Paul & Sue Hazelden
- Holiday Report -
Disneyland, Paris, 2004

Background

For the February 2004 Half Term, Alan and Philip were both booked onto a school ski trip. Ian was scheduled to take part in a French exchange trip at Easter, and Sue decided he needed a bit of practice at being in France, and perhaps a bit more exposure to the French language before he went.

After various ideas were discussed and dismissed, and after we discovered that Parc Asterix does not open until Easter, we decided to take Ian back to Disneyland Paris. We had visited several years earlier, but Ian was too small at the time to do many of the rides, and this was his chance to catch up.

The Mechanics

Sue searched around on the Internet and found us a good deal with a hotel, le Roi du Lac in Lognes, just a few stops down the main RER line from Disneyland, and the Eurostar tickets. For Disneyland, we had three-day passes, which allowed us to move between the two main parks as we liked on any of three days in the next three years: this turned out to be just about right.

The only potential problem in the booking procedure was that Disneyland required us to fill in a form to confirm our booking and post it back to them before sending our tickets... presumably too many children have discovered their parents' credit cards and decided to book a holiday without checking first. Anyway, the tickets arrived on the Thursday, two days before we departed - too close for total comfort.

On the Friday, we waved Alan and Philip goodbye. On Saturday afternoon, we drove to London to Paul's parents, via Pip and Philip in Newbury. On Sunday we rested and visited Greenwich Park and the Observatory there - well worth another visit. Monday morning, Roger gave us a lift to the station, then up to Waterloo for the Eurostar. We then had to buy another ticket for the last stretch of the journey on the RER to Torcy, and walked to the hotel: they had sent us directions, which were fine.

We relaxed in the hotel for the rest of the day, visited Disneyland on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, then back home on the Friday: RER then Eurostar to Waterloo, train to Eltham, parents picked up up from the station, gave us tea, and we drove home arriving a little before midnight. Alan and Philip arrived back safe and sound the next day.

Tips and Traps

A few pieces of advice for the unwary...

Take care to read what they tell you.

At the entrance to the site, there is a sign that tells you which attractions are not available that day. Reading this helped us plan our route and minimise disappointment.
If there is something you particularly want to do, check to see if there are any warnings at the entrance to the attraction. One item on our itinerary had a note on the welcome board saying that the 'best' part of the tour (a virtual reality ride) would not be available after 5:15 pm - which we only discovered too late.

Don't believe everything you read.

The sign at the start telling us which attractions were unavailable missed out at least one which was clearly inoperative throughout the Winter.
The waiting times posted above the entrances to many of the attractions are helpful, but often were significantly wrong - sometimes too long and sometimes too short.
The 'Fastpass' times above one ride were significantly different from the times printed on our ticket, so we had to wait half an hour longer than we had anticipated.

And, these may be obvious points, but here they are anyway...

Visiting in February means you risk frostbite, but the waiting times for the attractions is much lower than at more popular times.
The waiting time for many attractions goes down towards the end of the day, so it could be worth coming back later. Of course, there is always a small risk something will go wrong, and it won't be available later, but you can't have everything - it's a matter of balancing how desperate you are to do this one thing against the boredom of a long queue.
Bring a good book to read in the queues - there is generally very little to entertain you as you wait.
I know this is blindingly obvious but... the larger rollercoaster rides can get quite violent. You need to make sure nothing is going to fall out of your pockets, and keep your head firmly up against the padding or you can get knocked around a bit.

The 'Fastpass' system is nearly brilliant. On some attractions, you can get a ticket from a nearby machine that allows you to come back at a specified time (usually in a half-hour range) and go nearly to the front of the queue. However...

On some attractions, you by-pass more of the normal queue than others. On Space Mountain there was something like a 15 minute queue from the point where you joined the main queue, and a 10-minute wait to get in on the Fastpass ticket. We did not use the Fastpass system on the Indiana Jones ride because the advertised waiting time was only 20 minutes. This was good because we then walked straight to the point where the two queues merged, and only had less than 10 minutes in the merged queue. So the Fastpass route may not be faster than the normal one.
There is a notice above the Fastpass machines telling you when you will be able to return for the ride. You have no choice about this, so it does rather restrict your options about what you do in the meantime. When we were there, it was often long enough to snatch a quick cup of coffee, but not enough to do another attraction.
Consequently, it was often faster for us to queue normally - the choice between a 20 minute wait now, or a 10 minute wait in 35-65 minutes' time, for example. It all depends on what you can do in those 35-65 minutes.

The Parks

There are two main theme parks: the main Disneyland Paris, and the Disney Studios. We basically spent one day in each, and then spent the final day revisiting a few attractions and catching up on the ones we missed the first time around. This seems like quite a good plan if you have three days.

Conclusion

It all depends on whether you like Disney. For my money, The Jungle Book is entertaining as long as you can completely forget Rudyard Kipling, but their Winnie-the-Pooh is a complete Abomination.

I suppose the characters wandering around in suits and signing autograph books as 'Goofy' or 'Mickey Mouse' entertains the younger children, but it doesn't work for me. I might enjoy Fantasia, but I don't want to pretend I have met Mickey in real life.

I had two basic problems with the whole experience.

I lost count of the number of attractions in which we were lectured - I can use no other word. For example, the train ride round the back of a 'film set' couldn't just be entertaining, it had to be improving as well. For some reason, we had to pretend we were on an educational trip, learning about techniques used in film making. If they had been really doing that, I would have enjoyed it far more, but it was only entertainment dressed up as education.
I know you don't go to Disneyland for authentic anything, but the level of fakery took my breath away. In the mock-up of a radio studio, they couldn't tell us that this is what the Disney radio studio looks like, they had to pretend this was the real thing. Why? I suppose it is consistent with the whole "If you are lucky, Mickey Mouse might come round this corner in a few minutes, children!" played-out fantasy world they have created. Presumably, many people must find it charming, but personally, I found it more disturbing as time went on.