Two Parks To Choose From

The Paris Disney collection of theme parks is made up of 3 sections, Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney Studios Park, and Disney Village.  Disney Village isn't really a theme park as much as a shopping location with all kinds of themed restaurants and shops.  Disney Village is also the central point that all of the Disney hotels in the area surround.  While the Disney Village is an official Disney attraction, it is far from being a theme park, and doesn't even require any kind of ticket to go.  Today I'm going to focus on the two theme parks from Paris Disney, Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios Park.

Both of these parks take their cues from other Disney parks in other parts of the world.  Disneyland Paris, much like it's name, is a French version of Disneyland in California.  Much like all of the Disneyland/Magic Kingdom parks around the world, the park is designed in a spoke system with the castle (Sleeping Beauties Castle) in the centre.  Around this castle there are 5 different themed lands, Main Street USA, Frontier Land, Adventure Land, Fantasy Land, and Discovery Land.  Each one of these "lands" also take their cue from other Disney parks, however many of these have twists, as well as attractions only available at this one location.

This park is said to be the crown jewel of this whole resort complex, many say that this is visually the most beautiful of all Disney parks.  I'm really looking forward to checking out all of this eye candy, but that's not all.  There are several attractions here that are only available at this one location, such as Alice's Curious Labyrinth and La Taniere Du Dragon. There are also many rides that are in Disneyland (that I've never visited), but not in Disney World, that I'm really excited to see.  Finally, there are many rides that are in Disneyland Paris that are in the other parks as well, however many have a slightly different twist that I'm excited to explore.

Walt Disney Studios Park is the black sheep of the Disney parks world.  I have yet to read a great review of this park on any Disney fan blog.  Most say that there's not much to do, and that the theming is really mixed up.  I've checked out photos and maps of this park, and while it doesn't seem to have the pizzazz that many other Disney parks has, it still looks like a lot of fun.  I have a feeling that many Disney bloggers dislike this park because they have something in mind when they think of a Disney studios theme park.  I however have only been to the Disney Hollywood Studios park once before, and that was well over 10 years ago.  I really have nothing in particular to reference it to, and I'm really looking forward to a few of the attractions.

While I'm not a big fan of most "shows" at Disney parks, I still plan on checking a few of them out at WDSP. In particular the Animagique and Cinemagique shows look pretty cool.  I'm also really looking forward to the Pixar related areas of the park.  There's a section of the park dedicated to Toy Story were you're shrunk down to the size of a toy in Andy's backyard.  There's also a section of the park dedicated to Ratatouille that looks pretty cool too.  This park also has one of my favourite Disney rides of all, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror; I'm certainly going to ride that a few times.

Our plan at this time is to spend at least one day in each park; with a third day to visit anything we've missed or want to do again.  Fortunately the parks are very close to each other, so on the third day we can park hop between the two.  I have different expectations from each park, but both look like they're going to be a lot of fun.

Why Americans Hate Paris Disney

While researching our Disney Paris trip I've noticed one thing that keeps coming up, Americans really don't seem to like this theme park.  I've read many blogs, watched many videos, and gone through many tourist sites, and I've found that Americans really don't like this park at all.  The most obvious thing I've noticed is that there are very few Disney fan websites that have any mention of this place.  A few might put it on their list of places to go, but mostly only if they want to visit every single Disney park.  Most sites list Tokyo as the park they'd rather visit first.  Disney Paris seems to really have a cloud hanging over it, and it really seems to be scaring off the foreign tourists.

If we look at the people who have traveled to Disney Paris, many of them said that they consider Disneyland Paris (the Magic Kingdom part of the park) to be one of the most beautiful of the Disney park.  However, many of them seem to point out a few flaws that really turn them off.  The biggest complaint I hear is that the food is really bad.  I've often read comparisons to the food they could have eaten in Paris, and how disappointed they are about the fact that Disney Paris has nothing to offer for French foods. I also hear a lot of complaining about smoking, and general crowd politeness.  I've been told that people smoke everywhere, even though there are designated smoking areas.  I've also heard a lot about line cutting for attractions.

While I haven't been to the park yet, I did live in Europe for 4 years and I've traveled around a lot, and I have a theory.  Disney Paris is not for you (Americans).  Do you really think that Disney built a park halfway around the world so you can travel there?  If you think that this park is having financial troubles now, if they actually designed the park for American tourists only, they would have been out of business years ago.  France is one of the biggest tourist destinations for Europeans; this is why this park was built.  This is a park for Europeans to get a taste of the American park without having to fly overseas. And much like the France pavilion at Epcot, this American style theme park is designed to give Europeans a taste of the USA, changed to suit their pallet.

Why would a French person take the train from Paris for up to an hour, only to eat French food?  They want to come out to the park to experience American food.  Why are the guests "different" than the guests at Disney World?  Because they're European people, with different cultures and different lifestyles.  I guarantee that Europeans that travel to Disney World or Disneyland are equally shocked by some of the strange things you do.  Smoking in Europe is looked at very differently than it is in the USA (and Canada), crowd control is also very different.

