steve_rob
Mine? Mine? Mine? Mine?
- Joined
- May 23, 2002
Given that it's been over 18 months since the DLP part of this forum has seen one, I guess we're well overdue for a new trip report and so why not me to kick it back off?
Admittedly it's going to be a short and sweet one as I don't exactly have tons of photos to pad it out with. Having been to the parks so many times, I tend only to take my camera in if there's something specific/new that I want to capture - already got good shots of most of the things I wanted to take on previous trips. But I'll try and find a few for you!
First, a quick introduction and a bit of background to this report:
It's just me and DW, both in our mid-40's. She's been going to Disney since she was a kid, first with her family to Florida in the early '80s (and very frequently since then) and to DLP fairly regularly since it opened in 1992 - too many visits to count in total! My first Disney park experience was solo to Anaheim in 1997, but since then all have been with DW (including before she was DW!) and can be seen listed in my signature below. Our last visit was for runDisneyParis weekend in September 2019, where I did the 10K on a very dodgy ankle.
We didn't book this trip until very late on - we're usually obsessive planners and have our holiday dates lined up 18+ months in advance but given the pandemic, at the start of the year we decided to just book some time off work in June and October without any plans to go anywhere. If the stars did not align and things were still bad at that time, we'd have a relaxing week at home, but if everything had started opening up by that point in the year, we'd try and go somewhere on at least one of those weeks.
The week in June came and went and while we did get a few day trips into London out of it, there was no proper holiday. I had managed to get away for a short cycling break in Inverness, Scotland earlier in the year but that was a solo trip as DW couldn't get the time off. So as we approached October, she was determined to get away for real given that it had been two years without travelling more than about 50 miles from home for her. We had originally hoped that America would be open by then, but that was not to be (if it had, we wouldn't have gone to WDW anyway - we feel we can only do that justice with a multi-week holiday), so our thoughts started to turn to Paris.
As soon as France was added to the UK's Amber list in early August, we started to sketch out a plan - we would do a three night midweek trip, Monday to Thursday, flying from Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle airport and staying off-site as close to DLP as we could. Ostensibly this was to save money, as the cost of the holiday was going to be more expensive then usual (flight prices higher due to pent-up demand and our late booking, plus the added cost of Covid tests while in France and also back in UK afterwards), but also it was a little bit of an experiment on our part.
We have previously stayed at most of the on-site hotels, but our favourite / most frequent has been the Disneyland Hotel. Yes it is the most luxurious, but the main reason is we appreciate the ability to pop back to the room quickly if we need to and also not have to face an extra 20 minute schlep at the end of the day (on no-doubt already tired legs) especially as we're not quite as young as we used to be! Of course this hotel is currently shut for refurbishment, so we faced a choice of picking something like the Hotel New York, or perhaps looking slightly further afield...
We knew the area around the Val D'Europe station (one stop down the line from DLP if you're not familiar with the area) quite well, having been to the shopping mall there on a few previous trips, but we weren't sure of what hotels were nearby if any. A quick look on Google Maps showed that there were three in a small group at one of the alternate entrances to the station (e.g. at the other end of the platforms to the main entrance near the shops) - an Ibis, an Ibis Budget and a Residhome. Checked them out online and the Residhome looked perfect for us, as it had a mini-kitchen so we would be able to do our own breakfasts with supplies from the Auchan supermarket nearby. We worked out that given it was less than 100 metres from the hotel entrance to the station and the trains were every five minutes (and only 3 minutes journey to the parks), we would probably even get to and from the parks quicker than it would take to walk to the Newport Bay (and about even to the New York). And the cost wasn't bad either - we got three nights for the same price as one at the HNY (albeit without tickets included in the price of course).
So flights (with Air France) were booked, hotel room reserved, 3-day passes bought from Disney (chose to get proper tickets posted to us rather than printing off PDFs - more on that later) and we were suddenly all ready to go with only about seven weeks notice! Stay tuned to find out how we got on...
Admittedly it's going to be a short and sweet one as I don't exactly have tons of photos to pad it out with. Having been to the parks so many times, I tend only to take my camera in if there's something specific/new that I want to capture - already got good shots of most of the things I wanted to take on previous trips. But I'll try and find a few for you!
First, a quick introduction and a bit of background to this report:
It's just me and DW, both in our mid-40's. She's been going to Disney since she was a kid, first with her family to Florida in the early '80s (and very frequently since then) and to DLP fairly regularly since it opened in 1992 - too many visits to count in total! My first Disney park experience was solo to Anaheim in 1997, but since then all have been with DW (including before she was DW!) and can be seen listed in my signature below. Our last visit was for runDisneyParis weekend in September 2019, where I did the 10K on a very dodgy ankle.
We didn't book this trip until very late on - we're usually obsessive planners and have our holiday dates lined up 18+ months in advance but given the pandemic, at the start of the year we decided to just book some time off work in June and October without any plans to go anywhere. If the stars did not align and things were still bad at that time, we'd have a relaxing week at home, but if everything had started opening up by that point in the year, we'd try and go somewhere on at least one of those weeks.
The week in June came and went and while we did get a few day trips into London out of it, there was no proper holiday. I had managed to get away for a short cycling break in Inverness, Scotland earlier in the year but that was a solo trip as DW couldn't get the time off. So as we approached October, she was determined to get away for real given that it had been two years without travelling more than about 50 miles from home for her. We had originally hoped that America would be open by then, but that was not to be (if it had, we wouldn't have gone to WDW anyway - we feel we can only do that justice with a multi-week holiday), so our thoughts started to turn to Paris.
As soon as France was added to the UK's Amber list in early August, we started to sketch out a plan - we would do a three night midweek trip, Monday to Thursday, flying from Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle airport and staying off-site as close to DLP as we could. Ostensibly this was to save money, as the cost of the holiday was going to be more expensive then usual (flight prices higher due to pent-up demand and our late booking, plus the added cost of Covid tests while in France and also back in UK afterwards), but also it was a little bit of an experiment on our part.
We have previously stayed at most of the on-site hotels, but our favourite / most frequent has been the Disneyland Hotel. Yes it is the most luxurious, but the main reason is we appreciate the ability to pop back to the room quickly if we need to and also not have to face an extra 20 minute schlep at the end of the day (on no-doubt already tired legs) especially as we're not quite as young as we used to be! Of course this hotel is currently shut for refurbishment, so we faced a choice of picking something like the Hotel New York, or perhaps looking slightly further afield...
We knew the area around the Val D'Europe station (one stop down the line from DLP if you're not familiar with the area) quite well, having been to the shopping mall there on a few previous trips, but we weren't sure of what hotels were nearby if any. A quick look on Google Maps showed that there were three in a small group at one of the alternate entrances to the station (e.g. at the other end of the platforms to the main entrance near the shops) - an Ibis, an Ibis Budget and a Residhome. Checked them out online and the Residhome looked perfect for us, as it had a mini-kitchen so we would be able to do our own breakfasts with supplies from the Auchan supermarket nearby. We worked out that given it was less than 100 metres from the hotel entrance to the station and the trains were every five minutes (and only 3 minutes journey to the parks), we would probably even get to and from the parks quicker than it would take to walk to the Newport Bay (and about even to the New York). And the cost wasn't bad either - we got three nights for the same price as one at the HNY (albeit without tickets included in the price of course).
So flights (with Air France) were booked, hotel room reserved, 3-day passes bought from Disney (chose to get proper tickets posted to us rather than printing off PDFs - more on that later) and we were suddenly all ready to go with only about seven weeks notice! Stay tuned to find out how we got on...
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