Beca
Apparently, we all have more money than brains!!!
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2004
- Messages
- 4,676
Hi everyone!!
Sorry it has taken me a few days to post. We have been suffering from jet lag, and also learned that while we were in Europe, we have been victims of "identity fraud" (or, more accurately, credit card fraud). I have been really busy trying to clear up all the charges on our card.
Our trip to Europe was wonderful!! We had many "mishaps", but I guess that always happens. But, I am so glad we got the chance to go!! So, here's my thoughts on DLP...remember, these are just my opinions.
What was REALLY good about DLP:
1) The castle....Disney finally got it right with this one!! The castle is built up on a cliff with a waterfall. It looks like something right out of a medieval storybook. It is truly gorgeous. The castle is also an "attraction" in its own right. Maleficent's dragon lives in a cave in the basement of the castle. In true Disney style, musty smells are pumped in, and the dragon moves and roars. It was really neat!! The dragon is also incorporated into the princess parade...he is on the float. He is a really cool dragon. Then, if you take the circular staircase up into the castle, the story of sleeping beauty is told in the most beautiful stained glass windows. They are about where the big picture windows are in the castle at WDW. They are huge, and wonderful!! There are also tapestries hanging on the wall that depict scenes from Sleeping Beauty, her music is playing in the exhibit, and even the woodland animals are carved into the top of the columns. The architecture of the castle is AMAZING!! It is so beautiful...it even has flying butresses (I hope I spelled that correctly). This castle is our favorite...hands down!! Now, if we can only get Olszewski to make a miniature of it.
2) "It's a Small World". It was more like a "high-tech" Small World. Even the clock tower was great. On the hour, the cutest dolls came out to put on a parade. The "America" section was great. There is the Arizona Grand Canyon, the "Wild West", the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Hollywood Hills. It was really cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the singing dolls mouths had cracked around the edges and it looked like they had "bad moustaches". However, it was still the best IASWA I had ever seen.
3) The Disneyland hotel. Had I known how awesome this hotel was, we would've "bit the bullet" and stayed there. When they say "adjacent to the park", they're not kidding!! The hotel is located where the train station is located at WDW and DL. The turnstiles to enter the park are below the hotel. The rooms on the back side of the hotel overlook Main St. and the Castle...what an amazing view!! Of course, rooms here are $$$$. Some of the suites go for $3500 Euros per night (almost $5000). It is themed very much like the GF...even the colors are pretty much the same. It is a truly gorgeous hotel.
4) The Tarzan show. This truly rivals the "Festival of the Lion King" for our favorite Disney show. It is kind of a cross between "Tarzan Rocks", and "Festival...Lion King". It has the "tumble monkeys" who come and do acrobatics, Turk comes and lets the kids go up on stage to play pots and pans (that drop out of the ceiling) in "Trashin' the camp", and Tarzan and Jane do much of the same trapeze work as the did in "Tarzan Rocks". But, somehow the combination works magically. It was really awesome!!
5) "The Lion King" show. It is different from "Festival..Lion King", and I really like our Festival better. But, it is an amazing show in its own right. Ironically, it is in "Discoveryland" (our version of Tomorrowland) right next to Space Mountain. They system for tickets is different. The theatre is built into a counter service restaurant. The "show" seats comprise a small space in the theatre (about 30% of the space). At a certain time of the day, you go to the RR station in Discoveryland, and you can get "reserved" seats for the show. At this point, they give out all the seats in the "show seating" area. However, behind these seats, there is a walkway, and then they have seats with tables and chairs. These seats are available to anyone who purchases food from the CS restaurant to sit and see the show. The view from these seats is REALLY good...not so close that you feel you can't see the whole stage, but close enough to see the expressions on the actors faces. Of course, people start "camping out" at these seats a couple of hours before the show. But, in true French fashion (you know, the people who leisurely linger at cafes for hours), no one seems to mind or think much of it. If we ever get to go see it again, I think I would try to get a seat at a table rather than standing in line for a "reserved" seat, and then arriving an hour before the show to try to get a good seat for my dd to be able to see. The two hours we stood in line (one for tickets, and one for seating) would've been better spent leisurely eating, and relaxing at a table and chairs (just a hint for those of you who might be going). The show is really good. It's kind of a cross between the "Festival...Lion King" and "Fantasmic", in that they tell the story of the Lion King, but they use some actual footage from the movie, and project it onto a screen of "rain" that falls from the ceiling, much like Fantasmic. I thought the animal costumes were much more realistic in the DLP version. However, I think the singers in Festival were much better. Overall...a really good show.
