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[Dolph7800]

As I have been building myself up for going so long, why not spend a quiet evening at work starting my trip report.

So, have just arrived back from 3 days at DLRP as a belated 30th birthday present to myself. I took my 2 younger brothers along for the ride. We booked in to the Kings Cross Travelodge on the Sunday night as they were down from Nottingham, and I could avoid any tube mishaps on the journey from East London.

Day 1- Monday 10th January

A painless stay in the Eurostar, and an early-ish start got us to St Pancras in plenty of time for check in. The Eurostar seemed a lot more roomy this time than from when I remember it in '09, so that was pleasant. Shame there was a hold up at Ashford costing us 25mins, but still a smooth ride into Disney just before 2pm local time. Despite booking Disney Express separately, was surprised when they came to us on the train rather than us having to do it all at the station, so that was also a bonus.

As soon as we exited the tunnel, It was really, really foggy. But thankfully by the time we got to Marne La Valle it had cleared up and leaving the station it was a really pleasant day:



Today would be the last day of the sunshine though as it leathered it down from overnight Monday right through to Wednesday when we left  

So the plan was go through to Disneyland Park and for the first ride of Big Thunder Mountain. On the way they were doing the show outside the castle:



Didnt get too close as it was ending, but we thought it would be perfect opportunity to sneak onto BTM. When we got into Frontierland it was surprisingly busy- and that was because BTM had broken down. Phantom Manor also had massive queues. Bad start! So we bailed in favour of the studios, not before stopping for a delightful lunch:



Surprisingly nice, if more than a tad messy!

Into the studios, and the parade was in full flow here, so we decided to nip into Stitch Live as it was just about to start in English and I hadn't done it before. We sat at the back out of the way so the kids could enjoy it all at the front and get involved and we can hide away. Or not, as Stitch kindly picked on me, blaming me for robbing the space ship, and putting my picture on the screen  :lol:  A nice amusing way for our first attraction to pan out.

Then onto my favourite ride, for the first of what would turn out to be 8 rides on it  :mrgreen: , Rock n Roller Coaster. Had the Sweet Emotion tracker, which would be the most common (All the cars were purple, I thought they were all different?  :? ). Then onto Armageddon, which is not up there as a favourite at all but wanted my brothers to experience as much as they could. Not that there is much to experience there, quite why at the intro they felt the need to re-dub an English actor into French and then subtitle it again in English is anyone's guess.

After this, I finally went on Tower Of Terror for the first time. I'm not a fan of heights or lifts, but convinced myself to go on. And boy am I glad I did, its a really awesome sensation and turned out to be my brothers favourite ride, and another one where we racked up 6 goes on over the course of 3 days! Thankfully queues were for the most part 5 mins- with the odd 15 mins for ToT occasionally- and 35 mins for Crush  :roll:

We kept trying to get to Cinemagique at 3.30pm and 4.30pm but both times we came out of RnR or ToT at 3.34 and 4.33 and was too late both times, but after another go at ToT we managed to get in to the 5.30pm showing which was as pleasant as I remember it, and was a relaxing way to end day 1 in the parks.

Headed to the village for dinner in Annettes, a nice set of Burgers and milkshakes came to a lower than expected 101 Euros for the 3 of us, although the waiter originally gave us a bill for 61 Euros, ruining our game of guess the bill  :lol:  

Took our trudge back to the Sequoia to check in, looking marvelous in the winter darkness:



We were due to have a room in the lodges, so would be interesting to see if that would be the case as I hadnt been in the lodges before, and had read here that they were the refurbed rooms. As it turns out we were on the 3rd floor of the main building, the room looked exactly the same as I had previously visited so no new touches in this one. Beds were super comfy. Was impressed with the telly greeting and that the channels had been added to, but they are still severely lacking in decent English channels- BBC World is a horrendous waste of time as it has no news relating to the UK, and just duplicates the same stories on France 24 and Euronews. Impressed that some of the channels had language options so were able to watch some programmes in English before going to sleep. Day 2 would thankfully not be too early a rise with a 9.45am Breakfast.

Day 2 to follow....  :thumbs:

[norhel]

Great report so far :-)

[dagobert]

Thanks for the trip report!

What was your general impression of SL? We stayed there last year and we were a bit disappointed. In our opinion it was not worth the extra money compared to SF.

[15MagicalYears]

I'm really enjoying your report, looking foward to reading the rest,  :thumbs:

[Dolph7800]

Thanks for the trip report!

