Disney in the French quarter - completed, WITH NEW PHOTOS AT THE END! About This Page:

[chezp]

Introduction – planning to go to Paris



Date: Tuesday 23 September - Saturday 27 September 2003

Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (30) and DH Mark (38)

Resort: Disneyland Paris Resort, Newport Bay Club hotel, concierge with a lake view - their equivalent of the Yacht and Beach Club

Celebration: We needed another dose of Disney before our return to Florida next year, it's a free trip and it's DH's first trip at DLP!



As many of you will know, we spent a wonderful 19 nights at the Beach Club over Christmas 2002 and New Year 2002/2003. We immediately made plans to return in Spring 2004, knowing we had to use up our newly purchased DVC points by August of that year and finally we settled on a May trip, but… that seemed a long way off in the early part of 2003 – more than a year away to be precise.



At around the same time, I was trying to decide how to use up the vouchers I’d got from shopping with one particular supermarket chain. We’ve got a credit card with them and I always buy my petrol there, as well as getting our food shopping there. As my return trip to work is 80 miles a day, I buy a lot of petrol and we spend a lot of money on the credit card, getting points every time we do – so the points quickly mount up. They’re then converted to money off vouchers, which you can use instore or save up to use on other things, such as holidays. I discovered this two years ago, when I worked out I could get £15 off my weekly food shop or if I used them towards a holiday, they then became worth four times as much, £60. Ever since then, we’ve saved up the vouchers for holidays.



By February 2003, I had £840 worth of vouchers and was working out how to spend them on a trip to Oslo in Norway. The trip would cost around £600, so I looked at adding on Stockholm in Sweden – that took it to over £1000 and we didn’t really want to pay extra for a holiday, having just returned from WDW and having seen the size of the credit card bill from that particular month…! So either I’d be wasting vouchers or paying more money or I could look for another destination. While browsing through the holiday brochures, I noticed the offer included the one for Disneyland Paris (DLP), so I started mentally pricing things up. I could get a holiday (including passes to the park for the duration of the trip and breakfast everyday) for the two of us for around £750 at the Newport Bay Club (DLP’s equivalent of the Beach Club) travelling on the Eurostar train from Ashford (half an hour’s drive from where we live) right to the theme park itself – just a two hour trip. Even better, if we went for a week in September, we’d get four nights for the price of three. Then, when I looked at the small print, I realised that for £860 (c. $1350), we could also afford an upgrade to concierge level with a lake view. Well that was it – sold! The holiday was all booked less than a month later and we were on our way back to Disney, meaning we wouldn’t have to wait until 2004 to experience some Disney magic!



Next - starting out with low expectations

[chezp]

Background – or starting out with low expectations



So that’s our plans for the trip – now a little background. I spent a day at DLP in 1996 with my then boyfriend, as we were staying with a friend of mine, who was studying in Paris and I wanted to go and see what the new park (it had only opened a couple of years earlier) was all about. By this time, I’d been to Florida three times with my family – the most recent visit to WDW being only two months earlier, so I guess you could say I’d started to get the Disney bug. The problem was my expectations. If you asked me to do a word association game and gave me Disney as a word, sooner or later I’d have come up with the words “hot” and “sunny”. Well not at Disneyland Paris that day. It was freezing – I never knew the north of France could be that cold! The wind was absolutely biting and that was my abiding memory of the day – not a good start.



DH however had never been to DLP, but instead of thinking “he’ll have a great time, he didn’t have the bad experience I did”, I was worrying about whether he’d enjoy it as well. The problem you see, is DLP is in France. Now this is a problem because the French are not DH’s favourite people. In fact, they are probably his least favourite people. I guess Americans can now relate more to this, after recent events over Iraq and the French reluctance to get involved there, but the British as a race have had never liked the French for many centuries and it’s a pretty mutual thing. We’ve fought numerous wars over the years and today, we’re both still very proud nations. It doesn’t help that the French as a nation believe everyone should speak French and the British as a nation believe everyone should speak English. I’m over generalising here, but you get the idea.



