cdsmiler81
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2014
Hi all!
Finally back at a computer since returning from our recent DLP trip! Here's some highs and lows, in detail, as I probably won't get around to writing a full report!
Attending were myself, DH, DD (6) and DS (7 months), and our Friend, B.
Highs
Hotel New York - Amazing. We had a lovely stay here. Amazing pixie dust in the form of a free Thumper toy, free Mickey tsum tsum, platter of treats (macarons, brownie, strawberries) and a box of chocolates!! (Pays to have been emailing the concierge of the hotel before hand!!!). We also had lovely rooms on the 7th floor - not lake view but it did mean we could see Space Mountain and the Castle to the left hand side from our window - watched some of Dreams from the rooms on the Tuesday night! We had a 2 double bed and cot set up, out friend in the joining room had a massive king bed and settee area. Perfect. Irrespective of the pixie dust though, we loved the luggage delivery and collection option (with a 7th month old baby and LOTS of bags, this was a godsend!!), all the staff were lovely, and the location to the Village and Parks was perfect!
Park Side Diner - we tried this buffet for the first time this trip. We were very impressed!! Lovely selections, and although there may not have been as wide a selection of mains as in Inventions (although the choices suited us better!) the starters and dessert selections were very impressive! Also, our allocated waitress was amazing. So helpful (with heating baby food and even washing his bowl after) - nothing was too much trouble. Excellent customer service! We're definitely going back!
Characters - Characters, characters everywhere... brilliant! We met Rapunzel (in the Pavillion - had a tip off she would be a regular there!), the Queen of Hearts at the regular Alice in Wonderland M&G area, Tiana and Naveen at Thunder Mesa, Buzz Lightyear and Minnie Mouse at Toon Studio, and Snow White at a random M&G that occurred at Disney Studios Plaza. Oh and DD high fived Abu on his way to his meet and greet! Also, after completing an Easter egg hunt in the Lego store, we also met Tom! Who? You know Tom? Surely you do....!!
(Random Lego man!)
We COULD have met Merida, other characters at the Alice meet, Peter Pan characters, Aladdin characters, Rhythyms of the Jungle characters, Scrooge McDuck, Marie, Ariel & Eric, Belle in her 'day' dress (the last two in the same random M&G we encountered at the Plaza)..... Really impressed by the number of M&G - I hope this stays after all the work has been done!
Weather - weather was cold, oh so very cold some days. Tuesday was lovely - blue skies. But the most important thing was that the whole time we were there it was DRY! Yeay!
Forest of Enchantment - FABULOUS show. We all loved it. Lovely to see a selection of characters you wouldn't normally see, plus some excellent singing!! We wanted to see it again on our last day, but the only showing we would have been able to attend was unusually cancelled, so that was a shame. You tube it is! lol Highly recommend it.
Baby Swap - this worked really well on the rides we used it on. A lot of the time, DH simply didn't go on the ride, which suited him. But we used baby swap twice on Buzz (DS was a sleep otherwise he could have gone on!), and once on Ratatouille as a last minute decision (he had been on with us two days before, but was getting fed up the second time around in the queue - the CMs sorted it all out for us right at the last minute with no real fuss at all).
Pin Pixie Dust - DD does pin trading, and completely by luck she ended up trading with the same CM twice during the week. The CM recognised her from the few days earlier (even though she was Anna the first time they met, and Merida (see below) the second time - apparently she recognised her disney nail art!!!). Well, she obviously took a liking to DD and disappeared with a surprise for her. She came back with a voucher for 3 free pins!!!! Incredible generosity. Made DD's day!
CMs - Excellent. Friendly. Wonderful. Cannot fault a single one of them.
Our own little Merida - DD has a Merida costume and I'd picked up a cheap Merida wig for her to wear with it. She had SO much attention when wearing it, and loved runniong around like a mini-Merida! We didn't meet Merida unfortunately, DD had met her last time and SHE decided not to bother this time, but that would have been an amazing picture. (We tried to convince her for the last day, but no, she wanted to be Alice!) But mini-Merida did meet Rapunzel, along with a mini-Buzz! See the picture below!
Lows
Busier than expected - Not massively, don't get me wrong, just busier than I thought it would be after researching who would be on holidays in Europe! Apparently Spain, Germany and Ireland WERE on holiday! lol Obviously the queues weren't THAT bad, just more than I thought!