I'm not saying that Americans should not visit Paris Disney, in fact I think it's a great addition to any European vacation. Just don't expect it to be an extended version of the France pavilion at Epcot mixed with all the American values and rules you have and Disneyland and Disney World.  Disney has built this park to bring in European travelers, to give them a taste of Disney suited to their pallet. This is a park that represents the American dream, but in a way that Europeans see it.

Making A Reservation Online VS Phone

After reading a few websites, and checking out a few travel reviews, Allison and I were prepared to get started on actually making reservations for our stay at Disneyland Paris.  One of the best sites that seemed to give a candid review of the hotels in the Disney Paris resort area is the Disney Tourist blog. Our first bit of research we focused on how important it was for us to stay on property VS staying off property.  Staying on property at Disney Paris has many of the same benefits that you get as staying on property at Disney World.  Proximity to the parks is the best advantage, since one of the hotels is actually part of the entrance to one of the parks.  There's also the extra magic hours, these allow you to come to the park early or stay late if you're staying on property.  The only real disadvantage is price, but since we're only staying at Disney for a few days, we figured it was worth the money.

We made a list of the hotels we wanted to stay at listing our preferred down to our least preferred.  Our first choice was the Sequoya Lodge, followed by the New York Hotel. We then went to the Disneyland Paris website ready to make our reservations.  The first thing we noticed about the site was that it doesn't really allow for any flexibility as far as staying at the hotel and getting tickets to go to the parks.  After a quick phone call we learned that if you're staying at one of the hotels the ticket is attached to the price of the room, and you can't separate it.  This is fine, most of the time, but if you're arriving late or have to leave early it might mean paying for a day at the park that you cannot use. So we adjusted our schedule, and proceeded. We managed to pick our first choice of hotel, the Sequoya Lodge, for the days we wanted, but every time Allison tried to pay, she got an error message.  The error messages were both nerve wracking and annoying, so Allison decided to call the reservation number to try and figure out what went wrong, this was the best decision of the night.

Allison called the reservation line and a lovely lady picked up the phone.  Allison explained the situation and instantly the lovely lady on the other end discovered that due to this error and our many attempts to fix it, we had booked the trip twice.  It took a bit of working through things over the phone, but it was fixed and our trip was locked down, but this wasn't the only part of the conversation.  While waiting for the mess to get cleaned up, the lovely operator went over some of the details of our trip with Allison on the phone.  She didn't really try to sell anything else, but instead gave us some valuable information. She informed Allison about all of the ride and park closures that would be happening while were there.  She also got into a conversation with Allison and managed to find out it was are anniversary trip.  She asked if there was anything else she could do to make our anniversary more special.  Allison told her that we liked extra pillows, which we do.

I'm not saying that we're going to get anything special when we get there, and there's no need really, but it was really nice of her to offer.  Allison actually stayed on the phone with the nice lady for a while, she was a fountain of information, and she really put us at ease about our trip plans.  We went from being fairly excited about this trip, to being really excited, all because of this lady on the phone.

Since the call we've received all of the notification that our problem has been fixed, and that our trip is ready to go.  After this experience my best advice to anybody planning a trip to Disney Paris is call to make your reservation.  The website is just not that great (either for reservations or for information), but the folks answering the phones are fantastic.  While the operators may answer the phone in French, many are multilingual, and so far all of them have spoken English.  Best of all, if Allison did try and communicate in French, they didn't stop her.  They would just slow down and let her practice her French.

Disney Paris An Overview

A little over a year ago I announced that our trip to Disney World was going to be postponed for a few years.  Just to bring you up speed Allison and I at the time lived in Greece and thought that we would be returning home soon.  As it turns out Allison got another assignment and we weren't going to be near North America, so we decided to push back our epic Disney World adventure till we got back.  Then, a few months ago it came to light that Allison and I would actually be really close to Paris France at the time of our anniversary, and we then thought it would be really cool to head to Paris Disney instead.  We did a bit of research, but only recently can we officially say that the trip is on.  So for the next few weeks' I'm going to write a bit about planning our trip to the happiest place in Europe.

If you're not familiar with the Disney parks in Paris, then today I'm going to bring you up to speed... or at least up to the speed that I am at.  The Disney park in Paris opened as Euro Disney back in 1992, but has since changed its name to Disneyland Paris.  The park was an absolute flop when it opened, and has continued to garner the reputation as being an economic failure.  Since I'm not an economist I'm not really sure if that's true, but as a tourist I can tell you that it's still open, and still updating attractions regularly.  Most people assume that the park consists only of one Disneyland like park, but that is also not true.  There are in fact two parks Disneyland Paris and Disney Studios.  There are also several Disney hotels (themed around American style locations) and a Downtown Disney place for entertainment and restaurants.