DH is certainly a typical Brit, in the nicest possible way. He does not speak French and believes they should all speak English. On the other hand, I speak French, German, Spanish and Italian (admittedly not very well!) and don’t think we should expect others to speak our language. However, I guess he does have a point when it comes to DLP – it is, as he says, an American ideal and an American company and therefore you expect it to operate the same as you would in WDW. That’s fine in theory, but before we went I’d heard so many horror stories from trip reports on other boards that I had the impression that this wasn’t in fact how it worked.



The two main complaints I heard (and this is probably to do with the French, rather than DLP itself) were:

People smoke everywhere in the park and ignore any no-smoking signs(we have noticed smoking a lot more popular in continental Europe than it is in the UK or America) People do not stand in queues for food or characters – there is no concept of queuing and people just barge in at the last minute.



Both of these things are things which intensely irritate DH (and myself, although I often stay quiet for an easy life). I’d also heard that the CM’s aren’t as friendly as they are in WDW, there’s the obvious problem of the weather not being as “hot” and “sunny” and there isn’t apparently very much to do in the new Studios theme park. Add all these together and you can see why perhaps I wasn’t looking forward to our DLP trip, as much as I was looking forward to our 2004 WDW trip.



The other problem was finding information – there isn’t a lot on the Internet about DLP. I did pick up a very good guidebook early on, called “A Brit’s guide to Disneyland Paris”, which was full of useful tips and our travel agent sent us a guidebook with our tickets about a fortnight before we travelled, but someone needs to come up with an equivalent site to Deb Wills’ one, but made for DLP. There is just nowhere to find details of menus, there are very few restaurant reviews and I couldn’t even find opening times for many of the restaurants, so I didn't know if they served just dinner or lunch as well. Therefore, I will admit I felt very ill-equipped going into this holiday.



Four days before we left, I did finally find a good site – DLP guidebook which had some useful information on, such as what would be down for rehab while we were there. I discovered there’d be three attractions would be closed while we were at DLP – Indiana Jones (as that’s a roller coaster and we don’t do those, that wasn’t a problem) Autopia (Tomorrowland's Indy Speedway from WDW – again not something we’d ever go on), but the third one was a blow – for me at least! It’s A Small World would be down for rehab while we were there. I think this discovery made DH’s night, as he can’t stand this ride – but it’s so Disney I feel we’ve got to go on it every time we’re at Disney. Well, not this time at least. It could've been a lot worse – the Auto Stunt Show was scheduled for rehab the day after we were due to leave and if we’d missed that, I’d have been really disappointed.



A few last minute panics, like waiting until the last minute to get extra memory cards for our digital camera, losing (and then fortunately finding!) the power pack for the digital camera and torrential rain the night before we were due to leave, and finally departure day arrived….

[simbarel]

Cool! I've been waiting for this TR b/c unlike your DH I love the French (I am part French) and I loved Paris when I was there two years ago. You've got me hanging though..I know you had low expectations...can't wait to see how it turned out!


PS...80 miles on the way home??? [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[CRCrazy]

Keep going!!

Very interesting to read the before comments - can't wait to see how the reality compares!

You do write excellent trip reports - glad we don't have to wait until May for another fix!

[goofy4goofy]

Oh, I can't wait for the rest of the report!!!! I hope there are pictures too!!! (hint, hint)

Kelly

[poohsgirl]

Cheryl, glad to see you posting your trip report so quickly!

I have to tell you, I love all of the british touches to your report! Petrol and fortnight, I find it so endearing! I had the pleasure of visiting England in 1990 and had a great time. I found the English to be so charming! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I understand your DH's views of the french and hope that this holiday proves to pleasantly surprise you both!

[statelady01]

This is already magnifique....more please!!

[chezp]

Kelly, don't worry - there are PLENTY of photos to come (I've been uploading them for the last couple of hours!)

Originally posted by simbarel:
PS...80 miles on the way home??? [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS, Arial">It's an 80 mile round trip to work and back, so it's 40 miles there and back - not quite as bad as 80 miles there and back, but enough! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[tikibird]

Excellent start and perspectives Cheryl - can't wait for the rest! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[AKLRULZ]

Hooked! Great start and looking forward to more and to the snaps. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[TxDisMom]

Great start, Cheryl! I've been looking forward to this report!!

Can't wait for more [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Carol

[chezp]

Tuesday 23 September, part one – “what do you want to get out of this Disney vacation?”



