Топик: Disneyland Resort Paris
The Hotels
Very important:
Disney sometimes operates an early entry policy for its hotel guests. Any advantage you might gain by following this guide will be destroyed if the hotel guests have early entry privileges on the day you visit so be sure to telephone the park the day before you plan to come to ascertain which days, if any, Disney Hotel guests have that privilege and avoid those days like the plague!!
On the other hand, if you're actually staying at a Disney Hotel (by far the best idea, anyway) you will be given a hotel ID card. This unprepossessing little card is very important. Besides being able to charge absolutely anything you buy back to your hotel room one exceptionally useful function of the card is to allow you to enter the Disneyland hotel grounds early in the morning while they're still shut to day trippers (these grounds act as the entrance to the park as well as the hotel grounds). Disney makes the day trippers and non-hotel guests line up at these imposing gates. You can walk through simply by brandishing your ID card and shouting "Excuse moi" or something equally inane.
There are six hotels on the site and one camping ground, three miles away. All hotel rooms sleep 4 people in two double beds and the Newport Bay, New York and Disneyland Hotels offer some rooms that sleep five. All the hotels except Hotel Cheyenne and Santa Fe also have suites. Tea and coffee making facilities are not provided and Cheyenne and Santa Fe don't have a swimming pool. Guests staying there used to be able to use the Sequoia Lodge pool, but that has now been discontinued.
Staying at any of the hotels is quite an experience because of the attention to detail Disney lavishes on everything. Disney would maintain that quality of service (as opposed to levels of service) are all equal; some, however, are more equal than others. Click on the highlighted links to learn more.
Santa Fe
Basic, small, cheap and not recommended. The main areas can be noisy as well in our experience, although we've started get emails from people who say that the Santa Fe has improved considerably. Their only restaurant is La Cantina
Hotel Cheyenne.
Fantastic themed hotel, about 17 minutes walk from the park. First one we stayed in. Small rooms (with bunks for the kids), cheap but a great experience. Disney have reintroduced the ubiquitous hotel charge card facility to both the Cheyenne and the Santa Fe, a very good move, as the charge card facility is excellent. Eating is in the decorously named Chuck Wagon
Sequoia Lodge
Lakeside hunter's lodge type hotel. A nasty fire a few years ago caused it to smell a lot for about three months but they've rectified that now. Make sure you get a room in the main building. It can be a nuisance hauling yourself in from one of the lodges in bad weather. Excellent swimming pool and some very good rooms on the front with stunning views. Beaver Creek Tavern and Hunters Grill provide comestibles.
Newport Bay
Absolutely huge, nautically themed, hotel on the lakeside again. Best hotel shop, great swimming pool and three floors of extra services if you pay. Cape Cod and Yacht Club delight the palette.
New York
Good for business people, not a lot for the kids. Expensive but a little too sterile for our tastes. Parkside Diner and the classy Manhattan Restaurant keep body and soul together
Disneyland Hotel
The best. Judged 'European Hotel of the Year' by the British Travel Agents Association. Expensive, pink and right at the entrance to the park, a first for any Disney park in the world. By itself, this is a great hotel, especially in winter, when you can leave the blizzards and wind outside and pop back to your room for a quick chocolate. However, the Castle Club, a 50 room boutique hotel within the Disneyland is amazing. If you can afford it, try it. A week of decadent fawning and unrestrained hedonism can be yours! Inventions, the California Grill and the Piano Bar provide sustenance.
All of the hotels are frequented by Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto and Goofy at certain times but the Disneyland Hotel is the most visited. Meeting the characters in your hotel has the advantage that you don't waste valuable riding time in the park standing in a queue with your offspring hoping to have the autograph book signed.
Davy Crockett Ranch
About three miles from the park is the campsite at the Davy Crockett Ranch. An excellent swimming pool and great log cabin type accommodation make it a good place for the kids. The withdrawal of the bus service between the site and the main park has been something of a blow, however, and staying at the Campsite is only practical if you have your own transport.
The complex
The theme park’s 138 acres are divided into five theme Lands: Main Street USA, Frontier land, Adventure land, Fantasyland and Discovery land. Disney, however, has ensured that nothing is left to chance. From the smallest detail in planning to the largest construction, everything tells a story.
MAIN STREET USA
Main Street is Walt Disney’s idealized idea of a small-town, Victorian America. The Main Street traffic includes horse-drawn rail cars, old double-decker buses, an antique fire engine, a Keystone-cop style paddy wagon and a vintage car which together tell the story of the evolution of transport. These form part of a working transport system which moves visitors between the Town Square and the central hub of the park near Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, beneath which a Dragon lurks. Here is the Central Plaza, the point from which paths radiate to the other four lands. The Castle itself acts as a landmark throughout the park, enabling guests to find where they are when Aunty Edna has just walked off with the only copy of the map. The Park's pathways are an adventure in them and offer both dry and open routes between Frontier land, Adventure land and Fantasyland. Some of these are rarely discovered by the guests, so intent are they on getting to the castle but they can save a great deal of time. Watch out for the path that runs from the main entrance to Fort Comstock, past the toilets and towards Adventure land. This route offers cover and a fabulous example of the imaginers’' best work, where they imperceptibly change from Frontier America construction to Arabian and Central African thatching.
As you enter Main St, you pass beneath Main St Station from where you can ride a nineteenth century ‘steam’ engine around the park. En route, you pass through a Grand Canyon Diorama, a visual depiction of the Canyon from dawn to dusk. The train also stops in each of the other lands from where you can explore. Trains run every ten minutes but boarding in the lands is sometimes prohibited before midday. Beneath the station are lockers where, for 10 ff, you can store valuables and bags. (Currently suspended owing to the security risks)
FRONTIERLAND
From the Central Plaza, this is the first land you encounter, a musical, visual and live action recreation of America’s Wild West. Entry is through Fort Comstock’s imposing wooden gate and fort grounds, in which children can pretend they’re winning the West all over again, mainly by dropping their sticky lollipops on the heads of unsuspecting passers by.
Rides: