Theme Parks

Disneyland Paris

Disneyland Paris

There are plenty of ways to enjoy a Disney vacation if you live in the U.S. There’s the classic Disneyland Anaheim that many of us grew up with, the occasional trip to Walt Disney World that newer, younger folks on the east coast are used to, and there’s of course the large and growing group of people who simply migrate to Florida to enjoy Disney full time, like we have.

Not that we’re bored with Disney, but when something new comes along, you grab it. And that’s just what happened on a recent trip to Europe.

We were on an extended stay in Germany for the summer and wanted to visit Disneyland Paris, so we finally made it happen.

We leased a car in Frankfurt, Germany, for our stay in Germany, but we built in some extra time at the end,  so we could hop a train and head over to Paris. We were actually combining adventures. We’ve never taken advantage of Europe’s famous train transportation system, we’d never been to Belgium, and of course, there was the prize at the end of the train ride, Disneyland Paris.

ICE Train from Frankfurt to Brussels

This is the train that was blazing along at 185MPH between Frankfurt and Brussels. We’re in the train station beneath a terminal at the Frankfurt Airport. Photo by Bonnie Fink.

It was good to start a train ride from Germany. Since we had been in the country for a few weeks, we were getting used to hearing the language and reading the signs, so when the completely foreign concept of riding a train, negotiating the ticket buying process, finding the boarding platforms, and so on were at hand, we weren’t completely lost.

Our first train riding day was just a couple of hours over to Brussels, Belgium. We read that the trains that go long distances were reasonably fast, but we had no idea. The speed indicator in the cabin of the train showed that we were travelling at 300 Kph, which works out to slightly over 186 Mph. And sure enough, when we held our GPS equipped phone up to the window to receive a good signal, the driving app showed right around 185 mph. Didn’t take long at all to get from Frankfurt to Brussels.

As an American who’s ridden a train in the US (a long, long time ago), we thought the ride at that kind of speed would have been reasonably rough. In fact, we would worry that a train traveling at that speed on most US tracks would simply jump off the tracks. In fairness, the ride to Brussels was a bit too rough to use the computer to write, or the Kindle to read, and it was a bit of a challenge to move around the cabin, but considering the speed, it wasn’t bad. On the ride from Brussels to Paris, the track was considerably smoother.

We spent two nights in Brussels, which gave us a full day to explore the city.

Brussels

Brussels at the Grand Square

The Grand Place is the central Square in Brussels. Once the center of government in Belgium, the square was destroyed by the French in 1695. Surprisingly, it took only four years to re-build by the city’s guilds. Photo by Bonnie Fink.

Brussels is a city to come back to. We’ll put up a post about Brussels, with pictures, in short order. We spent two nights at the Hilton Brussels Grand Place which was located downtown in the City Center, near all the city’s tourist activities.

As you may know, Brussels is the capital of the European Union, and as such it’s a vibrant place. It also has extremely heavy security all around. In this case, it made us feel reasonably safe.

Being typical tourists, we concentrated our efforts in Brussels exploring the sights in the city, and of course, sampling the chocolate, and a Belgium waffle here and there. Believe it or not, the Belgium waffle was a bit different than what we’re used to in the US, and for the better. As for the chocolate? We run into some pretty good chocolate in our ramblings around Walt Disney World so it’s hard to compete with our reasonably picky chocolate pallets, but Brussels did a good job. Let’s put it this way: On our trip back through Brussels from Paris to Frankfurt, we had just enough time between connections in Brussels that we set out in the train station looking for more chocolate to take back to Frankfurt.

On to Disneyland Paris

The train station at Disneyland Paris is literally at Disneyland Paris. There’s a station that lets you off right at the entrance to the parks. It’s also the entrance to Disney Village, which is the Disneyland Paris version of Disney Springs, or Downtown Disney in Anaheim. A quick walk through Disney Village and we arrived at our hotel, which was Disney’s Newport Bay Club.

We arrived mid-day, and our room wasn’t ready, so we checked our bags and headed over to a park. An interesting side note about the room not being ready was that it seemed to us that the room wasn’t ready mostly because it wasn’t 3:00 pm. We didn’t notice any effort to determine if our room was available. It just wasn’t. Fortunately, the kind of reservations Bonnie had made included the room and the park tickets, and the tickets were good for the day of arrival and the day of departure. It was absolutely no big deal to simply drop off our bags and head over to Disneyland for an afternoon of fun while we waited for our room to be ready, or for 3:00 pm to come around, whatever the reason was.

We had heard stories that the French (or more accurately the Europeans) didn’t queue well in lines, particularly when getting on a ride, entering a bus, or seeing a character. We didn’t ride a bus during this visit, but we actually took time to see how folks were behaving here in Europe, and truthfully, we didn’t notice anything significantly different from anything we see on a regular basis at Walt Disney World in Florida.

