Disneyland Hotel, Paris

...My wife and I visited Disneyland Paris last month for a week. This op deals with our stay at the Disney land Hotel. Most of the hotel reviews I have read on Ciao were basically the same and were quite boring. Unfortunately this op is just as boring.


DISNEYLAND PARIS THE FIRST TIME

In 1999 we spent 4 nights in Paris and a couple of nights in Disneyland Paris, where we stayed at the Sequoia Lodge.

...
...that keen having already seen Disneyland and Disneyworld in the States.

The most important thing I learnt about holidaying in France was to take my pocket French-English dictionary everywhere I went.

I spent 5 years studying French at school. I could easily translate French into English and vice versa. But I could not converse in French at all. Perhaps that says something about our foreign language education system.
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WRITTEN November 2002

INTRODUCTION

The title of this op refers to a favourite French love song of mine. ‘Ne me quittez pas’ means ‘don’t leave me’ which is always good relationship advice.

My wife and I visited Disneyland Paris last month for a week. This op deals with our stay at the Disney land Hotel. Most of the hotel reviews I have read on Ciao were basically the same and were quite boring. Unfortunately this op is just as boring.

DISNEYLAND PARIS THE FIRST TIME

In 1999 we spent 4 nights in Paris and a couple of nights in Disneyland Paris, where we stayed at the Sequoia Lodge.

My wife enjoyed that trip so much that she wanted to go again. I was not that keen having already seen Disneyland and Disneyworld in the States.

The most important thing I learnt about holidaying in France was to take my pocket French-English dictionary everywhere I went.

I spent 5 years studying French at school. I could easily translate French into English and vice versa. But I could not converse in French at all. Perhaps that says something about our foreign language education system.

BOOKING THE HOLIDAY

Usually we booked our holidays at the British Airways travel shop in Regent Street. The sales staff were very efficient but they did pressure us to buy their own travel insurance and to join the BA Executive Club. Along with the plane tickets a vast set of documents was dispatched e.g. guide book, emergency addresses and telephone numbers, luggage tags, hotel vouchers etc.

This time our holiday was booked at a travel agency in Brough near Hull. With a week to go before our departure we still had not received any documents. When the documents did arrive they simply comprised of 2 plane tickets, a hotel voucher, 5 shuttle-bus tickets and an invoice. There were no luggage tags, details of departure i.e. which Heathrow terminal to depart from, guide books, how to get to Disneyland from Charles de Gaulle Airport etc.

The cost of the return tickets to Paris were GBP 226 each. But the BA website was selling them at GBP 75 each.

GETTING THE VISA

My wife needed a French visa as she held an Indian passport. I mentioned in my Prague op that it took 3 visits to the Czech Embassy before the visa was given. I expected something similar with the French Embassy and therefore took no money with me.

The travel agency in Brough sent a faxed copy of the visa form. This form was quite easy to fill in. A few documents were also needed e.g. bank statement, holiday invoice, passports, photos etc.

The French Embassy was located in South Kensington, London just in front of the Natural History Museum. There were 2 visa-processing times. All nationalities could come in the morning. Only EU citizens could come in the afternoon.

I really did not fancy getting trapped in the morning tube rush hour and so went in the afternoon. I got there around 1.45 p.m. and the doors opened at 2.30 p.m. Quite a large queue formed behind me.

There were 4 checkpoints before submitting the visa documents. Each time my documents were checked to ensure that nothing was missing. This was a brilliant idea as it can be frustrating seeing people submitting the wrong documents and wasting everyone’s time.

In front of me was an Oriental woman who was obtaining a visa for her husband who had a Hong Kong passport. As the husband did not have an EU passport a gendarme removed the woman from the queue.

Once inside the Embassy I took a ticket from a machine, which was similar to the delicatessen ticket system in supermarkets. The waiting area was huge and there were plenty of seats. The ticket number of the visa to be processed was displayed on the wall. The experience was similar to waiting for a blood test at the hospital. There was a ladies toilet but no men’s toilet.

I waited 45 minutes before my number was displayed. There were 10 visa booths of which 8 were manned. The visa staff was very friendly. I simply handed over a few documents and was asked some easy questions like ‘how many wives do you have, sir?’ I simply answered that one mother-in-law was enough to cope with.

I expected a month’s single entry visa for my wife. Instead she got a 6 months multiple entry visa. The cost of the visa was free which was good, as I had no cash on me. I was then given another ticket.

I then waited another 30 minutes before my wife’s passport was returned at another booth. Amazingly the whole process was completed by 5 p.m.

My only gripe was that there was no notice anywhere about the various visa procedures. It was a case of following people in front of you i.e. a bit like the blind leading the blind.

But the French Embassy was far more efficient than the Embassies of Holland and the Czech Republic.

