Theme Park Discussion / Disneyland! The Adventures Of Lew & Ol

So Lew and I went to Disneyland Resort Paris! For a nearly a week. Here's a few thoughts and photos.

We caught a Eurostar train from St. Pancras International which has to be one of the most beautiful train stations in the country.

 

The train went right into Marne La Vallee, right in the heart of the resort. This is great when you're on the way there. When you're on the back catching a Eurostar not everybody fits into the station because it is so small, so you end up having massive queues that have to go through security and passport control. This isn't good and it's a good job the train waits for you since they were still a few hundred people to get on the train right before it was due to depart.
 
We stayed in Hotel Cheyenne. It's alright and not too far to walk to the park, looks better than the Mexican prison-esque Hotel Santa Fe over the river. The only problem I have with the hotel is the lack of hot water in the shower which is incredibly annoying. Then you complain to reception twice and nothing is fixed, clearly a flawed hot water system.





The park's castle is stunning, both day and night.






Disney Dreams of Christmas. Night show using the castle. Wow, I was impressed. The fountains, fireworks and imagery on the castle really work well. The worst part of the show is the cheesy Toy Story Nutcracker sequence is awful though, even the Jingle Bells singalong is better than that portion of the show. The Frozen sequence with the song "Let It Go" is probably the best scene in the show, good song. The photos don't do it justice but it's well worth a watch. Still enjoyable after watching it 4 times.







There may not be a lot in Adventure Land (since there's a massive patch of trees and grass that would be perfect for a new attraction) I love Adventure Isle with all the caves and paths. There's also some great views near the top of the rocks.




Discovery Land is an amazing looking area, better than the Tomorrow Lands. However Space Mountain is awful and I didn't enjoy a single ride on it I don't think. Autopia is also hilariously bad, steering does nothing and the accelerator doesn't do much either. Fun ride but not great, are all the Autopia's like that?




Frontier Land. The best Big Thunder Mountain? The underground section really makes the ride, good fun.




We had some amazing meals eating at Walts, Plaza Gardens, Silver Spur Steakhouse, Cowboy Cookout, Hakuna Matata, Caseys, etc, but this at the Silver Spur was my favorite:


Walt's steak and potatos were stunning though:


Fantasy Land




There's quite a nice view of the area from the top of this castle.




My favorite area in the park has to be Main Street U.S.A. There's just so much atmosphere, so much going on which makes it so nice to just be stood there.














This is probably the best way to travel up towards the castle:


The parades are great to watch with some really catchy songs that get stuck in your head, Toy Land and Magic Everywhere. Disney Magic is the best of the 3 parades across the 2 parks.










The christmas tree put on a little show a few times a night which is a great touch.


The hotel over the entrance looks great at night and day.




The Disney Village seems to be expanding more and more towards the Studios park every time I visit with the World of Disney being a new store from the last time I visited. It sells the same merchandise as all the stores across the park do. There's very little variation between the different stores even though there titled different which we didn't understand. It felt like every time we walked into a store it was practically the same one.


The Studios. There's something missing from this park in large portions. It didn't feel like it was a park I wanted to be at unlike Disneyland next door. If we weren't queuing for something it felt like there was nothing to do. Apart from the severe lack of attractions the only other thing I can think that is missing is atmosphere, it has none. Is the other Studios park like that? Tower of Terror is still amazing. The Toy Story Land is good and surprisingly Animagiue was amazing, something I wasn't expecting. Everything else was meh, hence the lack of photos.




Guided Tour
The highlight of the trip was a guided tour around the Disney park. They offer a Tower of Terror which is unfortunately not in English and a studios tour which we didn't have time for. The tour was really good and we learned a few things neither of us knew, here's some of the interesting points I can remember:

-It took Imagineers 52 attempts to get the right pink for the hotel due to the weather. The hotel is situated by the railway due to the whole Victorian seaside resort idea of railways brought people to the hotels where they would stay in. The railway is also a tribute to Walt Disney who had a railway in his back garden.

-Supposedly the Main Street Transportation Company building is in the same shape as the original Disneyland castle. Personally it looks a little like it but I'm not sure.

-The Imagineers names that created the park are dotted throughout the park. One of the grave stones in Boot Hill Frontier Land has 6 names on called "The Hole In The Wallet Gang" or something similar.
-All machinery in Frontier Land is real. All furniture in the Cowboy Cookout Restaurant is different to fit the theme where back in that time everybody would bring there own seat.
-Adventure Land is split into 4 different regions/countries, Africa, North Africa, India and the Caribbean. The North African area or Morocco area which is the entrance to Adventure Land was supposed to be for Epcot originally. The light in the entrance was a present from the King of Morocco. There are symbols from one of Walt Disney's nature shows on the entrance as well. India never used to exist until the addition of the Indiana Jones coaster. The Colonel Hathi's Pizza Outpost used to be a table service restaurant but they found that Europeans wanted more quick, fast food due to park hours being shorted than American park hours and people wanted to spend as much time on rides etc. The evidence of this is the mangrove tree in the resturant is not native to India but was native to Africa however they didn't get rid of it.

-Imagineers first thought that when they created Adventure Land they would have to replant the foliage everywhere and also put some of it in storage due to the European climate being quite cold in winter. However they found that the foliage a acclimatised and survives naturally. This means the area is 2 degrees warm than any other area of the park.
-In Pirates of the Caribbean, if any pirate marked with a skull hat is broken then they won't run the ride. We counted about 7 pirates.
-Fantasy Land is split into 4 countries fitting the origins of the tales of the attractions. England, Germany, France and Italy.
-Autopia currently run on petrol but they are working on making them electric.
-Star Tours! We got a surprise and they took us to a room where we were able to view Star Tours in motion with the lights on! The "ship" is literally a box with a painting of a Star Tours ship which shocks me because Disney go to so much detail to actually make something, I was expecting more a facade of the ship not an exact box. Another tour guide said something in German to a guy with a camera about YouTube. So I had a look on YouTube and there's an exact video of what we saw on there. Here you go:
 
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=X3muFgwAq9g

-When we had chance to ask questions, I asked what's the capacity of the park. Surprisingly she isn't allowed to say. We were guessing around the 45,000 to 60,000 mark? Based on Alton Towers having a capacity of around 28,000 people.

We we're told there would be no backstage sections on the tour but we saw Star Tours with the lights on, I assume other Disney parks offer similar tours so do they have any other surprises like that?

Disneyland Resort Paris really has given me some much more appreciation for Disney. They offer something amazing. I hate to say it but it was a better trip than Europa Park last year. Currently I'm really inspired to build a Disney park, something that has never appealed to me.

Thanks for sharing this guys.  The park looks beautiful.