The cast members were polite in a Disney kind of way, but the magic wasn’t quite there as it is in Florida. An example to illustrate what we mean is, have you ever watched the cast members in Florida when they’re setting up for a parade? They are usually interacting with the guests, dancing, and singing to the music in the background. It’s a delightful thing to watch, and you simply can’t make employees behave in this kind of over-the-top, friendly and enthusiastically way. At Walt Disney World, it’s obvious that the cast members are there because they want to be there. At Disneyland Paris, the cast members were polite and competent, but the magic wasn’t quite as evident. It was more of a job. Or so it seemed to us. We were watching a Main Street band (the equivalent of the Main Street Orchestra at the Magic Kingdom) play a few tunes, and many of the musicians were reading their music as they played. We’ve never seen the band play at Walt Disney World where they even had their music with them. Their parts had long been committed to memory. At Disneyland Paris, we saw a band playing tunes. At the Magic Kingdom in Florida, we typically see the Main Street Orchestra, but it’s not a band playing, it’s a performance.

Does this mean we won’t come back to Disneyland Paris? Of course not. If it wasn’t for the fact that we spend a tremendous amount of time in Walt Disney World in Florida, we probably wouldn’t have noticed the difference. We’re jaded in that way. And as it was, the experience at Disneyland Paris was absolutely a positive one. We just like “our Disney” better.

Walt Disney Studios

Entrance to Walt Disney Studios

The Earffel Tower is still present at Walt Disney Studios. Photo by Bonnie Fink.

We should talk about Walt Disney Studios first because it was our least favorite. That way we can end the article on a high note.

Walt Disney Studios is probably the equivalent to Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida. It houses the Tower of Terror Ride, a land called Toy Story and a few other twists not present in Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Florida. Truthfully, it wasn’t a “full day” park in our opinions. The Toy Story Land was cool, but it’s designed for the very young people, and as such the rides were of the more subdued variety. With a heavy presence of Buddy and a slightly disturbing French speaking Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, and various other characters, it’s certainly worth a stop if you have youngins with you.

If this is what Toy Story Land is going to look like at the Hollywood Studios in Florida, there will be some happy youngsters. It was fun place for them.

Disneyland

Disneyland Paris Cinderella's Castle

Disneyland Paris Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. Photo by Donald Fink.

Disneyland at Disneyland Paris is interesting. First, it’s a “full day” park as much as any other Disney park we’ve ever encountered. It’s well maintained, well groomed, and except for the absence of the “magic” from the cast members we mentioned before, it’s every bit as much of a Disneyland as any other Disneyland we’ve visited.

The colors are different. Take a look at the pictures to see what we mean. Rather than being a duplicate of Main Street USA in either Anaheim or Florida, for example, it’s as if it was a brand-new creation. The street is brick instead of pavement.

The buildings, while the same in terms of late 19th century or early 20th century architecture, are completely different in their colors from the other parks. There’s a square at the head of Main Street USA, but instead of a massive flag pole, there’s a gazebo like you would see in many typical small towns in the USA. Casey’s is on the corner where it belongs, but there was no piano player. The ice cream shop was across the street, and while looking similar, it was selling Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Ben and Jerry’s is an ice cream company headquartered in Vermont, but it seems to be really big here in Europe. Oh, and to underscore the fact that it was indeed Mainstreet U.S.A., many of the buildings did indeed have the Stars and Stripes flying overhead, even though the main flagpole was missing.

Phantom Manor, Disneyland Paris

Phantom Manor can be found in Frontierland at Disneyland Paris. Photo by Bonnie Fink.

Frontierland was huge; at least twice as big as it is in the Magic Kingdom in Florida. Or so it seemed. There was the Haunted Mansion—called Phantom Manor—that was nearly the same as The Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World. The queue was a bit better designed here, and some of the features, while nearly the same, seemed a bit more up-to-date in terms of their technology. They were more believable. Even though the dialog was in French, it was still scary.

Of course, there was Big Thunder Mountain. We didn’t ride, but it appeared to be the same as Walt Disney World’s version. Of course, the setting was a bit different because there’s a “river” next to the ride, separating it from Phantom Manor, and providing a place for the riverboat.

What we did not see was the Country Bear Jamboree or Splash Mountain. We can see why Splash Mountain is left out. After all, it actually snows at Disneyland Paris, and since Splash Mountain is a wet ride, it wouldn’t be all that popular in the winter. No idea about Country Bear Jamboree. Maybe the French aren’t as fascinated with singing bears as we are.

