fantasyland to ride Peter Pan and the Tea Cups. Around 9am we left DLP for Starbucks. After a cup of fresh coffee and a Soy Latte we headed to the Studios, because we wanted to ride Crush's Coaster. There we got in line and after some minutes a CM told us that the ride wouldn't open because of technical problems. So we decided to ride the Tower of Terror and the Rock'n'Rollercoaster instead. The CM's at the ToT are so great, they are so creepy. RnRC was in a very good condition, the sound worked always very well and there was always a lot of fog in the attraction.

We returned to DLP to make some restaurant reservations at the City Hall. We also asked about Claudia's special diet, but unfortunately no CM could help us. All advice they could offer was that we should directly ask at the restaurants for a special meal, and that the chefs would prepare something special. But they were not willing (or able) to contact the restaurants for us ahead of time, which would have been convenient – many foods in DLRP are pre-cooked, so if there is chicken stock in the rice, then probably the chef would have no time to cook extra rice for us in a short amount of time. At this point I really missed the guest service of WDW. So after riding it's a small world we decided to have an early lunch at the Hakuna Matata restaurant, where we ordered fries, the vegetable rice and the green salad.  

After lunch we strolled around Adventureland to ride PotC, one of our favourite attractions, and Indiana Jones. Most of the time PotC was a walk on attraction.

At 3:30 pm we had a reservation at Agrabah Café. We have already eaten there in 2008 and so we knew that there are many salads suitable for Claudia. The food was really good and we enjoyed our time there.

Before we left the park, it closed at 7pm, we rode Big Thunder Mountain and strolled through the shops, but the merchandise selection wasn't better than outside in the DV.

King Ludwig's Castle still had the happy hour. You get two beers for the price of one. Many people had the same idea so it wasn't always easy to get a table.
For dinner we went to the Sports Bar. I had a Four Cheese Pizza and Claudia had Nachos with Salsa and French Fries.

Afterwards I bought some pins and we went back to the hotel, where we had a last drink before we went to bed.

Photos will follow!

[dagobert]

Here are some pictures of the first day in the parks:

Photos have been removed!

More to come!

[dagobert]

Photos have been removed!

More tomorrow!

[norhel]

Disneyland park seems sp deserted at some of the photos.

[dagobert]

@ norhel: I have taken many photos during the EMHs and so there aren't so many people in the pictures. The crowds were okay on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday it was very crowded.

[dagobert]

Day 3 – Second Day in the Parks

Breakfast was again at 7am. Although the EMHs don't offer many attractions we decided to use them again. After riding SM and BLLB we walked over to Fantasyland to ride Dumbo and Le Carousell de Lancelot. After walking through the castle's gallery we headed again to Starbucks.

Afterwards it was time for the Studios. After ToT we got in line for Crush, because waiting time was only 40 minutes. We love this ride, although the ride inside could be themed a little bit better, but the ride experience itself with the spinning cars is a lot of fun. Unfortunately we could only ride Crush once, because the waiting times are crazy even during off season.

Next was Armageddon. We did this attraction only once in 2006, because the pre-show is a little bit too long. Nevertheless we liked Armageddon and we will do it again.

For lunch we had a reservation at Café Mickey, because there they offer real Italian Pizza and so it was possible for Claudia to order a pizza without cheese. I had Genie's Pasta in garlic sauce and dried tomatoes served with garlic bread.
Needless to say we had a lot of fun with the characters, too. It was for the first time that I've seen Scrooge McDuck at DLRP. He is my favourite Disney character, because I'm a big fan of the Scrooge McDuck Comics by Carl Barks.

After a delicious lunch we went back to DLP where we rode Phantom Manor, BTM, PotC and Indy. Then we strolled around the park and checked out many shops.  Since we were a little bit tired and cold, we bought two hot teas at the Old Mill, the wind wheel was spinning, and boarded the Disneyland Railroad.

Afterwards it was already 6pm, so we decided to leave the park to have a happy hour beer at King Ludwig's Castle. There we also ordered fries and a pretzel. Then we did some shopping and had a drink at the Sports Bar. Later we returned to our hotel and enjoyed a drink at the open fireplace at the Redwoodbar and Lounge.

Photos will follow!