What was your general impression of SL? We stayed there last year and we were a bit disappointed. In our opinion it was not worth the extra money compared to SF.

Ive only ever stayed in the SL, and this was my 3rd visit there and I thought it was nice but as I haven't stayed at the others I couldn't compare it. I thought Santa Fe may have been a lot further to walk, if thats not the case I may consider it for next time. As it happens, I'm not massively fussed over hotels. I'm perfectly happy in a Travelodge, its all about the location, its just somewhere to rest my throbbing feet until the morning!

So onto..

Day 2...

After a dry and fairly pleasant first day in the park, it leathered it down with rain overnight leading a damp awaking early morning.



As it happens, today was the first day in a while that there was no Extra Magic Hours, and by the time we had reached the hotel on Monday night there wasnt much in the way of breakfast slots, so we took a 9.45pm breakfast. Which was a good job as my brother is absolutely horrendous at mornings, being one who usually plays on his xbox till 3am and get up around midday, unlike me and my other brother who work early shifts so this was nothing! Dragging him up with a mood was an absolute nightmare, so my plan to use the EMH on Wednesday was going to be revisited!

Down to breakfast, and the first time they had seen the breakfast buffet so it all goes a bit mad trying everything regardless whether it goes or not. Rolls, Nutella and cheese please!



I remembered my addiction from previous trips- Apple yoghurts! Pomme Granny    I don't remember seeing them over here, maybe I just don't look hard enough, but whenever I go to DLRP I have to eat plenty of them as they are superb!!

Onwards to the parks, and after spending Monday in the studios, today the plan was to head into the main park for most of the day, heading back to the studios around 4-4.30pm to grab a go on the favourites ToT & RnR and also to try and nab a go on Crushs Coaster at the end of the day regardless of queue length!



We had for the aborted plan from yesterday of Big Thunder Mountain first, and thankfully it was working this morning so grabbed our first go of that. Always a good ride, I remember going on it countless times with the girlfriend on my last visit as its the only fast ride she will do! For everything else she takes a trip to the shops while I ride!
The poses for the camera never seem to come out right, so joined the club of people taking a cheeky photo of the screen as it was slightly amusing, although not 25 Euros worth of amusing:



I'm in the grumpy T-shirt looking, well, grumpy! But I'm not   With younger brother James next to me and Daniel behind both on their first trips and enjoying themselves!

Went for our only go on Phantom Manor, it was closed when I went last time. A nice ride to do the once, I do like the stretching lift and it made me have the urge to watch the dreafdul Eddie Murphy film! Went to go on Indiana Jones next, but it was shut because the rain had made it too fast  :?  Must be shut a lot then!

Then onto POTC, not a favourite ride of mine by any stretch, and as you can tell the excitement wasnt abound on our boat  :lol: :



The ride does nothing for me, for the first half there werent even any pirates, it was like stuff had all been taking away. I did forget about the little dip which was a nice surprise, a big log flume type ride would be cool!

While we were in the area, the not-at-all camp Jack Sparrow character was doing the rounds impressing all the girls!



After this we did some more sedate stuff like the Tea Cups and the labyrinth, with was starting to bore Dan, just there for the big coasters! I would have happily done Peter Pan and Snow White, but that wasnt going to happen  :lol:



After these, it was back to Discoverland and into Cafe Hyperion for a bit of grub. Or not, as the service was painfully slow to the point of us eventually giving up and grabbing at waffle outside. All the fancy electronic menus are nice, but when you just end up standing in a queue for ages going nowehere, its a bit pointless. They seem to struggle to put the fast in fast food!

Next up was Buzz Lightyear, an attraction I must have done at least 10 times with the girlfriend, one of her faves. But it was a one time only deal here, luckily past experience meant I managed to get the highest score    Helped by some naughty moving of the buggy away from the targets!

On to the next coaster, and 3 goes on the spin on Space Mountain! Great stuff, this is why I come in cold rainy January. If only they would have let us just join the front of the queue again rather than do the long trek back!

After this, we went for a showing of Captain EO- James was especially looking forward to this being a massive Jacko fan, and I myself was looking forward to seeing it and how different it was to HISTA, which was looking a bit tired with a lot not working a couple of years ago.



5 mins outside followed by the rather pointless wait inside where we pretty much just had the view above- even a looped Kodak advert would have been entertaining, why not have a bit of Jacko playing? The show itself was pretty good, Jackos acting pretty much just saying Hoooooottterrrr a few times, but it wasnt any better than HITSA although that was probably an unfair comparison being slightly newer and purpose made. We didnt have no moving floor it was pretty devoid of any affects bar one Hooter sneeze and that was about it.