Smoking - now I'm normally the first one to dismiss this one when other people mention it. I've been to DLP regularly over the past few years and have never really found it a problem. However, this time there really did seem to be more of it! And I actually don't think it was the French. It seemed to be Spanish guests. No smoking in queues, just generally throughout the park. Maybe I was slightly more sensitive because of the 7 month old, but it definitely seemed to have increased.
Princess Pavillion Reservation System - I'm sorry, but what?! I queued for over an hour to get a ticket from 9.45am on the Tuesday morning (and the queue closed off about 15 mins behind me once I'd entered the Old Mill area - very lucky). We got an appointment, great, but then queued AGAIN for almost an hour inside the Pavillion at our appointment time!! Surely the whole point of the appointment system is to reduce the queuing time. I don't mind the long queue on my own to get the appointment, but it's the children who then have to queue just as long as we have done in the past with no reservation! It's not fun in there! There's much better ways of them doing this (trust me, we came up with a few solutions as we discussed it during the holiday!).
Mehs
Inventions - lovely food as always as far as I'm concerned, but it seemed overly busy. I'd never seen queues for the actual buffet heading back towards to the main door. And this was Monday evening dinner. Characters were great as always - in fact as we were one of the first in, we had Mickey, Tigger and Eeore all to ourselves at the same time when we first arrived. But no Minnie? That's highly unusual isn't it? Although we did meet Chip and Dale which was a first for us. This was the first trip where we wondered if the high price is worth it. Typically DD is probably getting to the age where she's not so worried about meeting these types of characters, but by the time next we go, DS will be perfect age for it! lol So we'll have to see - maybe we'll brave Cafe Mickey next time and see how it goes. Especially after such a good food experience at the Park Side Diner....
I think that sums it all up. A great trip overall and even the lows are not important enough to alter our thoughts on any of it. Can't wait to go back.... trouble is, that's unlikely to be until January 2018!!
Until then, here's that lovely picture I mentioned earlier to share with you all!
C x
Finally back at a computer since returning from our recent DLP trip! Here's some highs and lows, in detail, as I probably won't get around to writing a full report!
Attending were myself, DH, DD (6) and DS (7 months), and our Friend, B.
Highs
Hotel New York - Amazing. We had a lovely stay here. Amazing pixie dust in the form of a free Thumper toy, free Mickey tsum tsum, platter of treats (macarons, brownie, strawberries) and a box of chocolates!! (Pays to have been emailing the concierge of the hotel before hand!!!). We also had lovely rooms on the 7th floor - not lake view but it did mean we could see Space Mountain and the Castle to the left hand side from our window - watched some of Dreams from the rooms on the Tuesday night! We had a 2 double bed and cot set up, out friend in the joining room had a massive king bed and settee area. Perfect. Irrespective of the pixie dust though, we loved the luggage delivery and collection option (with a 7th month old baby and LOTS of bags, this was a godsend!!), all the staff were lovely, and the location to the Village and Parks was perfect!
Park Side Diner - we tried this buffet for the first time this trip. We were very impressed!! Lovely selections, and although there may not have been as wide a selection of mains as in Inventions (although the choices suited us better!) the starters and dessert selections were very impressive! Also, our allocated waitress was amazing. So helpful (with heating baby food and even washing his bowl after) - nothing was too much trouble. Excellent customer service! We're definitely going back!
Characters - Characters, characters everywhere... brilliant! We met Rapunzel (in the Pavillion - had a tip off she would be a regular there!), the Queen of Hearts at the regular Alice in Wonderland M&G area, Tiana and Naveen at Thunder Mesa, Buzz Lightyear and Minnie Mouse at Toon Studio, and Snow White at a random M&G that occurred at Disney Studios Plaza. Oh and DD high fived Abu on his way to his meet and greet! Also, after completing an Easter egg hunt in the Lego store, we also met Tom! Who? You know Tom? Surely you do....!!
(Random Lego man!)We COULD have met Merida, other characters at the Alice meet, Peter Pan characters, Aladdin characters, Rhythyms of the Jungle characters, Scrooge McDuck, Marie, Ariel & Eric, Belle in her 'day' dress (the last two in the same random M&G we encountered at the Plaza)..... Really impressed by the number of M&G - I hope this stays after all the work has been done!