6) "The Blue Lagoon"....this is a restaurant that resembles "The Blue Bayou" in DL. It is a beautiful restaurant that overlooks POTC. The food was wonderful, but the "fine dining" restaurants in DLP are more expensive than those at WDW. It was about $120 euros for two adults and a child to eat there (about $150 dollars), compared to the $40-50 we spend at LeCellier. However, it was a wonderful meal, and a very special experience.
7) Alice's Labyrinth (Maze)...well, actually...I could care less about this place. But, something really appealed to my dd...she spent over 5 hours in the days in that place....it is her all-time favorite Disney attraction.
8) Pocahontas' play place, and the Pirate play place....REALLY nice play places that are good escapes from the crowd...I just wish they would ban smoking in those areas...small children do not need to have to deal with adults smoking where they are playing.
Things about DLP that we weren't so crazy about:
1) The smoking. People smoke EVERYWHERE, in mass number!!! Even kids as young as 14 (often with their parents present). Standing in cue lines for rides often became a "dodge the smoke" challenge. I am SOOO glad WDW and DL do not allow this. I think it is totally inappropriate to smoke when others around you do not have the choice to walk away and try to avoid the smoke.
2) The counter service food...yuck!!! We tried MANY restaurants, and liked very few. At Pinnochio's we had a hamburger that might have had SOME kind of meat in it...but, no amount of convincing could make me believe it was actually cow!
The rotisserie chicken was really good, however. We had fish at Toad Hall. It was a little greasy, but I was really dismayed to discover that there was no tartar sauce in the whole restaurant. What??!!! No tartar sauce in a fish place??!!! The CM said, "Why do you need tartar sauce? We have mayonnaise!!" 
Man, the French really love their mayonnaise!! We also ate at the Italian CS place (I think it was called Bella Notte). The pizza wasn't bad (except the CM turned the pizza sideways in the bag, and all the cheese slid off), but the penne pasta had something that tasted like Hormel chili for sauce. Yuck!!
3) The snack food. This is really weird to say, but it wasn't so much the food as it was the way the food was offered. They sold a lot of pastries and belgian waffles. In a lot of the snack places, they would just set the white boxes (probably 18 x24) up on the counter, or on foldable chairs behind the counter, and just pull these pastries out of the boxes as people would request them. I know that may sound really "picky", but it looked odder than I can explain. It just was not very "Disney-ish" to see this. I mean, they may pull pastries out of boxes at WDW, but they would NEVER let you just see the box. Also, a lot of the snack booths said they had crepes, but we never could actually find anyone who would cook us one...everyone kept saying they were not offering crepes at the time...no matter what time of the day we were there.
4) The "seasonality" of the park. We were there on a Thurs-Fri-Sat. Thurs and Friday were dead. On Saturday, they started having a "Disney Visa Magical Weekend", and it was so crowded it reminded me of DL on Christmas Day...it was INSANE!! However, even on Saturday, much of the park remained closed. I'm not talking about rides (on Thunder Mountain was closed), but many of the restaurants and snack stands were not open. Certainly, more were open than during the week, but I have never been to a Disney park where much of the park was closed when crowds were light. We hoped to eat a Auberge Cendrillon, but it was closed on Thursday and Friday (they close it during the week in the "off-season", and we could not get a reservation for Saturday, as the park was packed.) "The Lion King" show was also closed on Thurs and Fri (actually, it had been closed for 11 days for cast vacations), and as a result was insanely crowded on Saturday. There were two other restaurants, "Hakuna Matata" and "Fuente del Oro" that were not even listed on the map. I don't know why they were closed, or for how long...but, it was really strange. As a result, there was NOTHING in Africa section of Frontierland....it was just a place where you could walk thru. Even the princesses were only available for pictures for about 2 hours in the morning. They had a place where they rotated them from 10-12, and then they were gone. They would be in the parade at 4, and that was the only place you could see them.
