scottwb
11-15-2009, 10:24 AM
We're back! We were there from Nov 4th to the 14th. Stayed at the NPBC (Admirals Floor, Lake View), saw the bonfire fireworks and Disney christmas.
Highs, Mids, Lows and observations ...
Highs
------
- My four year old DDs excitement at seeing Santa Claus and meeting all the characters :)
- Disney @ Christmas, truly memorable, loved the parade, Fantalusion, tree lighting, winter wonderland show, xmas Winne the Pooh + friends.
- The "Ice" castle - beautiful.
- Santa's grotto, the snow, snowmen, christmas tress and lights down by Woody's Roundup. This was magical at night.
- Snow on main street and the various snow carpets dotted around. Also, the Christmas music being played throughout the park - it really felt that Christmas had started.
- EMH - if only we could have had this EVERY day.
- Space Mountain, Rock 'n' Roller coaster and crush (backwards) - these were firsts for me and I absolutely loved them; up until now I've been reticent at going on roller coasters with loops etc, but with a 16 year old DD who wanted to try them all I had no choice (what else can a Dad do?) but to accompany her.
- Cafe Mickey in the evening. This was brilliant, so many birthdays, the clapping, dancing on the tables, the atmosphere was charged. Such a difference from CM at breakfast. Couldn't stop smiling and we saw nine characters and had lots of character interaction.
- Inventions; great food, a lovely restaurant and lots of characters.
- Auberge; as ever a great experience and my four DDs loved the princesses, prince and the mice; Suzy and Perla. We also got the photo pack free of charge as the waitress forgot to add it to the bill. I (with my conscience) pointed it out and she said "it's free!".
- Lots of meets and greets with characters and tons of really good photo opportunities.
- Scoring 642,000 on Buzz; this is a high for me, but is probably a low for some of you other Buzz sharp shooters ;-) My wife also beat my score by 2,000 which i just didn't expect, but then she was scoring perfect scores at the shooting range in Frontierland!
- Buffalo Bills; we had a really great evening and totally loved it. We also were upgraded to category 1 seating, again unexpected and a nice bonus as we got a better seating position, cocktail and some treats with our coffee.
- Walts! Excellent food and a lovely setting, we had a main street parade table and we were the only people in our room (Frontierland) when the parade was on so we were able to watch from three windows. I was surprised at how many parade characters actually spotted us waving from the windows and waved back! I gave a thumbs up to Mickey who spotted me and returned two thumbs up! The waitress also gave us some free coffees and light-up plastic figurines which was a nice bonus.
- Being invited to breakfast in the Captain's Quarters at NPBC. This was a godsend for us as it meant no breakfast slot, no queues or scrums and the added bonus of some hot food with the breakfast.
- Leisure Select on the Eurostar. Great service and lovely food. We were all kept topped up with plenty of water, juice, coffee etc (for me this is invaluable as I need coffee like a fish needs water) and on the way back had the added bonus of wine with our meal.
Mids
===
- The bonfire event was okay, good fireworks, music and lasers, but I felt it wasn't quite a 100% Disney. Not sure what else I expected, but it wasn't really a wow, and I would not bother booking this again - with hindsight the extra days would have been better on the end of our holiday.
- Having a balcony with canopy - it was nice to stand on the balcony and watch the fireworks or generally just take in the lovely view.
- Not having to walk miles from the room to the lifts in the NPBC.
- Lovely view of the lake from our AF room.
- People who forced their way into queues, parade spots being moved on by CM and Disney security - it was heartening to see that it wasn't going un-noticed and was being actioned.
- It was nice to see some of the Halloween decorations were still up when we arrived, although they were gone by about the 6th Nov.
- Getting lots of photos and autographs from the Stars 'n' Cars parade (standing behind the stage). Aladdin was just about to sign my DD's book when he was called to the stage. He looked at me and signalled that he would be back. True to his word, just before getting back into his car, he turned to Jasmine, pointed at us and then dragged her over for autographs and some photos, before getting back into the car and driving off.
Lows
===
- How expensive! Just could not believe how much everything was (I know the exchange rate is poor).
- NPBC; the hotel is in need of some paint and TLC.
- Some parts of the park are really starting to look quite drabby now.
- Pushing and shoving by some people. Some people just don't get the concept of a queue or arriving 45 minutes before a parade to secure a good vantage point.
