Anyone visit the other Disney Parks in other countries?

[NJtoATL]

Disney Tokyo when I was in High School.

Would love to do the one in France.

 

[BubMunkeyBles]

My DH proposed at Disneyland Paris. He splurged for the Disneyland part. I personally liked it. I never expected it to be like WDW though.

Tokyo and Hong Kong are both on our bucketlists... along with a bunch of other destinations.

 

[OchreHand]

Hopefully this bump is okay, but I stumbled upon this video called One Day in DisneySea. It's breathtaking. The quality is amazing (watch in the highest setting!)

When it got to the scene of the canal and gondolas I almost booked my ticket right there.

 

[angelinaxox]

We went To Disneyland Paris (we are in the UK so it is a 2 hour train trip for us) and HATED IT! In my opinion, Disney should be ashamed to associate themselves with it and it lets the Disney brand down in so many ways.

The staff (and other guests) were on the whole rude and unhelpful. Despite the park having Designated Smoking Areas, they were not enforced even in the loosest possible sense (we had people smoking in the line for rides!). At the time, we were smokers and we stuck to the rules, but I really didn't appreciate people in line blowing smoke in my kids faces.

We stayed at a higher end Disney Hotel (Newport Bay) which was filthy dirty and poorly maintained. Day 1, I tripped over carpet that was not stuck down properly. For our entire 5 day stay, there was a bag of trash outside the room next door (which was a hotel bag left by room service). My daughter got food poisoning. We had half board (breakfast and dinner).

On our final day, we were walking outside and saw a young kid (around 13) who clearly had learning disabilities. He was crying and frantic and was crying out for his father. We watched as 3 members of staff walked by him, looking in his direction and walking on by without stopping to help. My DW and I went over to him to try to help, but he was French and neither of us speak French. I did some French at school (many moons ago) so I could work out that he was lost but couldn't communicate with the kid. We took him with us and tried to find someone from the hotel but when we explained they look at us and this poor kid like we were just a pain in the backside.

He was eventually reunited with his father but we did not even get a thank you from the hotel staff or the kids father!

All in all, it left us feeling that we'd wasted a lot of money on a rubbish trip and that the parks that are not owned and operated by Disney which most of the parks outside the US are not (they are run by other companies who pay Disney to operate) are just not up to standard. For that reason I would not travel to any of them for fear we'd have another rubbish time!

I can relate to your post. I traveled to DLP in July 2010 with my parents, my brother, sister-in-law and their three kids (ages 6, 9 and 11). It was one day of our two week trip to visit Rome, Paris and London. It was the day I probably was most looking forwards to as I am a big Disney fan and I had missed an opportunity to visit on a previous trip to Paris. Our plans were to try and visit the unique rides and our most favorite rides as we wouldn't have time to hit them all.

The park certainly did not have the same Disney vibe. I encountered rude CMS. The rides didn't seem to be well-maintained. The worst part was that I had a hard time ordering food for my niece and I at the one quick service place as I didn't understand the menu (I basically just pointed to what I thought was what I wanted to order because I was afraid of ordering wrong) and I still obviously messed up because the worker was really nasty to me (in French). Luckily, there was a young American girl in line behind me who spoke five different languages and she helped translate what I wanted. I was pretty embarrassed. Overall, I felt disappointed because I had such high expectations. But I left feeling like a foolish American. I'm glad I did it once, but the experience soured me on ever wanting to go there again.

 

[minnie mum]

The worst part was that I had a hard time ordering food for my niece and I at the one quick service place as I didn't understand the menu (I basically just pointed to what I thought was what I wanted to order because I was afraid of ordering wrong) and I still obviously messed up because the worker was really nasty to me (in French). Luckily, there was a young American girl in line behind me who spoke five different languages and she helped translate what I wanted. I was pretty embarrassed. Overall, I felt disappointed because I had such high expectations. But I left feeling like a foolish American. I'm glad I did it once, but the experience soured me on ever wanting to go there again.

How strange. Any of the restaurants we went to, whether they were TS or CS, in the parks, the village or at the hotel, always had bilingual menus. Which one was it that you had problems with unilingual menus?