5) Fastpass lines at DLP. I'm not sure why, but fastpasses don't seem to work as well at DLP as they do at WDW. Often, we would return at our appointed time, only to discover that the fastpass return line had a longer wait than the standby line. This was especially true at Peter Pan and Buzz. We asked a CM at both rides if that happens often, and they smiled and said, "Yes.". I'm not sure if they give out too many fastpasses, or what....but, they system just didn't seem to work as well. On Saturday, the park was so crowded that fastpasses were gone at almost all of the rides by noon (and the park didn't open until 10).
6) Pin Trading...DLP has very few pins, very few of the CM's actually have lanyards, and those that do seem to have all the same pins. They did have some pins on sale really cheap ($3.00 euros per pin), so we picked up a few to trade at WDW.
7) Disney Village....a very "odd" version of DTD.
8) "Free Breakfast"....the lines were so long that we skipped the meal every morning. We didn't want to wait the 30-45 minutes it would've taken to eat a continental breakfast.
9) The Pig Farm....I guess they only "turn the soil" on the nearby pig farm twice a year, but we had the misfortune to be there during one of those times. The smell was pretty bad!!!
10) The lack of an evening parade. Even Wishes was only shown on the weekends.
11) Mariott resorts (timeshare) has kiosks set up in the hotel lobbies and the Disney Village, and they are pretty aggressive.
12) The train station (RER), and city bus stop sits between the Disney Parks and the Disney Village. At night, street vendors sell their wares, and gypsy beggar girls come and ask for money. I didn't like this at all...it was like ugly reality invading my Disney "dream" space.
The Hotels:
Disney has 4 levels of hotels at DLP. The "deluxes" are the Disneyland Hotel and New York. The "mid-ranges" are Newport Bay and The Sequoia, and the "Values" are Hotel Cheyenne and Hotel Santa Fe. There is also an offsite option....Davy Crockett's Ranch, similar to Fort Wilderness (this is the hotel we did not actually see). Using DVC points, we can stay at any of the first four.
We stayed one night at Newport Bay, and then decided to stay another night. Newport Bay was full, so we were able to snag a room at the Sequoia Lodge. Here's my opinions on the resorts that we saw (they say there are 7 resorts, we only saw 6)
1) The Disneyland Hotel...GORGEOUS!!! And, the location cannot be beat!! This is probably the best hotel at any of the parks I have visited. Victorian theming, right at the entrance to DL. Some rooms have views of Main St. and the Castle.
2) New York...the second closest hotel to the parks, and the second most expensive. We actually found this hotel to be pretty unattractive. It's like they tried to make it look like a NY city block, but somehow fell short of the theming. It just looked like a random industrial building painted different colors. We did not like the looks of this hotel at all, but it's location is nice...just at the end of the Disney Village.
3) Newport Bay...a pretty perfect blend of Beach Club and Yacht Club...a white clapboard building with blue and white striped awnings. It is absolutely beautiful. My only complaints were no balconies (actually none of the hotels have balconies, except for the suites), windows that only open a few inches, and no laundry room. The lobby is beautiful (albeit smaller than what we are used to at DVC resorts), but the hallways were a bit dingy, and our room had quite a bit of mold in the bathroom. However, we did have a beautiful view of the lake....and, air conditioning (something a lot of hotels in Europe do not have).
4) Sequoia lodge...this is a pretty perfect blend of WL and the Grand Californian. While it is VERY plain on the outside, the inside of this hotel is absolutely GORGEOUS!!!! There is exposed stone and wood everywhere, and it has a definite Frank Lloyd Wright feel to it. They even had an area where some of the characters would come and pose for pictures in the morning. Once again, the hallways were kind of dingy, and our bathroom had some mold, but our windows did open, and we had a beautiful view of the lake, and the DL castle outside of our room. Once again, this place had no laundry room, but we REALLY loved this hotel. One really great thing about this hotel was all the pine trees (which are now huge) that DLP planted. All the hotels are pretty close together, but the Sequoia felt secluded because of the greenery. If I could not afford the DL hotel, I would definitely choose the Sequoia as my second choice. It is interesting that DVC lists this as the cheapest hotel we can choose from...it is a beautiful hotel.
5) Hotel Cheyenne....we only saw this from the outside. This hotel is across a pretty major street from the parks, and is not on the lake. It looks like someone took Tombstone and placed it in Paris. The theming is pretty perfect for an old, dilapidated "Old West" town....not our style, and the location is not as good. However, it did have a laundry room...something the other hotels did not have.