- Lucky Nugget; very poor, we were there almost 2 hours and saw TWO characters! Disney need to sort this out as it just does not compare to Inventions and CM.
- The maids who cleaned our room. My wife and eldest daughter arrived back at our room (from breakfast) to find that one of the doors to our room was open (we had two connecting rooms). So they went in to brush hair, grab coats etc. Well, one of the two maids cleaning the room charged over and started shouting very loudly (in French) at my wife. My daughter tried to get to her room and was shoved back and both were forced out of the room. I arrived shortly afterwards and tried to enter the room. The maid shouted at me and grabbed the room card out of my hand and then tested it to see if we really were the occupants of the room! At this point we were allowed in. This is behaviour we just did not expect, not very Disney at all. We were going to immediately report it but decided to think about it and not let it spoil the rest of the day. By evening we decided that the maid was probably being overly officious - perhaps Disney instruct maids to forcibly remove people from rooms without first checking to see if they are the rightful occupants, the fact they couldn't speak english also didn't help. So we left it at that but did put it on the comments card that you hand in at the end of the stay.
Observations
========
- We had the half board plus meal vouchers and nowhere on the voucher could we see the face value. When we used them at face value, we also seemed to be given different values to the voucher; between 24 and 28E for an adult voucher.
- Some of the vouchers just did not work - the CM would type in the voucher code and it would be constantly rejected, resulting in a CM manager having to inspect the voucher, make phone calls etc before they were taken. This happened several times in different restaurants. However, at no point was a voucher rejected.
- Alcohol is not covered by the vouchers, so evan if you use them at face value they seem to deduct the alcohol from the meal price and then deduct the face value of the vouchers. So if your meal + alcohol is less than total face value of vouchers you still have to PAY for the alcohol. Not what I expected.
- Breakfast in the park only seemed to be available on some days - I did ask the Concierge but he couldn't explain why on some EMH days the plaza is open and on others it is closed. Shame really as we enjoyed the breakfast in the park.
- AF well worth the extra, LV, not so sure, unless there is something specific that can benefit from it like the fireworks.
- The staggered times for some of the rides didn't affect us and it was not something noticeable, although, Case Junior and Storybook land only seems to be open Fri-Mon now.
Highs, Mids, Lows and observations ...
Highs
------
- My four year old DDs excitement at seeing Santa Claus and meeting all the characters :)
- Disney @ Christmas, truly memorable, loved the parade, Fantalusion, tree lighting, winter wonderland show, xmas Winne the Pooh + friends.
- The "Ice" castle - beautiful.
- Santa's grotto, the snow, snowmen, christmas tress and lights down by Woody's Roundup. This was magical at night.
- Snow on main street and the various snow carpets dotted around. Also, the Christmas music being played throughout the park - it really felt that Christmas had started.
- EMH - if only we could have had this EVERY day.
- Space Mountain, Rock 'n' Roller coaster and crush (backwards) - these were firsts for me and I absolutely loved them; up until now I've been reticent at going on roller coasters with loops etc, but with a 16 year old DD who wanted to try them all I had no choice (what else can a Dad do?) but to accompany her.
- Cafe Mickey in the evening. This was brilliant, so many birthdays, the clapping, dancing on the tables, the atmosphere was charged. Such a difference from CM at breakfast. Couldn't stop smiling and we saw nine characters and had lots of character interaction.
- Inventions; great food, a lovely restaurant and lots of characters.
- Auberge; as ever a great experience and my four DDs loved the princesses, prince and the mice; Suzy and Perla. We also got the photo pack free of charge as the waitress forgot to add it to the bill. I (with my conscience) pointed it out and she said "it's free!".
- Lots of meets and greets with characters and tons of really good photo opportunities.
- Scoring 642,000 on Buzz; this is a high for me, but is probably a low for some of you other Buzz sharp shooters ;-) My wife also beat my score by 2,000 which i just didn't expect, but then she was scoring perfect scores at the shooting range in Frontierland!
- Buffalo Bills; we had a really great evening and totally loved it. We also were upgraded to category 1 seating, again unexpected and a nice bonus as we got a better seating position, cocktail and some treats with our coffee.
