We're back:Highs & Lows

[River<3Mickey]

Got back home at 10.30pm last night. In a post Disney downer. I'm completely frazzled & have just quickly scribbled this down, so apologies for any mistakes. I've probably missed stuff too.

HIGHS

We were at Disney

Sequoia Lodge, loved it. Great room. Large, looked refurbed, near the lift & you could see the castle . . . . when the mist cleared. We got VIP breakfast so could decide when we went for breakfast.

Anniversary lunch at Walts

Inventions. Brilliant character interaction, lots of space around the tables, delicious food - plenty of choice for me a vegetarian. There was a low, see below, but it turned into a high.

The parades. Never seen a parade before. We all loved them. R had both hands out waving frantically for most of Fantalusion despite the cold rain on her hands. We had kerb side spots for both parades

I was impressed with how well R waited patiently when we did queue & she took all the rides in her stride.

Moteurs Action. We all loved it. R, "faster, faster, red car, faster, faster".

A great service from RS Shuttles. Couldn't fault them.

Salon Mickey. Best pain au chocolate ever.

Shareholders card discount. Yes please.

Mickey's Winter Wonderland Show. I thought R was going to spontaneously combust, or fall to pieces she danced that hard & fast during the line dancing bit.

Cocktails in the bar at Hotel New York.

Agrabah Cafe. Loved it. Great food, fabulously themed decor.

R being asleep for our lunch at Walts & Agrabah, & Hotel NY cocktails, which gave us quality adult downtime & chance to enjoy these fully.

The Redwood Bar. Not the prices, but the bar was just dreamy.

DH loving the whole Disney thang. He came for mine & R's sake, but the first day you could tell he felt the magic & has talking about when we go back & possibly Florida & saving up.

Our new camera, 4032 photographs.

R saw so much of Mickey Mouse, she thought he was actually her best friend

LOWS

We left a suitcase at the airport yesterday. Combination of tiredness,

Tantrum'ing 2 year old, quick succession of passport control & baggage pickup plus taxi driver on the phone. Off to the airport shortly to try & retrieve it. It has presents in it, amongst other things.

When R had her meltdowns, they where off the scale. Take off & landing coming home. She never gave any warning it was about to happen, she'd go from completely fine & happy to total meltdown in seconds. This meant we missed a lot of shows & stuff she would really have enjoyed. Including Winnie The Pooh wondering round the hotel & we never saw him again.

Cowboy Cookout Tea Party. Oh My God. Worst part of the holiday. I wish it was described as €20 a head to see some characters in a scrum. You live & learn.

The waiter in Inventions being very 'fast', not rude, but certainly not great service. He didn't give us time to look at the wine menu, chose a wine for us, didn't check we'd want that wine or the price before serving it to us. I'm no wine buff, but DH worked for nearly 20 years in a bonded warehouse for alcohol, including lots of high end wine. The really, really prestigious, so he knows his stuff. It was insulting to think we didn't know how to order wine. We let it go at the time as we were trying to cope with a 2 year old with characters in the room. The bill came & the wine was €65. DH paid, we got Shareholders discount. As we left, I stopped to look at the wine menu & there are wines in the €30 bracket. So I complained at the front desk. It was dealt with superbly. Could not fault them. Profuse apologies, full refund on the wine, which we'd got discount on, so we actually got some money back. DH saw the waiter was brought to the desk & spoken to.

Not getting to do any of the adult rides. I know there is the baby swap, but we couldn't justify queuing up with R for a long time for her not to do the ride, if we could have queued with her in the pram, it would of been fine. The unprectability of the meltdowns & naps meant we couldn't plan for fast passes either. I did get 2, but ended up not using them.

Going so close to Xmas day, we flew on Boxing Day & were already exhausted. Plus I didn't get to do everything I'd plan to do in preparation before we left.

No cheese slices in the breakfast at Sequoia Lodge. I want some nutty Swiss cheese slices in my croissant at breakfast damn it, not a lump of not very nice Gouda or faux orange 'cheddar'. The Kyriad breakfast was far superior.