6) Hotel Santa Fe...this is next to the Cheyenne. It is a series of small, red clay adobe-style buildings with flat roofs. This is the only DLP hotel where you can park outside your door, and is also the least expensive of all the hotels. After living in AZ for 11 years, this is certainly not my idea of a vacation destination, but if you like that sort of architecture...you might really like this place.
Other differences we noted in the park (not good or bad...just different):
1) Much less options of "stuff" to buy. I read that Europeans do not spend as much money on "junk" as Americans. We noticed that souvenier shops were smaller, and the variety of "stuff" was much less. Other than a few pins, neither my dh nor I could find anything that we wanted to buy.
2) Some of the "stuff" that was for sale said "Disneyland Paris exclusive", but in reality it was stuff that had sold at WDW two or three years ago. For example, we bought my dd a jean jacket that says "Disneyland Paris exclusive" on it, however I remember that being sold at WDW. We picked that jacket on a cold day specifically because it matched some jeans and a shirt that I bought her two years ago at WDW.
3) The rides do NOT dump you into gift shops when you leave. You CAN go into the gift shops if you want, but there is always an option to skip them.
Overall, we loved our trip to Disneyland Paris. Although we had park hoppers, we did not ever venture over to the Studios. People we spoke to said there was not much there, and we could not get our dd out of Disneyland. We had a wonderful time speaking to people from all over the world, and we are so glad we got to go there. If you use DVC points to stay there, you have to stay a minimum of two nights, and I highly recommend staying at least that long. We were all sad to leave there. I totally expected that we would feel just like we were in any Disneyland when we were there, but what we saw and experienced was definitely a "French" definition/view of Disney. Such interpretation made the park a totally unique place to be...it was well worth the time and money!!
Sorry for the length of the report...I just wanted to be as helpful as possible for anyone considering a trip. I do not know how to post pics, but if anyone wants to see some of the pics I have, drop me a note. Once I get my pics onto my computer, I can email you some if you like. And, if anyone has anymore questions....fire away!!
Beca
Sorry it has taken me a few days to post. We have been suffering from jet lag, and also learned that while we were in Europe, we have been victims of "identity fraud" (or, more accurately, credit card fraud). I have been really busy trying to clear up all the charges on our card.
Our trip to Europe was wonderful!! We had many "mishaps", but I guess that always happens. But, I am so glad we got the chance to go!! So, here's my thoughts on DLP...remember, these are just my opinions.
What was REALLY good about DLP:
1) The castle....Disney finally got it right with this one!! The castle is built up on a cliff with a waterfall. It looks like something right out of a medieval storybook. It is truly gorgeous. The castle is also an "attraction" in its own right. Maleficent's dragon lives in a cave in the basement of the castle. In true Disney style, musty smells are pumped in, and the dragon moves and roars. It was really neat!! The dragon is also incorporated into the princess parade...he is on the float. He is a really cool dragon. Then, if you take the circular staircase up into the castle, the story of sleeping beauty is told in the most beautiful stained glass windows. They are about where the big picture windows are in the castle at WDW. They are huge, and wonderful!! There are also tapestries hanging on the wall that depict scenes from Sleeping Beauty, her music is playing in the exhibit, and even the woodland animals are carved into the top of the columns. The architecture of the castle is AMAZING!! It is so beautiful...it even has flying butresses (I hope I spelled that correctly). This castle is our favorite...hands down!! Now, if we can only get Olszewski to make a miniature of it.
2) "It's a Small World". It was more like a "high-tech" Small World. Even the clock tower was great. On the hour, the cutest dolls came out to put on a parade. The "America" section was great. There is the Arizona Grand Canyon, the "Wild West", the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Hollywood Hills. It was really cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the singing dolls mouths had cracked around the edges and it looked like they had "bad moustaches". However, it was still the best IASWA I had ever seen.
3) The Disneyland hotel. Had I known how awesome this hotel was, we would've "bit the bullet" and stayed there. When they say "adjacent to the park", they're not kidding!! The hotel is located where the train station is located at WDW and DL. The turnstiles to enter the park are below the hotel. The rooms on the back side of the hotel overlook Main St. and the Castle...what an amazing view!! Of course, rooms here are $$$$. Some of the suites go for $3500 Euros per night (almost $5000). It is themed very much like the GF...even the colors are pretty much the same. It is a truly gorgeous hotel.
4) The Tarzan show. This truly rivals the "Festival of the Lion King" for our favorite Disney show. It is kind of a cross between "Tarzan Rocks", and "Festival...Lion King". It has the "tumble monkeys" who come and do acrobatics, Turk comes and lets the kids go up on stage to play pots and pans (that drop out of the ceiling) in "Trashin' the camp", and Tarzan and Jane do much of the same trapeze work as the did in "Tarzan Rocks". But, somehow the combination works magically. It was really awesome!!
5) "The Lion King" show. It is different from "Festival..Lion King", and I really like our Festival better. But, it is an amazing show in its own right. Ironically, it is in "Discoveryland" (our version of Tomorrowland) right next to Space Mountain. They system for tickets is different. The theatre is built into a counter service restaurant. The "show" seats comprise a small space in the theatre (about 30% of the space). At a certain time of the day, you go to the RR station in Discoveryland, and you can get "reserved" seats for the show. At this point, they give out all the seats in the "show seating" area. However, behind these seats, there is a walkway, and then they have seats with tables and chairs. These seats are available to anyone who purchases food from the CS restaurant to sit and see the show. The view from these seats is REALLY good...not so close that you feel you can't see the whole stage, but close enough to see the expressions on the actors faces. Of course, people start "camping out" at these seats a couple of hours before the show. But, in true French fashion (you know, the people who leisurely linger at cafes for hours), no one seems to mind or think much of it. If we ever get to go see it again, I think I would try to get a seat at a table rather than standing in line for a "reserved" seat, and then arriving an hour before the show to try to get a good seat for my dd to be able to see. The two hours we stood in line (one for tickets, and one for seating) would've been better spent leisurely eating, and relaxing at a table and chairs (just a hint for those of you who might be going). The show is really good. It's kind of a cross between the "Festival...Lion King" and "Fantasmic", in that they tell the story of the Lion King, but they use some actual footage from the movie, and project it onto a screen of "rain" that falls from the ceiling, much like Fantasmic. I thought the animal costumes were much more realistic in the DLP version. However, I think the singers in Festival were much better. Overall...a really good show.
6) "The Blue Lagoon"....this is a restaurant that resembles "The Blue Bayou" in DL. It is a beautiful restaurant that overlooks POTC. The food was wonderful, but the "fine dining" restaurants in DLP are more expensive than those at WDW. It was about $120 euros for two adults and a child to eat there (about $150 dollars), compared to the $40-50 we spend at LeCellier. However, it was a wonderful meal, and a very special experience.
7) Alice's Labyrinth (Maze)...well, actually...I could care less about this place. But, something really appealed to my dd...she spent over 5 hours in the days in that place....it is her all-time favorite Disney attraction.
8) Pocahontas' play place, and the Pirate play place....REALLY nice play places that are good escapes from the crowd...I just wish they would ban smoking in those areas...small children do not need to have to deal with adults smoking where they are playing.
Things about DLP that we weren't so crazy about:
1) The smoking. People smoke EVERYWHERE, in mass number!!! Even kids as young as 14 (often with their parents present). Standing in cue lines for rides often became a "dodge the smoke" challenge. I am SOOO glad WDW and DL do not allow this. I think it is totally inappropriate to smoke when others around you do not have the choice to walk away and try to avoid the smoke.
2) The counter service food...yuck!!! We tried MANY restaurants, and liked very few. At Pinnochio's we had a hamburger that might have had SOME kind of meat in it...but, no amount of convincing could make me believe it was actually cow!
