Disneyland Paris

[winkywinkola]

I'm a bit surprised at how not great it is.

Packed with 90 minute queues. Over priced. Queues galore with fast passes run out until 5-6pm.

Food hugely overpriced and average. Products like t-shirts etc also very expensive. Shops absolutely everywhere selling exactly the same products. No variety at all. Dull.

Surly and unfriendly staff. And you had to queue to meet characters. Why aren't there many staff dressed up just wandering about for photo opportunities?

There are no modern characters in the street performance like Buzz or Cars or even a Star Wars element. We saw a Star Wars show that involved children who had booked and paid to be part of it and it was embarrassing.

The rides - once you got on them - are great. Many are closed though. So you pay the same money for a lesser experience.

To me it's a poor experience overall. It really feels like the poor relative of the U.S. version and even the Tokyo site.

The dcs loved it however apart from the queues.

Someone give me some tips as we have one day left.

Not at all Kirrie. I love Disney. I've been to many of their parks and adore them. I've been to Disneyland Paris 4 or 5 times alone. I just don't like being ripped off and freezing my arse off for the privilege thanks. I'm taking the kids to Porta Aventura again in May where the weather will be warm, the rides will be open, and the staff will not speak to me like I'm something they brought in on their shoe. I don't think that makes me miserable. In fact it makes me sad that this place lets down the Disney parks so badly.

Bitout, I completely agree with you.

I don't think the Disneyland Paris staff do embody the Disney ethos at all.

The Tokyo Disneyland is better, I think.

I've not been to the U.S. parks. I'm looking forward to those.

We will visit EuroDisney again but never in winter and only on a Monday-Wednesday. Last Friday was fine. The weekend was hellish. Bitterly cold and we were all layered up as much as possible with fleeces and winter coats.

Everyone looked bloody miserable actually! Shame really when everyone is paying so much money for half the rides being shut, huge queues and no jollity from the staff.

Oh and while I'm being a misery I'll mention how dirty it is there. Honestly the general level of cleanliness in the "reassurances" is appalling. Tables overflowing with rubbish, bins full to bursting, just generally grimy. Yet at Disney in the states and Japan you can eat your dinner off any surface it's so clean.

Last time we went dc1 fell over and got a nasty slash on her palm. We took her to first aid and to say they really couldn't give a shit is an understatement.

I also find the reluctance to queue nicely there also very irritating. Toddler dd1 pushed over by a French family in their haste to get on a fire engine thing that tootled up Main Street. Stepping over the pushchair that dd2 was in so we couldn't get on. Just not nice they got a mouthful of my best French

Reassurances = restaurants.

I was there on Wednesday. Didn't queue for more than 15 mins for anything and the parade was bloody great.

Everyone I encounter at DLP speaks immaculate English. I used to work out my A level french while I was there, not anymore. I speak in french and they reply with English.

However there is a hierachy. You find fluent English speakers as hotel reception, guest services, concierge and the waiting staff in all the table service restaurants. The places you really need them. One particularly impressive staff member spoke English to us, French to the other waiter and we think Italian to another table. The staff with basic English are at fast food order and shop staff.

If you only eat in the fast food joints and stay off site you miss most of the English speakers. Incidentally you also probably hit the worst bits of Disneyland Paris.

I had an interesting conversation with a guest services staff member (me in french her replying in English) about the English coming to France and expecting to speak English. DLP is in France it is still very french, although I think it has it a fair balance now.

On the first aid not being bothered DS has fallen over (albeit in the hotel). First aid where there quick spoke English, sorted DS out, called the Doctor. The doctor treated DS in our hotel room and dealt with a problem I had at the same time without charging extra. Hospital staff took the prescription to the pharmacy and bought it back within a couple of hours. What I fully expected to be a lengthy trip to A&E was a minor blip in the holiday that interrupted nothing.

I love winter in DLP but I don't expect it to be warm.

The biggest problem with DLP is frankly the french... not the staff or anything DLP can actually control. And the weather (although noone can control that you can come prepared)

Noone was having a good time
not sure where your looking everytime I am there everyone seems to be having a blast. Besides which if you were right there wouldn't be people you come back year on year.... She says planning Disney 2017 trip number 11

I don't expect to go to France and speak French since I speak good French. I do expect to be spoken to like s customer though

Hotel not hospital staff

We went to DLP for the first time in Feb 2014. We loved it! We had a great time.

Longest queue was about 50 minutes for Crush's Coaster. DH and the kids went on the Tower of Terror and Aerosmith over and over without queuing at all.

Food was good too.

Maybe it's gone downhill since then, or maybe we were just lucky!

