Yesterday we returned from our trip to Disneyland Paris. While we had a great time, it was a trip with some letdowns. Maybe my expectations about DLP's 25th Anniversary were too high. Like in recent years we stayed off site in a non-Disney hotel called Relais Spa Chessy in Val D'Europe. The hotel was fine as always, but I think next time we will stay on property again. Although the hotel offers a free shuttle to the parks from 8:30am to midnight, it's still not as convinient as staying at Disney. We are annual pass holders and that qualifies us for the Extra Magic Hours in the morning, but since the shuttle doesn't leave in time, we always had to walk to the parks. We didn't mind the walk, since it was only 25 minutes and the walkway was quite nice. Another thing we liked about the Relais Spa during our last stays was the fridge, because Claudia and I are both vegan and the fridge allowed us to bring some vegan goods with us. However this year we didn't use it that much, since we ate most of the time at the parks thanks to the Earl of Sandwich and the new Vapiano Restaurant. So if the price difference isn't that big, we will consider the Hotel Cheyenne next year. As I mentioned before, this trip had some let downs. As you know, DLP is celebrating the 25th Anniversary this year. It's very easy to miss that, because besides some decorations it was barely noticeable. Of course there's a new parade, which was okay, but I admit that we didn't watch the whole parade, because we aren't parade fans and the music didn't appeal to us. The dragon however was great. The next big thing for the Anniversary was the new Illuminations night time show. We didn't like it. The show is way behind the wonderful Disney Dreams, which I miss greatly. It somehow feels like DLP realized that they hadn't anything new for the Anniversary and had to come up quickly with something. It's just a revue show on the castle with fireworks that shows off all the franchises Disney owns. Star Wars felt so out of place and so did POTC. In my opinion such shows should only be about Disney and Pixar animated movies. What I would have also expected for the anniversary were branded bags like they did during other anniversaries. Instead they only have the bland DLP bags from last year. DLP doesn't sell alcohol inside the parks anymore without purchasing something to eat. While all other Disney parks around the world even have regular bars inside the parks, DLP gets more and more conservative. This might not be a big deal, but it's still annoying. Luckily there is still Cafe Fantasia inside the Disneyland Hotel, which by the way needs a refurb sooner than later. I really don't get the people who pay tons of money to stay there. Disneyland Park has never looked that beautiful. Disney did indeed a good job with all the refurbs. The park looked fantastic on the outside, but it's getting worse on the inside. I have never had experienced so many technical problems during any of my DLP trips like during this year. Even during the dark times ten years ago we never encountered so many ride closures because of technical problems. On one day Crush, ToT, RC Racer and RnRC were down when the park opened. In fact there were ride closures on each day of our trip. The Extra Magic Hours are a also joke with all the technical problems. During the EMH Fantasyland and Discoveryland are open to Disney Hotel guests and to annual pass holders, who have the more expensive passes. In recent years Peter Pan, the caroussel and the Tea Cups were open in Fantasyland, and SM, Buzz Lightyear and Orbitron were open in Discoveryland. This year they traded SM for Star Tours, which was okay, but the wait times for Star Tours were always 30 minutes, although they said 15 on the outside. And every day either Peter Pan or Buzz were down because of technical problems and always opened later during the EMH. SM was a far better chioce for the EMH. Maybe Disney is doing that on purpose to save money. We knew that Cinemagique was closed, and we also knew that there wouldn't be a replacement. However it's the 25th Anniversary and crap like Armageddon is still open and one of the best attractions in the troubled WDSP is closed. Doesn't make any sense for me, but I'm not the operator. I'm not an expert on air conditioning, but when it's hot it should be turned on. Not so at DLP. We were inside RnRC and outside we had around 30°C when the ride broke down. You can't imagine how hot it got in the queue. We and many others left because of the temperatures inside. I'm pretty sure RnRC has air conditioning, but maybe it was also down due to technical problems. Now on to the good things! As I mentioned before, the Disneyland Park looked fantastic. It was clean and so well maintained on the outside. The park is a real gem now. The Cast Members were so lovely and friendly, but that's nothing new when you are nice and friendly to them as well. Star Tours The Adventure Continues looks also great and still is a lot of fun, but now it's entirely in French. Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain was better than expected. The overlay is okay, but I wish they would return to De La Terre A La Lune, which I guess is not going to happen. The new ride vehicles are very comfortable and beautiful and fit the original SM perfectly. Thanks to those new cars the ride isn't as bumpy anymore. The downside of the Star Wars overlay was that the attraction is very popular again. Wait times even exceeded 60 minutes. I've never seen that in many years. Big Thunder Mountain looks also great after the refurbishment. The new explosion effect is basically a copy of the one in Anaheim, but it's a cool effect. Frontierland in general got a good clean up and looks fresh again. The merchandise for the 25th Anniversary is very basic, but it's fine. However the new book about the resort is really nice, but a bit pricey. At Disney Village a new casual Italian restaurant called Vapiano opened. We knew this chain restaurant already from home and since we like to eat there we were very happy that it opened at Disney. The only downside is that it is outside the security checks. Despite all the flaws we had a great time at Disneyland Paris. However since January 2015 we did a Disney Cruise, visited WDW and DL Anaheim and traveled to Disneyland Paris three times. Now I really need a longer break than six months from Disney, because being at Disney so often makes it less and less special. A Disney park once a year is enough. Additionally we visted Paris for one day, where we also had a great time. Now I'm looking forward to our USA trip in September.