The rotisserie chicken was really good, however. We had fish at Toad Hall. It was a little greasy, but I was really dismayed to discover that there was no tartar sauce in the whole restaurant. What??!!! No tartar sauce in a fish place??!!! The CM said, "Why do you need tartar sauce? We have mayonnaise!!" Man, the French really love their mayonnaise!! We also ate at the Italian CS place (I think it was called Bella Notte). The pizza wasn't bad (except the CM turned the pizza sideways in the bag, and all the cheese slid off), but the penne pasta had something that tasted like Hormel chili for sauce. Yuck!!3) The snack food. This is really weird to say, but it wasn't so much the food as it was the way the food was offered. They sold a lot of pastries and belgian waffles. In a lot of the snack places, they would just set the white boxes (probably 18 x24) up on the counter, or on foldable chairs behind the counter, and just pull these pastries out of the boxes as people would request them. I know that may sound really "picky", but it looked odder than I can explain. It just was not very "Disney-ish" to see this. I mean, they may pull pastries out of boxes at WDW, but they would NEVER let you just see the box. Also, a lot of the snack booths said they had crepes, but we never could actually find anyone who would cook us one...everyone kept saying they were not offering crepes at the time...no matter what time of the day we were there.
4) The "seasonality" of the park. We were there on a Thurs-Fri-Sat. Thurs and Friday were dead. On Saturday, they started having a "Disney Visa Magical Weekend", and it was so crowded it reminded me of DL on Christmas Day...it was INSANE!! However, even on Saturday, much of the park remained closed. I'm not talking about rides (on Thunder Mountain was closed), but many of the restaurants and snack stands were not open. Certainly, more were open than during the week, but I have never been to a Disney park where much of the park was closed when crowds were light. We hoped to eat a Auberge Cendrillon, but it was closed on Thursday and Friday (they close it during the week in the "off-season", and we could not get a reservation for Saturday, as the park was packed.) "The Lion King" show was also closed on Thurs and Fri (actually, it had been closed for 11 days for cast vacations), and as a result was insanely crowded on Saturday. There were two other restaurants, "Hakuna Matata" and "Fuente del Oro" that were not even listed on the map. I don't know why they were closed, or for how long...but, it was really strange. As a result, there was NOTHING in Africa section of Frontierland....it was just a place where you could walk thru. Even the princesses were only available for pictures for about 2 hours in the morning. They had a place where they rotated them from 10-12, and then they were gone. They would be in the parade at 4, and that was the only place you could see them.
5) Fastpass lines at DLP. I'm not sure why, but fastpasses don't seem to work as well at DLP as they do at WDW. Often, we would return at our appointed time, only to discover that the fastpass return line had a longer wait than the standby line. This was especially true at Peter Pan and Buzz. We asked a CM at both rides if that happens often, and they smiled and said, "Yes.". I'm not sure if they give out too many fastpasses, or what....but, they system just didn't seem to work as well. On Saturday, the park was so crowded that fastpasses were gone at almost all of the rides by noon (and the park didn't open until 10).
6) Pin Trading...DLP has very few pins, very few of the CM's actually have lanyards, and those that do seem to have all the same pins. They did have some pins on sale really cheap ($3.00 euros per pin), so we picked up a few to trade at WDW.
7) Disney Village....a very "odd" version of DTD.
8) "Free Breakfast"....the lines were so long that we skipped the meal every morning. We didn't want to wait the 30-45 minutes it would've taken to eat a continental breakfast.
9) The Pig Farm....I guess they only "turn the soil" on the nearby pig farm twice a year, but we had the misfortune to be there during one of those times. The smell was pretty bad!!!
10) The lack of an evening parade. Even Wishes was only shown on the weekends.
11) Mariott resorts (timeshare) has kiosks set up in the hotel lobbies and the Disney Village, and they are pretty aggressive.
12) The train station (RER), and city bus stop sits between the Disney Parks and the Disney Village. At night, street vendors sell their wares, and gypsy beggar girls come and ask for money. I didn't like this at all...it was like ugly reality invading my Disney "dream" space.
The Hotels:
Disney has 4 levels of hotels at DLP. The "deluxes" are the Disneyland Hotel and New York. The "mid-ranges" are Newport Bay and The Sequoia, and the "Values" are Hotel Cheyenne and Hotel Santa Fe. There is also an offsite option....Davy Crockett's Ranch, similar to Fort Wilderness (this is the hotel we did not actually see). Using DVC points, we can stay at any of the first four.
We stayed one night at Newport Bay, and then decided to stay another night. Newport Bay was full, so we were able to snag a room at the Sequoia Lodge. Here's my opinions on the resorts that we saw (they say there are 7 resorts, we only saw 6)
1) The Disneyland Hotel...GORGEOUS!!! And, the location cannot be beat!! This is probably the best hotel at any of the parks I have visited. Victorian theming, right at the entrance to DL. Some rooms have views of Main St. and the Castle.
