Disneyland Resort Paris - 30/03/09 - 03/04/09 Big PTR

[Crazycoaster]

Part 7 - Parade & Disney's Santa Fe Hotel

So everyday, Disney has a parade that cuts the park in two. If your in Discoveryland but are wanting to get to any other land while the parade is on you will find yourself thwarted at every turn.

YOU SHALL NOT CROSS!!

Anyways the parade is the usual Disney stuff..

it has a FRIGGIN' HUUGE FREAKY ALICE AHHHHH

And Pinocchio

And greeen men.

I dunno what it is about Woody and Girl Woody, but their big heads freak me out. I think they just remind me of giant babies, which nobody wants..

Tigger had AWSOME shoes. OMG I want a pair. Then I can go about my daily business while JUMPING OVER PEOPLE HUZZAAAH

OMG IS PETER PAN A GIRL OR A BOY?!?! I CAN'T TELL

Yaay penguin awesomeness!

Feeeed the buuuurds.. tuppence a baag!

Evil float

Ursula is all like GIMME YOUR VOICES

Lion King..

Baloo wearing a bra..

Crazy elephant thing that I can see haunting me in my dreams..

Reject Princess 1

Reject Princess 2... These princesses arn't important enough to get to ride on the main princess float. Gutted.

Whereas these ones do. As does Aurora off of sleeping beauty, but she was hiding


Onto my hotel! Santa Fe is located opposite Hotel Cheyenne, on the other side of the Rio Grande River..

Said river..

In no particular order, here are some shots of the theming and hotelage.

Styled around Mexican Pueblo hut buildings apparently.

It has authentic dumped 'theming'. "Yay kids! Lets go play on the old rusty car! WHO CAN GET TETANUS FIRST"

For some reason your not allowed to touch the cactus, you might hurt its feelings.

Some of the kids play areas deffinately had an authentic 'dogging' feel to them.

But I joke, the hotel is actually quite nice.

Its decorated nicely in its desert style.

You get some nice views from the top here.

See.

Its nice how the buildings get taller the further back they are set, giving a multiplicity of heights when seen from the front and making sure no building is hidden.

This is in the middle of the Snake section. At first we had no clue as to what it was, but you can tell from this angle.

We then jumped really far and were at the top of it.

It has a randomly placed 1950's UFO.

And some nice rock features placed randomly. The strange shape ontop of that building is to represent the roadrunner & Balancing rocks that make the area famous.

This was right outside my building.

My room was located on the top floor of building 50. The only one that was black and white. This was apparently part of the buffalo's story, representing the light and dark of humanity or something.. It also had 4 other coloured buildings behind.

Room was tastefully tacky in its decoration.

A nice shot of the lights. The big sign you can see is actually a fake drive in theatre screen, locating the entrance to the hotel. Next door is 'La Cantina'

]
The buffet restaurant..

This was definitely the nicest themed part of the hotel.

See. Lovely.

They did mega awsome free breakfasts here. We ate LOADS.

And one last look at the entrance. We waited till friday to take a picture of this part, and unfortunately the weather was a bit overcast that day =(

That brings me to the end of this part! Next up will deffinatley be Walt Disney Studios.

 

[Ollie]

I'm loving this trip report BTW. Can't wait for the next update.
The Santa Fe hotel is ugly.

 

[marc]

Cool pictures again, seems strange seeing a parade anywhere but from Main Street.

 

[Ben]

Wow, that hotel is hideous...

 

[Crazycoaster]

^ Still though, for £300pp inc. park tickets, 4 nights / 5 days, breakfast and Eurostar return, I saw past the ugly

 

[nadroJ]

It's not ugly, it's themed! (It is ugly, looks like a prison) I stayed in the black building too =] I bet they put all people who book a room at Santa Fe aged 25 and under without a family group in that building, seems like a Disney thing to do.

Apparently the UFO thing is something to do with Roswell?

I really hate the Disney parades apart from Spectromagic (<3) the floats never seem different to me.

Still, great PTR can't wait for more =D

 

[Crazycoaster]

^ Haha I know what you mean about the parade, I was saying 'I swear this was the daytime one from Florida..', but I guess theres only so much you can do with a couple of floats and dancing people.

 

[Mark]

Yeah, they are definately different floats from the first visit which was years back. They tend to only change the shows on a biannually basis I believe, sometimes less.