The language wasn't a problem. It was the attitude.

Why on earth is every part of others' possibly negative experience being dismissed as not at all valid?

Wherever I looked over the weekend, I hardly saw any smiles at all on the faces of visitors. No laughter. Just people trudging about, looking grim, wrapped up very warmly but obviously still cold. It was so noticeable that I remarked on it to h. He agreed. The atmosphere was pants.

But I guess you'll tell me I'm simply wrong and that I didn't plan it properly?

I'm sorry but the 5.30 parade is absolutely full of characters, I've just come back and saw it twice.

If the kids are young enough, go and see Disney Junior Live, mine loved it.

We've been to DLP twice and weren't over-impressed with it. As others have said it is just dirty. There aren't enough toilets and they stink, even first thing in the morning. Nobody wants to queue and they all blantantly shove in front of you.

We also struggled to find any cast members who could speak English. And although I do get that it is France, it is also Disney, so I expected that the customer facing staff would speak English. I don't think that's unreasonable.

We've just been to Disneyworld. Clean, loads of toilets, nothing too much trouble. No comparison.

That should be blatantly, obviously.

Must preview..

I have been about 4 times and whilst I like it and the kids adore it. If you have visited a 'proper' Disney park then there is no comparison.

It is what it is.

Winkywinkola I've been accused of being miserable. I can assure you I'm not. Well at least not because I'm not keen on Eurodisney

One big positive though: the dragon underneath the castle. Absolutely petrified and thrilled the Dc when they were little.

Sorry to make you feel that way. Honestly i find many of your complaints within your power to sort or to a greater or leser extent minimise

And to balance many of the negative experiences mentioned here don't reflect any of the last 7 of my visits (although very much the early years) as if tried to explain with examples. Doesn't invalidate any negative experiences but they are certainly not universal.

I've done WDW twice. However i would struggle with the idea of paying significantly more for anywhere near the ease of experience of staying walking distance of all the attractions when you stay on site at DLP. . Unless I had the money for the grand floridian or contemporary, I would choose several visits to DLP over one Florida visit. It really is a sweeping generalisation that you have done a "proper" park there is no comparison. For me there definitely is, I've had a fantastic time at both.

What really escapes me if if you don't enjoy it why on earth would you go back!!!

Doesn't invalidate any negative experiences but they are certainly not universal.

Neither are the positive ones.

And I'm struggling to find one of my negatives about DLP that was in my power to change.

Being cold. After first couple of winter years visits I have never been cold. And I have done it in -10°C.

Most of the rest if your complaints I have found simply not to be the case .in any of the 7 most recent visits. But then I tend to avoid the fast food places which I suspect is the uncleared table and unclean surfaces

Or they are a problem with France in general and there is not a lot disney can do about them. (And why I don't often venture beyond disney in France)

Although generally I have conflated many of the OPs complaints with your own

I'm supposed to have changed the weather? OK.

I can assure you we were wrapped up but seeing your toddler's face red raw with cold doesn't exactly add to the fun eh?

DC often wear a buff around the face and mouth especially when little. I take nivea and vaseline in case of irritation. Unless you have one with special needs who picks his nose and accidentally l smears it infecting the lower half of his face, that should be enough to avoid anything major.

(Even then it didn't effect anyone's enjoyment on the holiday we just saw the doctor on the return. )

See problems with the cold are not unique but they are solvable with a little forward planning and asking around on forums.

The problem I have with the cold is...erm it's cold. And I don't like being cold. It's just not my idea of a good time

I've spent too many times there standing grimly frozen in a 50 minute queue (for a 90 second ride) to ever want to go back there again

Now that the kids are teenagers there's not a massive amount to interest them there anyway (especially as space mountain seems to be perpetually closed) and I think there are better, cleaner, cheaper, warmer places to go to.

I realise that those of you that love DLP are taking this as a personal affront and think I am a miserable cow but I am merely expressing my experience, just as you are

I'd hate standing for 50 mins in a frozen queue too. I went on January and it was fantastic but we went out of term time and off season to avoid queues. I wouldn't enjoy queueing for 50mins in the sun either!!

Not personal at all but I hate thinking of people not enjoying something because of something solvable. I'm an intolerable problem solver and much teased by my children for my obsession with noone being too cold and thermal underwear!!

There is so much unpleasentness in life that I cannot solve sort or alter. DLP is my respite from that. I don't cook I don't drive. I don't have to spend hours researching how easy or difficult a holiday will be with DS I know it works.

See this is another thing that puts me off WDW is the heat. If I'm cold I can put another layer on. I can't find a solution to the heat.