Straight out of that into Star Tours where an amusing moment happened for sheer rudeness (of which there was a fair bit from people) but a group of youngsters (Just turning 30 I can use this now like an old man!) were taking a group photo in the queue so we waited a bit for them to finish as we couldnt pass. Not like there was any other queue. Except this one man, on his own, grew too impatient and walked right across them at the precise moment they took the photo- which we saw as just being a blur of his rainmac  :lol:  A brief angry exchange in French and on he went- to be in our row and the row behind the group. Except when the doors opened, he dashed into the row in front, to be in the middle splitting the group in 2 because he wanted to sit there! Baffling! You would expect that sort of behaviour off a spoilt kid, not a middle aged man on his own  :shock:  I wish I could have come across him some more during the holiday to see him just offending his way around the park ruining photos and rides for everyone!

Decided to wait for the train back to Frontierland to grab another go on BTM and see if Indiana Jones was working now:



Although the BTM queue was relatively long (about 15-20 mins, not long by most standards I know!) I think Indy was still closed so with the time edging after 4 we headed back to the studios for some more Aerosmith and Tower of Terror. Crushs queue was standing at 35 mins whilst everything else was at 5! So the plan was to ride the favourites until 5.30pm and get on Crush at the end.


So after a few drops in the hotel and a few spins with Aerosmith it came to 5.35pm.... and Crush was shut  :evil:  Not sure if that was due to being 25mins of opening and a 35+ min queue, or if it was technical but it was seemingly destined not for us to go on it. My brothers didnt know why I wanted to get on it as it doesnt look much, and I couldnt explain as I hadn't been on either! Oh well, at least we squeezed in another Tower Of Terror and 3 more Aerosmith rides in that half hour  



The start of Aerosmith still gets me going I love watching it, and the love the anticipation when we were sitting there on it.

6pm rolled around too soon (really it is, 7pm would have been a nicer closing time) so we headed back via Studio 1 to use our Hot Chocolate from our lunch receipt (a daily tradition now   ) and then into the Village to eat at Planet Hollywood which was lovely- I adore their hot chicken tender starters and the LA Lasagna.

When we were leaving, a chef character came in with an enormous oversized champane bottle and pretended someone had won it and then tried to take it off him  :lol:  Think it was going to be a hard job to prise the booze away from the Brits!!

Spent the evening shopping for presents in the Village- and was surprised to see the queue for Hurricanes which I thought had long since closed down  :?  Maybe it had, but something was happening there but I dont know what it was!

Wearily walked back to Seqouia and watched Les Experts Manhatten! (CSI New York) on the telly which I wouldnt normally watch, but it was either that or what that stupid girl on the Disney Channel who couldnt pronounce her R's and kept saying SORTED after everything. The rage was building with everytime I watched it!  :evil:  I could take solace in the fact that all the foreign ones looked and sounded just as annoying! Sorted!  

Stopped by reception to pick up a breakfast card as they had run out- 10.30  :shock:  But luckily we could turn up anytime, but I sense EMH wasnt going to be an option on day 3  :lol:

To be continued

[Dolph7800]

Works been annoyingly busy lately with the introduction of a new (and borderline unworkable) new system, but I will get around to finishing this very shortly!

[never2old]

Looking forward to day 3, great report so far!!

We too love going in the winter, being able to do some rides like SMM2 and RNRC without any queues is brilliant!! Though the weather can be tiring... Personally I hate endless rain the most!

[Dolph7800]

Looking forward to day 3, great report so far!!

We too love going in the winter, being able to do some rides like SMM2 and RNRC without any queues is brilliant!! Though the weather can be tiring... Personally I hate endless rain the most!

Luckily the rain wasn't too heavy for the duration, as its horrible when you squelch along all sodden and soaked but thankfully it wasn't that bad.

[Dolph7800]

Ok lets get going with day 3 as work has thankfully quietened down now, and I don't have anyone nosy next to me looking at everything I do  :evil:

Wednesday we aimed for the same time as the previous day, and to my amazement Dan was up first! He had got the hang of the early starts eventually and had beaten the alarm  :lol:  Another generous helping of croissants and pomme-granny yogurts and it was off through the rain to the park. The weather was pretty ropey, as was to be expected, but it didn't bother us. If anything, I prefer it to rain at theme parks so it may keep some people away making it quieter  

We had done a pretty good job on the previous days on pretty much getting on everything we wanted, so today was a Greatest Hits collection as it were, whilst the intention would be to ride Indiana Jones (in the slim hope it was open, as the rain was worse than yesterday so we didn't hold out much hope) and Crushs Coaster somehow, which twice had defeated our attempts so far!