The question from DH took me by surprise. We hadn't been up that long and were just going outside to check on the vegetables in the garden after last night’s torrential rain. What did I want to get out of it? I don't know about you, but I could answer that straight away – “a bit of Disney magic”.



Well it hadn't started too magically. Although it was only half an hour's drive to Ashford, where we were catching the train, we’d woken to hear on the news that the motorway between here and there was closed due to an accident. DMIL, who was taking us to the station called and we agreed she should come and get us quarter of an hour earlier than originally planned.



We did very well and were on the outskirts of Ashford in just 20 minutes, but then we hit the queue to get off the motorway. There was half a mile to the junction and we had the best part of an hour to get to the station so I wasn't too worried, but half an hour later, when we still hadn't reached the turn off, I was starting to get worried. We decided to turn left, instead of right towards the station and take a different route and hopefully one which was traffic free. Fortunately it was and we made it to the station by 9:45 a.m. (We later found out from DMIL when we returned home that the queues we were stuck in were nothing to do with the earlier accident on the motorway, but had in fact been caused by faulty traffic lights!)



On train was due to leave at 10:27 a.m. and we had to be checked in half an hour beforehand, so we only just made it. As I went to put my ticket in the machine, some stupid woman dropped her suitcase in front of me, straight onto my toe. Limping, I made my way through passport control security, not so silently cursing her!



When we got into the waiting area, we found our train was already running half an hour late…. and after we’d rushed to get to the station as well! Typical. We passed the time chatting to a family from Essex (east of London), who'd been to Disneyland Paris once before and WDW once as well. We were shocked to see so many children in the waiting area going to Disneyland Paris in late September. We thought that most kids would be at school but this didn't seem to be the case at all. It's not as if there was school holiday coming up shortly, the next one would be in late October and schools in the UK only go back after a summer break at the start of September.



In the end we left about 45 minutes late from Ashford. We were standing on the platform for about 10 minutes waiting for the train and I'm glad it wasn't any longer, as it was starting to get quite cold in the wind and there seemed to be dark clouds arriving overhead.





Ashford International station





Our train arrives... finally!



When we got on board, we discovered a major problem with the design of the Eurostar trains. There simply isn't enough space for all the luggage. We eventually managed to move a buggy (stroller) and a small bag to fit our large suitcase underneath, but only after about five minutes of trying to find somewhere. When we later walked up to the buffet car to get something to eat, we found we weren't the only ones who obviously had a problem, there were bags and suitcases blocking most of the carriage doors. I dread to think what would have happened in an emergency.



We had been told that we would be able to complete the check-in on board but as the journey went on and we saw no one, it became apparent that might not happen. When we tried to ask someone it turned out he was French and didn't speak any English, which did surprise me as I understood all Eurostar staff had to be fluent in both languages. Although I speak some French, I wasn't about to start getting into the intricacies of the Disney Express check-in service in anything out my native tongue, so we gave up on that idea and resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd be going to the hotel first and not the parks as we'd hoped.



But about 20 minutes before we were due to arrive at Marne La Vallee, the station for Disneyland Paris, we finally saw some Disneyland Paris CM's, who quickly gave us tags for our luggage, so we could check-in our suitcases and head straight for the parks. It was all very simple, we were given our tickets to get into the parks and the information we needed to fill in before arriving at our hotel.



When we arrived at Marne La Vallee, we were one of the first people to get out of our carriage. As just about everyone else had children, we decided we would be able to move quicker than them, so we positioned ourselves at the doors and sure enough we were away. We needed to compensate, as we were in the first carriage and therefore the furthest away from the exit of the station!



We followed the signs for the Disney Express check-in service as we left the train and as we walked along the platform, we heard the familiar sound of Zippity Do Dah, finally we were in Disney!



Next: is this definitely the way to the park?

[Grumpygal]

Great start to your report. Sorry about the beginning of the trip wasn't as great as it could be, but it sounds like it got better. Can't wait for the next installment. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[tikibird]

Wow, sorry your commute was a bit painful, and hope your foot is okay! But, you did make it to Disney afterall, and that's what counts!

Can't wait to hear all about DLP! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]