2) New York...the second closest hotel to the parks, and the second most expensive. We actually found this hotel to be pretty unattractive. It's like they tried to make it look like a NY city block, but somehow fell short of the theming. It just looked like a random industrial building painted different colors. We did not like the looks of this hotel at all, but it's location is nice...just at the end of the Disney Village.
3) Newport Bay...a pretty perfect blend of Beach Club and Yacht Club...a white clapboard building with blue and white striped awnings. It is absolutely beautiful. My only complaints were no balconies (actually none of the hotels have balconies, except for the suites), windows that only open a few inches, and no laundry room. The lobby is beautiful (albeit smaller than what we are used to at DVC resorts), but the hallways were a bit dingy, and our room had quite a bit of mold in the bathroom. However, we did have a beautiful view of the lake....and, air conditioning (something a lot of hotels in Europe do not have).
4) Sequoia lodge...this is a pretty perfect blend of WL and the Grand Californian. While it is VERY plain on the outside, the inside of this hotel is absolutely GORGEOUS!!!! There is exposed stone and wood everywhere, and it has a definite Frank Lloyd Wright feel to it. They even had an area where some of the characters would come and pose for pictures in the morning. Once again, the hallways were kind of dingy, and our bathroom had some mold, but our windows did open, and we had a beautiful view of the lake, and the DL castle outside of our room. Once again, this place had no laundry room, but we REALLY loved this hotel. One really great thing about this hotel was all the pine trees (which are now huge) that DLP planted. All the hotels are pretty close together, but the Sequoia felt secluded because of the greenery. If I could not afford the DL hotel, I would definitely choose the Sequoia as my second choice. It is interesting that DVC lists this as the cheapest hotel we can choose from...it is a beautiful hotel.
5) Hotel Cheyenne....we only saw this from the outside. This hotel is across a pretty major street from the parks, and is not on the lake. It looks like someone took Tombstone and placed it in Paris. The theming is pretty perfect for an old, dilapidated "Old West" town....not our style, and the location is not as good. However, it did have a laundry room...something the other hotels did not have.
6) Hotel Santa Fe...this is next to the Cheyenne. It is a series of small, red clay adobe-style buildings with flat roofs. This is the only DLP hotel where you can park outside your door, and is also the least expensive of all the hotels. After living in AZ for 11 years, this is certainly not my idea of a vacation destination, but if you like that sort of architecture...you might really like this place.
Other differences we noted in the park (not good or bad...just different):
1) Much less options of "stuff" to buy. I read that Europeans do not spend as much money on "junk" as Americans. We noticed that souvenier shops were smaller, and the variety of "stuff" was much less. Other than a few pins, neither my dh nor I could find anything that we wanted to buy.
2) Some of the "stuff" that was for sale said "Disneyland Paris exclusive", but in reality it was stuff that had sold at WDW two or three years ago. For example, we bought my dd a jean jacket that says "Disneyland Paris exclusive" on it, however I remember that being sold at WDW. We picked that jacket on a cold day specifically because it matched some jeans and a shirt that I bought her two years ago at WDW.
3) The rides do NOT dump you into gift shops when you leave. You CAN go into the gift shops if you want, but there is always an option to skip them.
Overall, we loved our trip to Disneyland Paris. Although we had park hoppers, we did not ever venture over to the Studios. People we spoke to said there was not much there, and we could not get our dd out of Disneyland. We had a wonderful time speaking to people from all over the world, and we are so glad we got to go there. If you use DVC points to stay there, you have to stay a minimum of two nights, and I highly recommend staying at least that long. We were all sad to leave there. I totally expected that we would feel just like we were in any Disneyland when we were there, but what we saw and experienced was definitely a "French" definition/view of Disney. Such interpretation made the park a totally unique place to be...it was well worth the time and money!!
Sorry for the length of the report...I just wanted to be as helpful as possible for anyone considering a trip. I do not know how to post pics, but if anyone wants to see some of the pics I have, drop me a note. Once I get my pics onto my computer, I can email you some if you like. And, if anyone has anymore questions....fire away!!
Beca
(Not looking forward to all the smoking though.)
Do you want to go back to DLP someday, or is one visit enough and it's back to WDW from now on?