- Walts! Excellent food and a lovely setting, we had a main street parade table and we were the only people in our room (Frontierland) when the parade was on so we were able to watch from three windows. I was surprised at how many parade characters actually spotted us waving from the windows and waved back! I gave a thumbs up to Mickey who spotted me and returned two thumbs up! The waitress also gave us some free coffees and light-up plastic figurines which was a nice bonus.
- Being invited to breakfast in the Captain's Quarters at NPBC. This was a godsend for us as it meant no breakfast slot, no queues or scrums and the added bonus of some hot food with the breakfast.
- Leisure Select on the Eurostar. Great service and lovely food. We were all kept topped up with plenty of water, juice, coffee etc (for me this is invaluable as I need coffee like a fish needs water) and on the way back had the added bonus of wine with our meal.
Mids
===
- The bonfire event was okay, good fireworks, music and lasers, but I felt it wasn't quite a 100% Disney. Not sure what else I expected, but it wasn't really a wow, and I would not bother booking this again - with hindsight the extra days would have been better on the end of our holiday.
- Having a balcony with canopy - it was nice to stand on the balcony and watch the fireworks or generally just take in the lovely view.
- Not having to walk miles from the room to the lifts in the NPBC.
- Lovely view of the lake from our AF room.
- People who forced their way into queues, parade spots being moved on by CM and Disney security - it was heartening to see that it wasn't going un-noticed and was being actioned.
- It was nice to see some of the Halloween decorations were still up when we arrived, although they were gone by about the 6th Nov.
- Getting lots of photos and autographs from the Stars 'n' Cars parade (standing behind the stage). Aladdin was just about to sign my DD's book when he was called to the stage. He looked at me and signalled that he would be back. True to his word, just before getting back into his car, he turned to Jasmine, pointed at us and then dragged her over for autographs and some photos, before getting back into the car and driving off.
Lows
===
- How expensive! Just could not believe how much everything was (I know the exchange rate is poor).
- NPBC; the hotel is in need of some paint and TLC.
- Some parts of the park are really starting to look quite drabby now.
- Pushing and shoving by some people. Some people just don't get the concept of a queue or arriving 45 minutes before a parade to secure a good vantage point.
- Lucky Nugget; very poor, we were there almost 2 hours and saw TWO characters! Disney need to sort this out as it just does not compare to Inventions and CM.
- The maids who cleaned our room. My wife and eldest daughter arrived back at our room (from breakfast) to find that one of the doors to our room was open (we had two connecting rooms). So they went in to brush hair, grab coats etc. Well, one of the two maids cleaning the room charged over and started shouting very loudly (in French) at my wife. My daughter tried to get to her room and was shoved back and both were forced out of the room. I arrived shortly afterwards and tried to enter the room. The maid shouted at me and grabbed the room card out of my hand and then tested it to see if we really were the occupants of the room! At this point we were allowed in. This is behaviour we just did not expect, not very Disney at all. We were going to immediately report it but decided to think about it and not let it spoil the rest of the day. By evening we decided that the maid was probably being overly officious - perhaps Disney instruct maids to forcibly remove people from rooms without first checking to see if they are the rightful occupants, the fact they couldn't speak english also didn't help. So we left it at that but did put it on the comments card that you hand in at the end of the stay.
Observations
========
- We had the half board plus meal vouchers and nowhere on the voucher could we see the face value. When we used them at face value, we also seemed to be given different values to the voucher; between 24 and 28E for an adult voucher.
- Some of the vouchers just did not work - the CM would type in the voucher code and it would be constantly rejected, resulting in a CM manager having to inspect the voucher, make phone calls etc before they were taken. This happened several times in different restaurants. However, at no point was a voucher rejected.
- Alcohol is not covered by the vouchers, so evan if you use them at face value they seem to deduct the alcohol from the meal price and then deduct the face value of the vouchers. So if your meal + alcohol is less than total face value of vouchers you still have to PAY for the alcohol. Not what I expected.
- Breakfast in the park only seemed to be available on some days - I did ask the Concierge but he couldn't explain why on some EMH days the plaza is open and on others it is closed. Shame really as we enjoyed the breakfast in the park.
- AF well worth the extra, LV, not so sure, unless there is something specific that can benefit from it like the fireworks.
- The staggered times for some of the rides didn't affect us and it was not something noticeable, although, Case Junior and Storybook land only seems to be open Fri-Mon now.