We decided to go to the Studios first, and aimed for Crush to get it out of the way.... and it was closed. Again.    The CM said it would be open at 11 or 12. Defeated again, we decided to have a wander through Toy Story Playland and maybe have a go on RC Racer... which was closed, along with everything else in TSPL. Oh dear! Not a good start, so we ended up back on the old favourites- Tower Of Terror and Aerosmith for a few blasts, whilst aiming to be ready for the morning Moteurs Action. As ever, Aerosmith was pretty much a walk on, so we just kept going on it until it was time for the stunt show.

Id been to the show on my 2 previous visits, but being my brothers first visit it was a first for them. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in another thread, the show was ultimately very disappointing as they ran a shortened show taking out all the best bits. Including laughably bringing out all the lorry ramps and fake grocers stalls, and doing nothing with them. The ending was also ridiculous, as shown by the video taken by someone else, instead of jumping over the ramp in a blaze of glory, the hero car just spun in the middle and stopped. A puzzling end to a disappointing show that wasn't worth spending the best part of an hour in the cold and wet for. I know it can be better, but I think I would struggle to justify going back when we go again.



After we exited the show I was determined to go on Crushs Coaster regardless of the queue. We wandered down towards the information board, stopping for some lunch along the way and one of the food stalls. We plumped for the random sausage and chips baguette which was pretty nice if a tad spicy, and again a decent value lunch at around 7 Euros each. It filled a gap and we wandered to the info board to see what the damage would be in terms of waiting for Crush.

It said 5 minutes. Hmmm. It's never 5 minutes, I assumed that was a rough translation of "It's shut" but we headed there anyway and, by god, it was open! However, the queue was obviously not 5 mins, more of the order of 30mins but we had finally got on it!



I didn't know what to expect from the ride, I had only seen the outside drop and had read here that it wasn't representative of the rest of the ride. And isn't that the truth! We all got in our shell, and the CM literally (and appropriately) crushed me with lap bar and we were off! All nice and casual at the start, and my brothers were still wondering why I had insisted on going on this ride every day, and then they got the reason when we got to the spinning! Round and round and round constantly, totally disorientated it was really fun and we all came off enjoying it, but we weren't going to join the queue again for that one!

We left the studios and headed for the main park and another go on Big Thunder Mountain. Dan had suggested to jump on the bus that was parked up- I had no idea if we could ride them or not but it turns out we could! So we got that down towards the middle and wandered down to BTM. The queue was a bit long but the fastpass lane was empty and people were wandering past so once we had our go we decided to grab a fastpass, go and try Indy and then come back for another ride on BTM.

We got what we wanted to see at Indy:



5 mins- yes please! In fact it wasn't even that- no queue at all! So we managed to get 3 rides in a row in on it and I have to say we loved it. I was a bit apprehensive of this one on my previous visit and didn't go on it as I thought it only had a lap bar like on BTM and I didn't fancy that with a loop, but it turns out I was wrong (thanks to seeing a pic on this site!) and we had a blast. It's a great difference to have a coaster outside, rather than the dark rides of RnRC and SM, and the loop on this one is really intense it's a great feeling. Got my head bashed about a fair bit, but it was worth it! It was also nice to do a bit of sightseeing on the slow ascent at the start of the ride as a rare glimpse outside of Disney, as the real world outside is usually hidden away!

We could have kept going back on it over and over again- it would have been nice not to have to do the walk every time, was hoping that we could hop out on the right and just join the tiny queue there but we had to go out and go in again, and it was now time for our fastpass slot at Thunder Mountain so we headed back and joined the queue which had unfortunately changed configuration in the half hour or so we had been away, and the previously empty fastpass lane was now full up as a usual queue  :evil: To make matters worse, the ride then broke down and a fruitless wait for 20 mins before we gave up and headed back to Indy, a bit miffed that we could have had another 3 rides on that in the time we had wasted for BTM. So I think we only managed 3 rides on BTM overall thanks to breakdowns and longer than normal queues- they seemed to be only running 1 train for the most part and the differing queue system was pretty annoying too as it was hard to judge whether it was worth going for it, or heading to something else with less of a wait.