Weather - weather was cold, oh so very cold some days. Tuesday was lovely - blue skies. But the most important thing was that the whole time we were there it was DRY! Yeay!
Forest of Enchantment - FABULOUS show. We all loved it. Lovely to see a selection of characters you wouldn't normally see, plus some excellent singing!! We wanted to see it again on our last day, but the only showing we would have been able to attend was unusually cancelled, so that was a shame. You tube it is! lol Highly recommend it.
Baby Swap - this worked really well on the rides we used it on. A lot of the time, DH simply didn't go on the ride, which suited him. But we used baby swap twice on Buzz (DS was a sleep otherwise he could have gone on!), and once on Ratatouille as a last minute decision (he had been on with us two days before, but was getting fed up the second time around in the queue - the CMs sorted it all out for us right at the last minute with no real fuss at all).
Pin Pixie Dust - DD does pin trading, and completely by luck she ended up trading with the same CM twice during the week. The CM recognised her from the few days earlier (even though she was Anna the first time they met, and Merida (see below) the second time - apparently she recognised her disney nail art!!!). Well, she obviously took a liking to DD and disappeared with a surprise for her. She came back with a voucher for 3 free pins!!!! Incredible generosity. Made DD's day!
CMs - Excellent. Friendly. Wonderful. Cannot fault a single one of them.
Our own little Merida - DD has a Merida costume and I'd picked up a cheap Merida wig for her to wear with it. She had SO much attention when wearing it, and loved runniong around like a mini-Merida! We didn't meet Merida unfortunately, DD had met her last time and SHE decided not to bother this time, but that would have been an amazing picture. (We tried to convince her for the last day, but no, she wanted to be Alice!) But mini-Merida did meet Rapunzel, along with a mini-Buzz!
See the picture below!Lows
Busier than expected - Not massively, don't get me wrong, just busier than I thought it would be after researching who would be on holidays in Europe! Apparently Spain, Germany and Ireland WERE on holiday! lol Obviously the queues weren't THAT bad, just more than I thought!
Smoking - now I'm normally the first one to dismiss this one when other people mention it. I've been to DLP regularly over the past few years and have never really found it a problem. However, this time there really did seem to be more of it! And I actually don't think it was the French. It seemed to be Spanish guests. No smoking in queues, just generally throughout the park. Maybe I was slightly more sensitive because of the 7 month old, but it definitely seemed to have increased.
Princess Pavillion Reservation System - I'm sorry, but what?! I queued for over an hour to get a ticket from 9.45am on the Tuesday morning (and the queue closed off about 15 mins behind me once I'd entered the Old Mill area - very lucky). We got an appointment, great, but then queued AGAIN for almost an hour inside the Pavillion at our appointment time!! Surely the whole point of the appointment system is to reduce the queuing time. I don't mind the long queue on my own to get the appointment, but it's the children who then have to queue just as long as we have done in the past with no reservation! It's not fun in there! There's much better ways of them doing this (trust me, we came up with a few solutions as we discussed it during the holiday!).
Mehs
Inventions - lovely food as always as far as I'm concerned, but it seemed overly busy. I'd never seen queues for the actual buffet heading back towards to the main door. And this was Monday evening dinner. Characters were great as always - in fact as we were one of the first in, we had Mickey, Tigger and Eeore all to ourselves at the same time when we first arrived. But no Minnie? That's highly unusual isn't it? Although we did meet Chip and Dale which was a first for us. This was the first trip where we wondered if the high price is worth it. Typically DD is probably getting to the age where she's not so worried about meeting these types of characters, but by the time next we go, DS will be perfect age for it! lol So we'll have to see - maybe we'll brave Cafe Mickey next time and see how it goes. Especially after such a good food experience at the Park Side Diner....
I think that sums it all up. A great trip overall and even the lows are not important enough to alter our thoughts on any of it. Can't wait to go back.... trouble is, that's unlikely to be until January 2018!!
Until then, here's that lovely picture I mentioned earlier to share with you all!
C x
at your photo. Love how DD is so in character posing with her "bow". DS has some growing to do but looks a very relaxed Woodie! 
for no rain. 
K