 

[crazy_cremello]

I went to Disneyland Paris in 2010 with school. It doesn't have the same vibe as WDW, and is also a lot smaller. Chances of finding someone that speaks good english is almost impossible. The food is terrible and ridiculously expensive. One thing I will say is that Space Mountain is a million times better in Paris (because it goes upside down and corkscrews etc) and I think probably Rock 'n' Rollercoaster is better too. ToT is a completely different colour and not as big, although its the same ride, the inside is SO different to WDW and it's actually pretty cool. We went when there was at least a feet of snow, which was also really cool. And Haunted Mansion - or rather, Phantom Manor is also really different and probably better than WDW. If they could just move Space Mountain and Phantom Manor to WDW, it'd be perfect Here's some pictures if your interested:

Hotel Cheyenne:

Disney Studios:

Tower of Terror:

Disneyland Hotel:

Main Street USA:

The Castle! I think it's beautiful actually!:

Phantom Manor:

Hollywood!:

Space Mountain!!! :

 

[Groovee]

I couldn't walk after space mountain in Paris. My legs were jelly.

 

[the_princess]

I can relate to your post. I traveled to DLP in July 2010 with my parents, my brother, sister-in-law and their three kids (ages 6, 9 and 11). It was one day of our two week trip to visit Rome, Paris and London. It was the day I probably was most looking forwards to as I am a big Disney fan and I had missed an opportunity to visit on a previous trip to Paris. Our plans were to try and visit the unique rides and our most favorite rides as we wouldn't have time to hit them all.

The park certainly did not have the same Disney vibe. I encountered rude CMS. The rides didn't seem to be well-maintained. The worst part was that I had a hard time ordering food for my niece and I at the one quick service place as I didn't understand the menu (I basically just pointed to what I thought was what I wanted to order because I was afraid of ordering wrong) and I still obviously messed up because the worker was really nasty to me (in French). Luckily, there was a young American girl in line behind me who spoke five different languages and she helped translate what I wanted. I was pretty embarrassed. Overall, I felt disappointed because I had such high expectations. But I left feeling like a foolish American. I'm glad I did it once, but the experience soured me on ever wanting to go there again.

Where was that, that you couldn't understand the menu??? I have never had any problems with menus not being available in English... Especially at quick service...

 

[dadddio]

We've been to all of them. We've been to DLP twice. The first time was on our honeymoon. The second one was in conjunction with a Baltic cruise on the Magic. We ended up taking our 7 month-old daughter the second time as we had planned the trip prior to planning her.

Our visits to TDL and HKDL were on the same trip. They were actually side trips to our going to the Beijing Olympics. While in Hong Kong, make sure to take a side trip to Ngong Ping to see the Tian Tan Buddha.

Now that we are a party of four, SDL is going to be a more complicated deal. If we end up going, it will be probably after it's been open for a while and have opened the second park. The trip will likely include a side trip to HKDL as the last time we were there was in 2008 and they have added new lands since then. I'd also want to add on TDL to that trip. My thinking is that if you are going all the way to Asia, you may as well hit all the region's DLs.

Yes, a lot of people do. That is what keeps them in business.

I suspect that it has more to do with the regional population, than our visits.

 

[clayfolks]

We stopped at Disneyland Hong Kong, last week, on our way home from Malaysia. We only had a few hours and focused on seeing those things that we can't see in the states. We really liked it and would not hesitate to go to any Disney park anywhere.

 

[JDUCKY]

I agree that Disneyland Paris does not have the same vibe. It was fun to see and I'm glad we went while we were over there, but it wasn't the same as going to WDW at all. We stayed a couple nights on site and took the metro into Paris to sightsee which was convenient.

Totally agree!


We honeymooned in Paris and stayed at DLP for two nights and while the parks were beautiful, it was just horribly run compared to WDW and DL.

We love going to WDW about every week and took our 1-year anniversary to DL last month so we did Paris, FL, and CA all in one calendar year (almost did WDW and DL - 6 parks - in one day but decided against it )

Some day, we'll do Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

 

[dadddio]

We honeymooned in Paris and stayed at DLP for two nights and while the parks were beautiful, it was just horribly run compared to WDW and DL.

Our take on it was that the parks were awesome and the castmembers within the parks were pretty good. The hotels, on the other hand, were abysmal and those employees were not even close to being up to par, for the most part.