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[dagobert]

Micechat.com has posted some great pictures of the new Advebtureland suite:







Frontierland suite:





Fantasyland suite:





In my opinion these suites look great. It would be great to have such suites in Paris as well.

[CafeFantasia]

Wow, those interiors look amazing. So lush and full of texture. I like the Adventureland suite the most.

And yes, great idea, these suites should come to the Disneyland Hotel at Disneyland Paris. The rooms could do with being more expensive to stay in :-)

[SM:M3]

The Frontierland and Adventureland suites look great, but I'm not sure about the Fantasyland one, it looks a bit sterile. It should have been more like the Efteling Hotel suites;

They have loads of themed suites, one is even a Coca-Cola suite, take a look//https://www.efteling.com/Solution/Accommodations.aspx?id=NL-EFTROOMS&ch=DEF

[dagobert]

Thanks for the picture. These rooms look great.

It seems other themeparks have nicer hotels than Disney. They caught up with WDI or even surpased them. Davewasbaloo has posted some great pictures of Phantasialand and Europa Park hotels. They look also fantastic. It would be great to see such rooms in Paris as well, but I'm already happy with the refurbs at Sequoia Lodge.

[HayHay]

WOW!! I would love to stop there! looks really nice!

[davewasbaloo]

I love the New Tiki Bar that has opened and the Geyser near the Frontierland wing. I do not like the new Monorail pool area and desperately miss the water falls and koi ponds, then again, they remind me of my childhood  where we stayed in the DLH a couple of times a year.

[dagobert]

In my opinion the pool area looks fine, especially the modern atchitecture and the new Tiki restaurant. I've never been there, but I didn't like that hotel. The pool area with Peter Pan looked so out of place between those huge towers.

I think Disney is doing a good job transforming that old hotel into a new one. I wouldn't have chosen the Tiki restaurant for the pool area, but as I said before it looks great. The whole hotel looks very contemporary and so I think a restaurant in that architecture would have been better.

[davewasbaloo]

Hmmm, but you have to know the clientele. The Tiki Theme is a huge part of Disneyland culture. It is a perfect fit. To be fair, the DLH has never been an overly themed place until the Eisner years. He is the genious that brought in OTT themed hotels (though WDW did have the Poly and Contemp before Eisner).

the DLH was always quite dull, but had some interesting features in my lifetime - a Disneyland themed miniture golf course, a marina with an underwater video arcade, a western saloon, the waterfalls, the dancing waters show (I used to love this). And Granville's (currently Steakhouse 55 soon to become Walt's) is an excellent restaurant. And Chef Goofy's is fun too - much better than Chef Mickey's at WDW or the joke called Cafe Mickey in Paris.

There used to be a good restaurant called Hook's point where the Tangaroa Terrace now is. It was a very good and romantic restaurant. But I think they wanted to have a reasonable counter service option (the DLH has never really had one), so they filled that purpose.

Frankly, my favored solution that was considered was levelling the hotel and starting again. Sadly that choice was not made, so this is the direction they have gone with. But I really do not like the Monorail pool, despite loving monorails. And the Neverland pool does not look as good in pictures as it did in reality.

However, despite all these changes, if the money is available, I will always oft for the Grand Californian. We have stayed there twice now (2002 and 2007) and it is better than any of the WDW or DLP hotels IMHO, and right in the middle of the action. The DLH is as far away as the Sequoia Lodge is from the Paris parks.

[dagobert]

The GC looks fantastic. Friends stayed there three years ago and now it's their favorite Disney hotel with their favorite restaurant Napa Rose. They even liked it better than Victoria and Alberts at WDW and that's the crown juwel of the Disney restaurants.

I would have also preferred to completly rebuild the hotel, but that would have been to expensive I assume. I think you are right and they shouldn't have done the monorail pool. I preferre simple pools like the new one at the new Bay Lake Tower at WDW.

Eisner was perfect for Walt Disney Parks & Resort. He was so enthusiastic about that division. Iger is good in running the company from a business point of view, but he lacks creativity. Maybe he and Eisner together would have been a prefect match like Eisner and Wells.

[davewasbaloo]

Yep, the Napa Rose is amazing (and they have a vege menu too), better than Victoria and Alberts by far IMHO, and there is nothing in DLP that comes near the quality.

As for pools, my favs are the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Wilderness Lodge and Stormalong Bay pools (maybe the ones at the Poly). Since I grew up in California, where everyone I knew has a pool in the back yard, pools have to be pretty special. DLP doesn't have any special pools other than maybe the Davy Crockett.

As for IGer, I hate him, and think he is doing a terrible job all around.

[dagobert]

I think we all agree that DLRP will never reach the quality of food served in the US Disney parks, although I have to admit that we had the best Disney lunch at the Auberge De Cenrillon. Okay now we have to save for a meal at the Napa Rose.

I think Iger did a great job when he became CEO of TWDC. He settled the dispute with Roy E. Disney, Stanley Gold and Steve Jobs which brought Pixar to Disney. ABC became a major network again and he decided to do a DCA makeover. Now he just needs to help DLRP which will never happen.

I totally agree that he made many mistakes as well and I hate that everything is about franchises now. It seems the consumer products department runs the company now. In former years it accompanied the studio and the parks and now it seems it says what goes into production. The parks also suffered a lot. There are no new original attractions. Everything is cheap and based on stupid toons. But that's not only his fault. I heavily blame Mr. Rasulo for that. Hopefully Mr. Staggs will handle that division better. Universal Studios is currently designing better attractions. I'm excited about SHDL, but I'm not sure if isn't too early for a third Disney park in Asia. I think he wants to leave a footprint in the themepark industry with building the most advanced Disney park.

He also relies too much on products from other companies, for example Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks or Marvel and Pixar. The Disney Studios cut back the production of new movies and he sold Miramax. That studio produced so many Oscar movies.

From an economic point of view the company has never done better. From a creativity point of view the company is suffering, especially WDI. At least it seems they hired some former Imagineers to help to create SHDL.