It's definately different from the Orlando show though. Although, as Crazycoaster said, there really is only so much you can do with the floats and dancing people. Although the ones in the states were just that little bit better

Great pictures of a very boring hotel tehe. That was where I stayed the very first time I visited DLP. Since then I have stayed Sequoia Lodge, which is just absolutely gorgeous and authentically rustic and then the Disneyland Hotel for my birthday last year. Needless to say, it was one of the best birthdays I have ever ever had. I love the main hotel. Waking up in the morning overlooking the park and everything. Was tres amazing.

Anyways, back to Santa Fe and the pictures, I have always found the hotel looks almost tacky with the neon strip lighting along the sides... does anyone else think that? It just all looks so bland, I know that is the point, but it's so square and one colour it's horrid. Like slums. Not the best "theme" for a hotel really. Even the "economy" hotels in the states (at Orlando and CA) are much nicer and still look the Disney part.

 

[peep]

I think I've watched that parade too many times (must be about 15 times), I'm very bored of it now. They rarely change a parade as they cost a fortune to make. The current Once Upon A Dream Parade has been around since 2007 now.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Santa Fe but at least it's well themed and fairly cheap. The UFO always makes me lol when I walk past it, I dunno why.

 

[marc]

The worst parade was the one in the Studio Park, thank god thats going or gone

But the one they are getting is not much better.

 

[Crazycoaster]

See I liked the parade because its a great crowd absorber and makes the queues shorter around the park, but my biggest gripe with it was the fac that if you were in discoveryland and wanted to go to fantasyland, you had to walk all the way down to the entrance and do a big loop of main st. They should have areas where you can cross supervised by cast members every now and then or something similar.

 

[Crazycoaster]

Part 8 - Walt Disney Studios.

We see you Studios!

During our visit, Studio 1 was being refurbed.

Entrance

This is the entrance plaza. Its not really that interesting tbh. Although the screen covering the front of Studio 1 makes it look like I bodged stuck it there in paint!

It has a funky fountain though.

They made sure the Earful Tower was much more prominent in this park.

I didn't have any interesting pictures of Studio 1. It basically consists of a restaurant on one side and a shop that sells generic stuff on the other side.

Yeaaah look at my amazing photo skills...

The Partners Statue. Strangely not located in the Magic Kingdom parks like Tokyo or Florida. But atleast it has one, Hong Kong still lacks Walt.

The rear of studio 1

Straight ahead we have one of them fake road things, I forget what they call this?

At the bottom is the Studio Tram Tour.

This version also contains catastrophe canyon.

SPLAAAASHHH

Then it also has random Dinotopia..

And some props of stuff. I won't bore you with pictures of those.

GRRR IM TOWER!

And reign of fire. There was a massive build up to this area and then..

..just a bit of fire. No animatronic dragon or anything pffft.

Still it looked quite cool.

Ooooh spoooky.

This is the majoritory of the park, theres not much here really.

BUT YAAY MICKEY

aaand me.

Apparently when the park first opened it didn't even have any of these facades... What exactly DID this park have when it opened?! =S

Tower of Terror is all like "YOU CANT SEE MEEE".

"BONJOUR! TOUT LA FRUIT!" says Tower.

Tower has awsome fastpass machines. Im awsome for thinking that.

An ever so different shot of Tower..

I couldn't be bothered to wait for the sparkly lights to turn on..

It has nice floor. This whole area creeped Danny out the whole time because of the music.

Entrance. Its nice and all.

Cobwebby.

Broken elevators.. Has anyone ever seen the Made-for-TV movie about Tower of Terror? It has Kirsten Dunst in! =O

Some random machinery.

GRRR IM A BIG FACE IN THE BOILER!

Is this actually supposed to look like a comical face?

Anyways next up is the toooon studio.

And time for Monsters Inc poses!

Check!

The Art of Animation. It was okay. Bit boring and the second part with Mooshu was so loud and in french that I couldn't hear the english headphones at all! Am glad I saw this part in Florida.

MICKEEEY!

I thought this picture was awsome. I wanted to steal it.

It has Animagique. A bit like Philharmagic mixed with Koruko and Finding Nemo the musical.

They have one of Disney's famous generic spinny rides.

This time with added Genie!

They have a cars ride yaay!

See. Cars.

These are the best characters

Turns out it was just a poopy spin ride too. We didn't fancy the 40 minute ride for teacups..