Adventureland  has a ride called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, or Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril. It’s a small roller coaster ride in a mine car through what looks like an archaeological dig. It’s the only ride we’re aware of in a Magic Kingdom Park that goes upside down. By upside down, we mean that it does a quick inside loop, but it happens so fast, and it’s so tight, that you have to pay attention to notice it. We were shooting with our GoPro when the loop occurred, and the extra G force caused Don’s hand to move down slightly and the upside down part was completely missed in the video.

For the “It’s a Small World” fans around, the ride seems to be brighter, happier (if that’s possible), and with better audio. The GoPro had no trouble capturing the whole thing, and it usually struggles with the ambient light in the ride at Walt Disney World.

Final Thoughts

When we were doing our research about Disneyland Paris, we read several stories about the place being run  down, rude cast members, out of control crowds, and so on. When got there, none of it was true. The parks were actually in good shape in terms of repair, paint, and so on. Disneyland itself was pristine. Walt Disney Studios seemed to lack a bit of focus for us, but maybe we were having an off day. It was very cold the day we were there. Maybe we were grumpy.

The hotel was odd in its layout, but otherwise a fine hotel that reminded us of The Yacht and Beach Club at Epcot. Its level of repair was not quite up to Disney standards in Florida, but remember the harsh weather in France. It might just be enough to make the difference. The hotel was great in all ways that matter.

PanoraMagique

Take a six minute ride in PanoraMagique. Photo by Donald Fink.

The one area that needs improvement in our view was Disney Village. From an appearance point of view, it seems a bit run down. Even accounting for the harsh weather, it needs work. On the plus side, there was a Starbucks, an Earl of Sandwich, a MacDonald’s, and a Five Guys Burger, as well as other great places to eat. Shopping seemed adequate too.

Safety should not be a problem at Disneyland Paris. Every entrance was covered with security, including all entrances to Disney Village. We make it our practice to not go into the specifics of exactly what the security was like, but security was there, and it seemed to be effective.

So, will we go back to Disneyland Paris? The answer to that is absolutely. Probably, the next time we come to Europe, we’ll figure a way to make our way to Paris and spend a few days at Disney. Actually, what we would like to do is stay at a Disney hotel, most likely the Disneyland Hotel at the very entrance to Disneyland, and visit the parks from there. We could build in a couple of extra days to the trip and use the train station to make our way into Paris City Center to visit Paris too.

Posted by Donald Fink in Blog, Europe, Theme Parks, 0 comments
Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort

Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort

Visiting Disney and staying on property during a holiday of some kind has become almost a tradition for us. It started with New Years, wanting to be on property so as to not have to deal with New Years Eve drivers. Then it moved to Christmas, and now it seems like pretty much any excuse we have, we’re staying on property having a mini-vacation. This last one was the Fourth of July holiday, and we stayed at one of our favorite moderate hotels, Disney’s Coronado Springs.

Coronado Springs is modeled in the 17th century Spanish style buildings found all over the southwest. If you’re a Californian, you might think it represents Southern California because that’s what much of the southern half of the state looks like.

This hotel, as we understand it, is designed as a place that Disney used for convention business. In fact, it houses a 90,000 square foot convention hall that’s set aside just for that purpose. What this means to most folks is that, unless there’s an actual convention in progress when you’re there, it’s usually pretty quiet. We’ve actually been there when a convention was in town and it was still reasonably quiet compared to some of the other hotels. There’s a new fifteen story addition currently under construction here, projected to be complete some time in 2019, and we think the hotel will still be a quiet, out-of-the-way, lazy little place to relax.

We’ve heard people mention on social media that Coronado Springs is too far away from everything, but we’re not sure what that means. We use Disney transportation when we’re staying on property, and to us, everything is no farther away than the nearest bus stop. In fact, Coronado Springs sits between Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom, so it’s actually in between two of the four parks, and still just a bus ride away from the remaining two parks and Disney Springs.

Although not intended as a full review of this hotel, we thought we should at least mention one of our favorite restaurants, Las Ventanas. Another tradition of ours is to seek out the best breakfast on Disney property. There is some good company here in terms of quality, places like The Garden Grill at Epcot and Whispering Canyon Cafe at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.

Currently, our all-time favorite breakfast is the Whole Wheat Pancakes, although a close second is the Sourdough French Toast or the Huevos Divorciados.

It’s not fair to try to rank the hotels at Disney. For us, we happen to like them all, and our favorite is usually the one we’re staying in at the time. Of course we prefer the Deluxe hotels over the Moderates, and the Moderate hotels are preferred over the Value resorts. But since we’ve stayed in all three “classes” of hotels, we’ve never had a bad time or even a valid complaint. So, we can truthfully say that since we were just there over the Fourth of July, Coronado Springs is our favorite Moderate hotel on Disney Property. Until our next stay.