DEPARTURE

The flight to Charles de Gaulle airport departed from Heathrow Terminal 4. This really is a beautiful terminal and the passengers were treated with respect. In my Prague op I made the point that passengers in Terminal 1 were treated like cattle.

We were the only people in the queue. After passport control and security we had lunch at Pret a Manger. I loved their sandwiches and fresh drinks. But their high street outlets unlike the airport branch only accepted cash, which was a pain.

The flight to Paris took 45 minutes. The meal was a large all-day sandwich, which was filling. My mind still goes back to the Dublin flight last year when the sandwich was minuscule.

I spent the flight chatting to an air stewardess about her various trips around the world. All the passengers on the plane were so serious that the plane felt like a morgue.

I loved riding the giant elevators at Charles de Gaulle airport. There were no problems with passport control. But our bags took nearly an hour to arrive on the luggage carousel. This was longer than the flight itself.

COACH TRIP TO THE HOTEL

The travel agent did not give us any details of the coach trip to Disneyland from the airport. I went round the departure gates looking for the appropriate directions. Eventually I found a sign about the coach and went outside and found nothing.

I went back inside and took a lift down to another exit and again went outside. There was a very small sign saying something about Navette Disneyland.

Standing next to us was a family from Manchester and another from Scotland. No one knew where to go. The Scottish people spent an hour circling the terminal after being given the wrong direction by the airport staff.

After waiting nearly 45 minutes our coach came. I made the mistake of speaking to the coach driver in French. His face lit up and spoke very fast and I did not understand a word he said.

The journey to the Disneyland complex took nearly 90 minutes. We had got caught up in the Paris rush hour traffic. The driver dropped the passengers off at the various Disneyland hotels.

Looking back at this episode I think that the French airport personnel deliberately made things difficult by not putting up any decent signs.

HOTEL CHECK-IN

After coming off the bus our luggage was taken away on a trolley. Check-in took about 10 minutes.

I requested a Disneyland card. This meant that I could pay for any meals and souvenirs just by showing this card. All the bills are sent electronically to the hotel and total cost was taken from my debit card the day after checkout. This was a great idea.

Loads of documents were given to me e.g. a map of the hotel; leaflets about Disneyland, Walt Disney Studios, and Disney Village; 2 7-day passes; a card key to our hotel room.

Amazingly it took over 10 minutes to walk to our hotel room. Unfortunately by the time we had rested from the journey Disneyland had already closed. But in summer it was open till 11 p.m.

HOTEL DÉCOR

The Disneyland hotel was the only hotel to be designed by Disney imagineers. They conceived some of the brilliant Disneyland attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a small world, Thunder mountain etc.

The lobby was huge and there was a baggage and concierge service. Instrumental versions of popular Disney songs were constantly being played in the background.

According to my wife the décor was painted in soft colours. The staff wore pink pinafores. The whole atmosphere seemed reminiscent of a Hollywood movie. Then it hit me that the hotel was based on ‘Gone with the Wind’.

The length of the hotel was enormous. But the entrances to Disneyland are about a minute’s walk away from the hotel. When we stayed at the Sequoia Lodge we had to travel to Disneyland via a shuttle-bus ride which took about 10 minutes.

HOTEL ROOM

The hotel room door was opened by a key card system. This was often frustrating to operate.

The room itself was quite spacious with a double bed and sofa. There was even a balcony from where the Walt Disney Studios could be seen.

A lovely feature of the studios was that orchestral versions of theme music from major films were played all day. I loved ‘Lara’s theme’ from Dr Zhivago. Listening to this music after waking up was very pleasant.

There was plenty of wardrobe space. At check-in I told the receptionist that I did not want to use the mini-bar and so it was thankfully locked.

My one complaint was that there were no mirrors in the room. I spend more time looking at the mirror on holiday rather than at home.

TV

The TV had 8 channels. The first 4 channels showed a non-stop video about the Disneyland park in English, German, French and another Latin language. I must say that the editing was fantastic.

One channel showed the Disney Channel non-stop. Other channels showed Disney cartoons. Basically Disney was in your face constantly.

In the evenings some normal French TV programmes were shown. I saw the interview, which Arsene Wenger made after the win in Auxerre. He has the sexiest French accent ever.

There were also a couple of radio channels accessible through the TV. These channels had narrations of famous stories such as Peter Pan etc.

I really wanted to see a channel such as Sky News or CNN.

BATHROOM

The hotel bathroom was pretty normal e.g. 2 sinks, shaving mirror, hairdryer, and shower. There were enough towels for a small army.

Mickey Mouse soap, shampoo, bath gel and shower cap were provided.

One unique feature was a telephone handset next to the toilet.

For a 5-star hotel the toilet paper was awful. Given the size of my bum I needed 3 or 4 sheets at a time. Even Donald Duck would have had difficulty wiping his bum on this toilet paper.