There are some interesting thoughts there. All the ride down time doesn't sound good. When we were there last year Ratatouille had lots of problems and we only just got to ride it before we left. I'm still not sure it was running correctly... I'm not a big parade fan, but I'll make sure I watch the new one at least once. I agree that too much Disney definitely takes the shine off after a while, but we're probably going to get new APs this year after many years of not having them.
That's a shame that there were so many problems along the way. It sounds like DLP's 25th took all the wrong lessons from DL's 50th, and ignored the small things that really made a difference. That anniversary was also rushed at the last minute, and focused on refurbishments and entertainment, but also managed to capture a lot of nostalgia for the park's past, which continues to be their main marketing message 12+ years later. Given DLP's rocky history, I'm not sure that was the best format to try to copy I'm also disappointed to hear that Illuminations is a downgrade. I thought that Dreams was the best nighttime show Disney's done in recent years, especially since it managed to use some somewhat-obscure characters/songs and follow a loose story. It sounds like the new show falls into the trap of World of Color (and so many shows since then) of just throwing all sorts of stuff out there with no real reason. I've heard good things about MK's new show, so I'm cautiously optimistic about that Hopefully they can find a way to work on the reliability of the attractions. Although the parks have a decent lineup of offerings, there's not a lot of excess capacity for when attractions are taken offline, so they really need to keep everything operating
Today I advised my bank to sell my Euro Disney SCA shares to TWDC. So as of tomorrow I'm no longer a DLP shareholder. Boy, that was a bad investment ;-) Hopefully the TWDC takeover will mean a brighter future for the troubled European resort!
It's still worth watching Illuminations at least once, but that's definitely enough. The show is just not good enough to be a worthy successor of Dreams. It should have been the other way round. As for the 25th Anniversary I expected something like the 20th, which was really well executed, or like Disneyland's 60th Anniversary. Even in 2016 one year after the actual celebrations the decorations looked great. I really liked how they did pull that one off.
Your pics are beautiful! I still say DLP has the prettiest castle hands down between DLR, WDW, and DLP. The colors pop in your pictures, and it was a nice reminder of why I enjoyed the park when I visited a few years ago. Too bad so many rides were not working though...one would think during the 25th celebration they would've been on top of their game in that arena.
Great pictures, as always! I especially liked the one of the geysers in Frontierland at sunset; I don't think I've actually seen a photo of that area since it was restored, but it looks great! And I completely agree with you on the Armageddon attraction. It was closed for refurbishment during my first visit to WDSP, and it just happened to be our first attraction of the trip this last time. It's clearly a ripoff of the Backdraft attraction at Universal (which isn't a great attraction to start with), but it's just not very good. Of all the changes that park has seen in the last 10+ years, I'm surprised it hasn't been changed out for something better
I also don't get why Armageddon is still there. While I really like the movie, I even like it today, I just don't get why this attraction is still there and Cinemagique is gone.
I think Armageddon would make a great preshow for Disneyland's Space Mountain. They could put the queue through the upstairs Starcade.