Below are a few images we made during this recent visit. We did a more complete Photo Tour for MousePlanet.com in 2016, and you can see the images and article here.

Posted by Donald Fink and Bonnie Fink in Blog, Disney, Hotels, Theme Parks, 0 comments
Port Orleans

Port Orleans

Today we started another vacation. And as with many of our vacations, we’re spending the night at one of our favorite Disney hotels, Disney’s Port Orleans, Riverside. We’ve stayed at this hotel many times before and even posted a story about it on Mouseplanet.com here.

Today, our check in at Disney’s Port Orleans is worth noting. Disney has a process where you can electronically check in without visiting the front desk, and today it worked that way for us. For our check in, we received a text message from Disney telling us that our room was ready, and giving us our room number. We  already had a Magic Band associated with our account, and when the room was made ready it was associated with that room number. All we had to do was make our way to the room and walk in. No stopping by the front desk, no nothing. Tomorrow when we leave, we’ll just get up, load our stuff in the car, and leave. Easy Peasy. Continue reading →

Posted by Donald Fink and Bonnie Fink in Blog, Disney, Hotels, Theme Parks, 0 comments
Gingerbread Carousel at Yacht and Beach Club

Gingerbread Carousel at Yacht and Beach Club

Not long ago we posted a note about the Gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian. We thought it was a lot of fun to see, and kind of unique. And while it is unique by most standards, it turns out that it isn’t alone in the Disney scheme of things. There are others, and have been for some time.

Today we want to show you the Gingerbread Carousel, presented by the chefs and engineers at the Yacht and Beach Club resort Hotels. Like the gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian, this tradition has been around for fourteen years and is an amazing piece of confection to see. Located in the lobby of the Beach Club, this rotating gingerbread delight includes 2013 pieces of gingerbread, 14 hidden Mickeys, and displays images of the “Fab Five”, which is Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Pluto. If you visit this display, take a moment and see how many of the hidden Mickeys and Fab Five you can spot.

Gingerbread Carousel Ingrediants

A complete list of ingredients showing what it takes to create the Gingerbread Carousel at Disney’s Yacht and Beach Club Resort. It’s impressive to watch the team of chefs at work. Photo by Donald Fink.

Continue reading →

Posted by Donald Fink in Blog, Disney, Florida, Theme Parks, 1 comment
Gingerbread House at Grand Floridian

Gingerbread House at Grand Floridian

Each year at the Walt Disney World Resort a transition takes place around the holidays. Main Street at the Magic Kingdom first decorates in a Halloween theme then changes over to Christmas. Decorations go up all around all the parks and hotels. Continue reading →

Posted by Donald Fink and Bonnie Fink in Blog, Disney, Theme Parks, 1 comment
Festival of the Masters

Festival of the Masters

This weekend was another hit at Downtown Disney. It was time for the annual Festival of the Masters art show. Judging from the lack of parking on Saturday, it was one of the more popular events on the year. Of course, there’s a lot of construction in progress as Disney creates Disney Springs and that’s sure to have contributed to some of the parking situation, but Downtown was certainly busy.

We were impressed with the high quality of all of the art. Ranging from paintings of nearly every type, to photography, sculptures, and jewelry, there was something for nearly everyone. We’re photographers, and we saw everything from classic canvas prints to the new glass mounted panoramas.

The event was held for three days, Friday, November 8, 2013 through Sunday, November 11th, and with the volume of artists displaying, from Cirque Du Soleil on the West Side all the way to Earl of Sandwich in the Marketplace, it would have been difficult to see everything.

If you’re a local, or if you’re here during the Festival next year, it might be worth a visit to see this incredible art; maybe pick up a piece for home.

Posted by Donald Fink in Blog, Disney, Theme Parks, 0 comments
Halloween At Fort Wilderness Campground

Halloween At Fort Wilderness Campground

There are so many facets of the Walt Disney World resort that it’s sometimes hard to keep it in perspective. It’s almost a world of its own. Every year, for example, beginning around Halloween, folks staying in the Fort Wilderness Campground go crazy setting up decorations. Continue reading →

Posted by Donald Fink in Blog, Disney, Theme Parks, 0 comments
Three Broomsticks – Universal Orlando Theme Parks

Three Broomsticks – Universal Orlando Theme Parks

We went to Universal Orlando for a quick lap around the parks a couple of days ago, and ended up having lunch at The Three Broomsticks, in Hogsmeade. As theme park fast food goes, this dine-in restaurant is in a class that we’d call “pretty good food”. Continue reading →

Posted by Donald Fink and Bonnie Fink in Blog, Theme Parks, 0 comments