The area looks nice though.

See. It does!

This is certainly the best ride in the park. But the only way to ride it without a 50 minute queue is to do it right at the beginning of the day..

It has a random outside part.

The buildings so unusually themed. I couldn't work out whether it was trying to be a studio or trying to be a complete themed ride?

Once again.. its france thats blurry not me

The station is nice.

But im sure everyones seen pictures like this before.

Seen it before!

And my final picture of Toon studios. This area should hopefully be much nicer once all the Pixar stuff is added.

One more look at Tower!

On t'other side of Tower is 'Armagedon: Something in french'. Its ehhh. Okay I guess.

I didn't really enjoy that film all that much, its too much AMERICA IS THE BEST WE SAVE EVERYONE!

They have Cinemagique. This was actually probably the best done show in the park in terms of the language barrier.

They have the original car show. Its pretty good. I would have gotten pictures but we lost our camera on Space Mountain the morning we saw it LOL. Well done Disney for getting it back by the afternoon though!

I did get this shot from the Tram tour though =)

Tower Butt!

Rock'n'Rollercoaster. I really can't decide which version I prefer out of this one and Floridas. The different effects inside make both worth riding. Shame we only got to do it once, as on the Wednesday we visited the ride caught on fire..

http://www.screamscape.com/html/disneyland_paris.htm

A tad more info on that here..

Now its time to head back to superior neighbour park YAAY!

And with that brings the end of my Trip Report.

I hope you all enjoyed it! Sorry about the lack of good photos of the Studios park, but honestly theres not much there at all. It makes a good add on to the main park, but alone it wouldn't stand a chance.

I shall try to upload a Trip Report of Europa Park soon, which I visited shortly after my trip to Paris.

 

[Ollie]

Aww is it really the end?
I wouldn't mind going back to the Studios. When I went they were still building ToT. So I've still yet to ride that, Cars and Crushes Coaster.
The studios does need more to do, but they are adding stuff gradually.

Also, I too was expecting a big animatronic dragon on the Tram tour and was disappointed with a simple flame thing.

 

[Crazycoaster]

^ Crush's coaster is supprisingly awsome. It really caught me off guard how fast it went, maybe just because it was dark but it seemed much more fun compared to Spinball or Fury.

Although I was a tad dissapointed in the fact that as soon as you get off the lift hill the amazing theming throughout disapears and the rest of the ride is in the dark with a couple of bubbles projected here and there.

I think during my visit the tram tour was cut short too, as I read somewhere that your supposed to go through a costume making department? Id assume this was because of all the work going on in the area.

Im really not sure what else this park is missing, but it really does need something big to keep guests in. Maybe a Dinosaur/Indiana jones adventure ride wouldnt go amiss, or even something like Phantasmic or the Indy show at Hollywood studios.

 

[Ollie]

We didn't go through any costume department when I went on the tram. We saw a building that we drove past though that could of been it.

 

[Pokemaniac]

That's a fair amount of station crew there. Were so many people really necessary to operate the coaster? Or was it a random group in blue vests, without connection to the park?

 

[Ollie]

^I thought that as well when I saw it Poke.

 

[marc]

They need that many people, and you should see the speed of them. Remember the trains do not stop and there is 2 or 3 trains in the station at a time. So 2 ops per train from what I remember.

Merlin could learn a lesson from them

 

[Crazycoaster]

^ This was taken just as the ride opened, there were about 20 or so people ahead of me, maybe they were there to take the initial rush?

Their operations were kinda weird, you had to put your hands up and they wouldn't let you put your own harnesses down. I guess its the easiest way for them to make sure the lapbars lock?

 

[peep]

Their operations were kinda weird, you had to put your hands up and they wouldn't let you put your own harnesses down. I guess its the easiest way for them to make sure the lapbars lock?

Yeah, they seem to have only started doing that, it's really odd. It really annoyed one peep we saw which was just odd, why get annoyed about it?


Studios getting additions gradually? It took them years to build ToT and since 2007 5 attractions have opened in the park, another 3 are getting added next year. I don't think I've ever seen a park add so much in such a small amount of time.

I think the Tram tour is the worst attraction in the whole resort it needs a mega update (no-one watched Dinotopia). Your not missing out really with the costume department, you just go past a few windows, some with clothing and props and a few which look into the clothing department for DLRP.