Every morning it was the job of the cleaning staff to tidy up the room and bathroom. Everything was fine except that there was no spare toilet paper.

So one evening I got out my French-English dictionary and asked for un roleau from a cleaning lady who only spoke French. She was so shocked at my Inspector Clouseau accent that she gave me 2 rolls.

This episode backed up my earlier point of always taking my dictionary with me.

BREAKFAST

We always spent over 8 hours walking in Disneyland every day. The combination of tired limbs and not enough sleep was not pleasant. The last thing we needed was to walk for 10 minutes to the breakfast room.

A couple of restaurants doubled as breakfast rooms. The restaurants provided the best French cuisine possible for lunch and dinner. A starter would set you back GBP 20. Unfortunately the meals on offer were out of our price range.

But these restaurants proved disastrous as breakfast rooms. The breakfast room at the Sequoia Lodge was huge and provided enough area for children to run around in.

At the Disneyland Hotel we had to queue outside the restaurants giving the woman in charge the number in our group having breakfast. After a couple of days there was a little bit of banter between the woman and us. But when we had breakfast for the 5th time she demanded to know our room number and see our key. This was simply inexplicable.

After queuing for 10 minutes a waiter took us to our table. This took a few minutes. The problem was that breakfast was laid out on a buffet table, which was near the restaurant entrance. This meant that having been shown our table by the waiter we then trawled all the way back to get our breakfast.

The waitresses gave us our drinks e.g. tea, coffee, apple and orange juice. But we could not help ourselves to the drinks. The juice glasses were like champagne flutes. You would need about 10 of these for a decent drink. At the Sequoia Lodge we could drink as much as we could. Walking around Disneyland was very thirsty work.

Some of the waitressing was ordinary. On one occasion I asked for coffee and had to wait a few more minutes for the milk. A few minutes later I asked for a spoon and made a stirring motion above my cup. The waitress did not understand and gave me more milk in my coffee cup. I then spoke in French and she eventually brought me a cereal spoon to stir my coffee. I could not make this episode up if I tried.

The main problem was that the waitresses did not speak any English. Hotel wages were not the greatest. They tried hard but lacked the experience required. But the standard was not good enough for a 5-star hotel.

The buffet breakfast was average e.g. 3 types of cold meat, 2 types of cheese, cereal, scrambled eggs, sausages, some fruit, croissants, jam, chocolate spread etc.

The cheese was really limp and cheap. I think it was General de Gaulle who said that how can one rule a country which made 360 types of cheese. Last week I bought some Camembert from Tesco and it was fantastic.

The eggs were half scrambled and half omelette. The fruit looked old. Really this breakfast would have suited a 2-star hotel.

The problem the hotel faced was providing a decent breakfast for large numbers of guests. The Sequoia Lodge managed all right. The management needs to find a room big enough to serve the guests properly. It would be easier to scrap the queues, go straight to the buffet table and then find a table.

I read a quote in a recent issue of The Weekly News that Prince Philip said that ‘If French cuisine is so great then why can’t they serve up a decent breakfast.’

INQUISITION

After breakfast my wife and I usually sat on a sofa outside the restaurant. On morning I saw a woman asking some tourists a few questions. I simply assumed that she was a tour rep giving some instructions.

But a few minutes later she accosted us. She asked us a few questions about the Disneyland Hotel and inputted the answers on a palm-top. She made it clear that this was an independent survey.

She asked us if there were any criticisms of the hotel. I mentioned the small amounts of juice available at breakfast. She tersely replied that this was not an American hotel where large quantities of juice were available but a top class French hotel where it was polite to give customers small glasses. She also mentioned that I was the first ever person to complain about the breakfast. This is a typical Americanism where an argument is turned around against the critic.

I also criticised the fact that there was nowhere in Disneyland to purchase large bottles of water or soft drinks. A nearby supermarket would have been nice. She replied that if I took a train to a town a few miles away then I could shop at a supermarket. She also pointed out that there was a bottle of water in the hotel mini-bar. In the same breath she said that the mini-bar was quite expensive.

A few years ago I would have given the answers which would have pleased her. Now I simply held my ground and told her the truth. Beneath the smiles of the Disney characters lay the hard muscle of American corporate management.

OTHER FACILITIES

There was a lovely souvenir shop near the restaurants. But the souvenirs were expensive. Merely adding a picture of Goofy to a sports jacket would increase the selling price by GBP 20. The photo development service at the shop was also quite expensive. I felt sorry for the kids who were refused a toy by their parents every time they walked past the shop. There were a few tantrums thrown.

There was a health club, which incorporated a Jacuzzi. The funny part was seeing hotel guests walking in their robes in the hotel.

The hotel bar was doing great business. There were a couple of waiters ready to pounce on any hotel guest sitting near the bar. The prices of the drinks were marked up.