So it was back to our flavour of the moment, Indiana Jones for a stunning 5 walk ons in a row!   Once we had our fill of that, we wandered back towards the castle and look who we came across with pretty much no one around:



We all had our pics taken with Mickey, which was nice as we hadn't really got near any characters. As Ive just hit 30, it feels a bit sad vying for a picture with all the little kids, so I was glad we got him in a quiet spot  

We wandered through the Aladdin area, and area which we had not been in as yet  :shock:  and of course, cashing in the receipt for our free hot chocolate which had been a daily routine now  :lol:  As it happens we came across a restaurant, I can't remember which it was, but like with Blockbuster the day previously, they were trying to close at 5. Bit of a cheek them all closing early with the short days anyway, we were already on short hours anyway let alone with things trying to close even earlier.

 

As it turns out, we ended back in Main Street to catch the back end of the parade. Something we hadn't done on any day as it was only on at 5pm and by that time we were trying to cram in as many rides as possible before closing!




Pretty ropey pics of the parade as I just whipped the camera out and snapped!

So we left the park about 5.45pm for the last time, sad that the time was over but happy with what we had done.
You may be amazed to know that we didnt go through the castle at all  :shock:  I was hoping to show them the dragon, but time didn't allow that and we always took another route to get there! They didn't miss this really- boys in their mid twenties so they weren't fussed about going through the princess castle, they had seen it, that was enough. It would have been funny to do some of the slower rides like Peter Pan and the like, but at the end of the day we were there for the coasters and thrills and we got plenty of our share of them, with at least 8 goes of RnRC, 7 on Space Mountain and Indy and at least 5 goes on ToT (which I wasn't even going to go on at first!) and of course, finally getting on Crush.

We headed to the village for our last dinner before we were due to grab the Eurostar home. We were undecided, we headed to Billy Bobs as I fancied the buffet but it was closed, so we headed to the Rainforest Cafe, which I wasn't as impressed with food-wise on my last visit, but it had lovely theming and had something for all of us so we gave it a bash.




I have posted the food pics elsewhere, but I will say again how lovely the food was, especially the Chilli.  :thumbs: We did the Cha Cha menu, which was 21.50 each for main and dessert. We had done starters/main at Annettes and Planet Hollywood and as nothing on the starters tickled our fancy we did it this way round and we all thought this was the best meal of the trip, so I was glad we did go there after all!

We headed to the Disney Express to collect our luggage giving ourselves a little time- but there was no need. No queue for the bags, we just joined the queue for boarding which opened about 10mins after we joined. Thats the slowest part of the journey, but once thats all done we were straight on the train, nearly an hour before departure and just slumped in our seats, tired with sore feet (blisters, nice!) but having had a great trip.



It was a lovely journey home, barely anyone on our carriage. For my brothers it was part 1 of the journey as they had to then get a train from St Pancras-Nottingham, whereas I just had the pleasure of the tube to Dagenham.

Thankfully I had the next day off to recover and look through the photos  

A holiday I had been looking forward to for months, it had the possibility to disappoint as my expectations were high but realistic being my 3rd visit and DLRP lived up to them all. And within a week, my brothers were phoning me saying we should go back, so I think the plan should be to go back again in January 2012!

[Dolph7800]

Good job I copy and pasted as it auto logged me out after I had done typing  :shock:

I may add more random pictures to this soon anyway as I have loads of them on my PC, and while they are not of the quality as some of the excellent efforts on some other trip reports, I know there are people like me who like to see any photo of DLRP!  

[LittleMonster]

Looks like you had a good time!

[dagobert]

Thanks for your trip report. It's great that you had a wonderful time at DLRP.

[Terkina]

Thank you for the trip report.  It's always fun to read about trips to Disneyland Paris

[Dolph7800]

Here's a few more photos that I'll just leave in here  :thumbs:

Toy Story Playland in the dark just before closing time (6pm)


One of many (very similar!) photos of Tower Of Terror:


The show that was going on when we entered the park at lunchtime on day 1. We didnt stop as we were rushing to get on Big Thunder Mountain... which was closed!



Panoramique:


Always love the view of the Newport Bay Club in the night:



Our Sequoia Lodge (Non-refurbed) room:



Big Thunder Mountain (Waiting ages for a train to pass until realised it was shut, boo!)



And the Adventure Isle area:



That'll do for the moment  

[loladelorean]

Great trip report, thanks for sharing
Really glad to read TRs of Sequoia Lodge as I'm staying there for the first time in June. I think sometimes the rooms look quite sparse, but in your photo it looks nice and cosy.
Bravo on finding Mickey with no crowds!