Despite the being the busiest time & the associated hectic & frantic crowds, the only people that pushed me to losing it & swearing were English.


Thank you to everyone for your help, advice & input.

We had a truly magical, once in a lifetime holiday.

 

[loladelorean]

Welcome back, great to hear you had a fantastic time. Sounds like your daughter had a truly magical trip, and its good you got some adult time too when you needed it
That is disappointing about the waiter at Inventions, we also had dreadful service at the Disneyland Hotel in 2010. It sounds like he had completely the wrong attitude. But you did the right thing in complaining straight away, and it is heartening to hear that Disney dealt with it effectively and turned your bad experience into a good one. I wish I had done this now, instead of waiting until I got home to complain by email, although I did receive a long detailed apology from them.
So whens the next trip then? Sounds like your DH is a convert! Success

 

[Ware Bears]

Welcome back glad you had a great time and that your DH now has the bug!

Hope you manage to get your suitcase back.

 

[BWVIAN]

I'm glad that you enjoyed your time at DLP, but sadly we have just returned and had a very different experience.
We found the cast members to be ok but not to usual Disney standards of politeness and helpfulness. They even insisted that we had to have a cold drink with our counter service meal as it is apparently not possible to swap this for a coffee even though we said we would pay extra. I always charge everything to the room, but the cashier had no pen for me to sign the bill so I had to pay cash!
The parks were dirty, badly maintained, badly organised and the Christmas decorations were very poor to usual Disney Standards. I have photographs of signs where there are more blown lightbulbs than working ones.
We were also surprised to see very little extra entertainment in the parks or the Village.
We stayed at the Hotel Cheyenne which has great theming but is way overpriced for a poor 2 star hotel with shoddy facilities and ripped and stained sheets.
The queue jumping was astonishing and even when it was pointed out to the cast members nothing was said or done.
Some guests seem to have a problem with understanding the concept of the fastpass system. Some of them get their fastpass tickets and immediately go to the fastpass line and crowd around trying to jump in the queue. When people with the correct time on the fastpass ticket tried to get past, a scuffle broke out as one guy accused the other guy of trying to jump the queue. A little further up the fastpass queue there were people jumping over the barrier between the regular queue and the fastpass queue and this led to an argument involving my wife who was then smacked on the back of the head by another woman who had jumped over the barrier.
Many of the rides were not working correctly leading to longer lines as they were always breaking down.
We had three attempts to ride thunder mountain which broke down each time. There was no music on Rock n Rollercoaster, we had 20 minutes sat on one ride before it would start. Even the lift doors on Tower of Terror jammed so we rode it with 1 door open and 1 door closed. The wait time was listed at 5 minutes but it took 40 minutes to ride. It took almost 20 minutes to complete a ride on Buzz Lightyear as it kept stopping (although you could still fire at the targets so I got my highest ever score).
It seems as though most people smoke and will smoke everywhere with no thought to anyone else. There are cigarette buts everywhere. I saw a young child burned by a cigarette that was being used by a woman to clear a path at a busy time! Also I had an argument with a man that was spitting on the floor every 5 yards.
But the worst thing that I saw was a rubbish bin that had been left overflowing from the night before, with vomit all around it!!!! It was still there the next day???
We are BIG Disney fans and have been to DisneyWorld, Disneyland California and now DLP all at Christmas and we have vowed we will NEVER visit DLP again. This was our 4th visit to DLP and we got the feeling that Disney have stopped spending money on the park. Even the posters in the Studios are advertising movies that are years old. The Christmas decorations were pathetic compared to other Disney Parks. You mentioned that you are saving to go to DisneyWorld..... please do as you will be blown away by the difference and the people there are wonderful in comparison. You will not be disappointed... I promise!

 

[chmurf]

It seems as though most people smoke and will smoke everywhere with no thought to anyone else.

As far as smoking goes, let me remind you that it is forbidden to smoke in public areas in france, including places designed to welcome children. DLP's visit regulations forbids to smoke, and smoking designated areas exist within the park. Most of the time guests are pretty well behaved when it comes to smoking. Even though there are "black sheeps" as everywhere else