Everything was geared to make the most money out of unsuspecting guests.

HOTEL GUESTS

When I stayed at the Sequoia Lodge most of the other guests were Italian or German. There was a real atmosphere inside the hotel.

At the Disneyland Hotel most of the guests were Spanish, German and British. It felt good to be speaking English in France.

Most of the French people I met spoke English. But no one would speak to me in English if I started the conversation in English. So I used to start conversations in French and a few minutes later we would both be speaking in English. I am sure the French did this deliberately to rile the English.

KIDS

The behaviour of the kids at the hotel and in the theme park was excellent. At breakfast they all ate the food without any tantrums.

From reading newspapers I got the impression that kids were more unruly and less respectful nowadays. I did however see a French mother spank her 2-year old child for misbehaving. But the excellent behaviour of the kids really shocked me.

OTHER DAYS OUT

Other then visiting Disneyland and Walt Disney studios there were a few other attractions. These included a day trip to Paris, trip to a shopping centre where clothes were sold at wholesale prices and a sea-life centre.

These trips could be booked via the hotel concierge. Prices were more expensive than they should have been.

HOTEL CHECK-OUT

I have bad memories of checking out of the Sequoia Lodge in 1999. We vacated our rooms at 11 am and 3 Filipino maids were waiting outside the hotel room armed with a vacuum cleaner, bathroom supplies etc. This gave the impression that Disney was too concerned with making money than providing a decent service.

Checkout at the Disneyland Hotel was slightly better. On our last morning there was an envelope marked express checkout hanging on the doorknob. In it was a breakdown of all the souvenir and food purchases made in the theme parks.

I did not have enough energy to carry the heavy suitcases for 10 minutes to the reception area. So the baggage trolley department was phoned a few times to help us. Each time they said that someone would collect our bags but no one came.

Eventually we left our room and found somewhere to sit. I found a spare trolley in a corridor and nabbed it. I then spoke to a manager who reluctantly sent a member of staff to help me. The problem was that Sunday was the busiest day of the week for the hotel. Over 300 new guests checked in that day. Obviously the new arrivals got preference over the departing guests.

I then waited in the checkout queue for 10 minutes. I spoke to a French woman about the express checkout. She said that there was no need to queue and that the bill would automatically be paid from my
debit card. It would have helped if someone had told all this to us before.

The hotel staff was very good at pointing out the right coach for us. Coaches arrived at regular intervals for Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports.

Bear in mind that the coach stops at 3 terminals at Charles de Gaulle airport. We got off at the same terminal which we arrived in. A Spanish couple was told to get off at the wrong terminal. I just hope they got home okay.

ARRIVAL

In 1999 at Charles de Gaulle airport a passport control man did not believe that my wife’s passport photo matched her face. He then told his female boss who took some persuading. This time we came across the both people again and the same argument about the passport photo ensued. It was amazing how history repeated itself.

Going through customs took 3 times the usual time due to an internal strike. Part of the airport was also sealed off due to a security alert.

The return flight was noisy. Most of the passengers were quite merry. On landing there was a loud burst of applause.

We felt relieved that the holiday was over. Walking over 8 hours every day for a week was very tiring. It took me at least a couple of weeks before I felt right again. Disneyland sounds glamorous but involves a lot of hard work. My hat goes off to those holidaymakers with kids.

ADVANTAGES

The Disneyland Hotel was the flagship hotel in Disneyland Paris. The best advantage was that it was 2 minutes away from the Disneyland entrance. It was 5 minutes walk away from the Walt Disney Studios.

It was a 5-star hotel with all the mod cons. The décor was fantastic.

DISADVANTAGES

The worst part was the sheer size of the hotel. It took ages to get anywhere. The walk to the restaurants took 10 minutes.

The breakfast was pretty much ordinary. Lunch would cost about GBP 30 per person and dinner about GBP 50 per person, which was too expensive. In the theme parks lunch cost about GBP 8 per person.

The cost of staying in the hotel was very expensive.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The majority of our day was spent in the theme parks. All that was required regarding accommodation was a bed and breakfast. Really the Disneyland hotels were glorified B&Bs.

Every day was tiring and I could have slept anywhere. The breakfast simply did not provide enough fluid intake.

Having stayed at the Marriott Hotel in Prague earlier in the year I knew the standards of a 5-star hotel. Interestingly Disneyland are currently involved with Marriott in a project near the theme parks.

I actually e-mailed the Ciao team to include this hotel as a category. It will be interesting to see how other ops about the Disneyland Hotel compare to mine.

All hotel ops are generally boring. But I hope anyone going to Disneyland Paris will be helped by this op.

This hotel did not really provide value for money.

To paraphrase a Disney story, the Disneyland Hotel had plenty of beauty but some beast as well.

Finally congratulations to John and Tracy (tabyorky) on their new baby.

 

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