While the park doesn't have the history of Disneyland in California, or the sheer size of Disney World, it still seems like a pretty fun place to check out.  It has a few attractions that are unique to the Paris parks, and there are a few classic attractions found at other parks as well.  I assume that many of the attractions will be in French, but I also assume that they're going to try and bring in outside guests, so there'll also be a few things in English as well.  It doesn't really matter to us as Allison and I both speak French fairly well.

Our plan is to visit the parks in the spring for two or three days, this works with our Anniversary, as well as other plans we have in the area.  Since we don't live in Europe or North America, our planning is all going to be done from a long distance.  This is going to be challenging I'm sure, particularly with long distance charges and time differences.  Research wise I've found a few interesting websites on the subject of Disneyland Paris:

There's the official Disneyland Paris website.  It's OK, but lacks a lot of detail.

The best site I've seen is the Disneyland Paris Guide.  Other than the regular updates (the food menus are a few years old) I would say that this is a much better site to research your trip.  It's even more professional than the actual Disneyland Paris site.

Character Central is a great site for all the parks.  While it doesn't just focus on Disneyland Paris, it at the very least looks at it.

When you search the internet for Disney parks other than Disney World or Disneyland California, you really don't get much.  Maybe I'll change that, but probably not much.

As for videos online, I've come across one video that interested me, it's a copy of the official tourist promotional DVD from 2005:



So we're off an running, for the next few weeks I'll be talking a bit more about organizing our trip, what we expect, and what I've learned about this off the beaten path Disney park.

Epic Disney Update (Yet Another Twist)

It's been a while since I've posted anything on this blog, mostly because I thought that we wouldn't be going to Disney in another 2 or 3 years. It seemed like I'd run out of things to write about in that long time.  It's safe to say that we're not really planning anything for that trip as of yet.  But there's a twist, something new has come up.  Since we're not going to be anywhere near Florida for our anniversary, Allison and I started thinking about what to do anyways.  Then it occurred to us, why not see if there's another Disney park that could visit on our 10th anniversary.  As it turns out we're planning on being in the UK around the time of our anniversary already, and Paris is only a quick train trip away.  So it looks like we're going to have a bonus (maybe more awesome than epic) trip to a Disney park.

So for the next few months I'll be posting a few things about how we're planning our Awesome Disneyland Paris Adventure.  We're still trying to figure out the logistics at this point, but it's looking pretty good so far.

Is Star Wars Land A Reality?

One of the question marks I have about new attractions to Disney World is the possibility of Star Wars Land.  Since George Lucas sold the franchise to Disney, rumours have been flying around about the possibility of Star Wars Land.  Presently there are two Star Wars themed parts to the park, one is an attraction and one an event.

The attraction is fairly old-fashioned in concept in comparison with most modern theme park rides.  It is a motion simulator, called Star Tours, which takes you on an adventure through the Star Wars universe.  One interesting thing about this ride is that it was one of the first simulator rides of its kind, but there's a new feature to this ride.  Recently they've updated the ride to allow each experience on the ride to be different.  So each time you ride the Star Tours experience, you travel to different parts of the Star Wars universe.

The event, which takes place annually at Disney Hollywood studios, is the Star Wars Weekend.  Once a year Star Wars fans, as well as Star Wars celebrities, meet for a weekend dedicated to all things Star Wars.  There are special shows, exhibits, and meet and greets throughout the park.  It has become one of the staple events at Disney World and attracts many fans from all over the world.

At this point I've heard two different stories about what kind of expansion might be coming that involve Star Wars.  Some say that they're going to take out several attractions at Disney Hollywood Studios, and build a land from scratch dedicated to Star Wars.  Others have said that they may refurbish Tomorrow Land at the Magic Kingdom.  At this point I'm sure designs are in the works, and I can only hope that it'll be up and running by the time we go.  Allison has already made up an expression for what might happen if so, she calls herself a “Star Wars widow".

Where We Stand in The New Year

With our great life's change, the date of our Epic Disney Vacation has been delayed for a few years. Don't get me wrong, this trip is still going to happen, the change is not a financial problem, nor have Allison and I grown apart.  We've moved the date for great news, and we're not having kids either.  It's simply one of life's changes that make it geographically difficult to get to Florida for our anniversary.

The biggest change that comes with this rescheduling is the chance for a date (time of year) change as well.  The initial plan was to visit Disney World for our 10th wedding anniversary, so our date was fairly locked.  Now that we're not going to make that date for sure, we're more open to the idea of moving the time of year we're thinking of going.  September seems like a good month to go, and we could tie it into Allison's birthday.  We'll have to do a little more research on this topic now that the time of year is open.

Finally with this extension comes the realization that some of the new attractions that would not have been open yet, will be ready to visit.  The new Fantasy Land will be running at full steam, and in three years shouldn't be as busy.  Avatar Land should be finished by then as well, something I was a little disappointed that I thought I might miss.  Disney Springs should also be up and running by then, and that could influence our hotel choice, depending on what they open there.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with this blog.