suzybear6
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2007
Well here's another "Highs and Lows" from a member of the half term mob!
Over all we had a very good trip. Yes we had a few niggles, but the highs most definitely out weigh the lows
Highs
My DS(8) and DD(10) riding their first inversion roller coaster - RnR - it became my DS's favourite ride of the holiday.
BTM becoming my DD(10)'s favourite ride - she loved it!
Following advice from this board and getting to Crush before the park official opening so you don't have to wait for 60 min or more. After a false start on Wednesday morning when Crush wasn't actually working when we got into the park at 09:45 hrs, DP, DD and DS only waited 20 minutes on Friday morning
Finally getting to do The Art of Animation and my drawing of Mickey turning out really good, even if I do say so myself!
Crowd levels not being as high as some people were predicting. Yes there were some quite long lines during the day, but we used fast pass whenever possible and did a lot of the rides during the evening when things were often a walk on.
Food! We ate at Restaurant Des Stars, Cafe Mickey, EOS, Crockett's Tavern, Rainforest Cafe and Plaza Gardens and enjoyed them all. I remember that thread about whether you have 2 or 3 meals a day at DLP and I would have said we have one counter service and one table service, but we were enjoying the food so much we ony did the one counter service meal (EOS) during our 3 days in the parks! lol
Oh and when talking about food I have a top tip for booking restaurants - use the Guest Services Office at the Studios park rather than City Hall in the Disneyland park. Everytime we walked past City Hall the queue was out of the door, but whenever I popped into Guest Services to book a table there was rarely anyone in there so I got served immediately
The way we scheduled our trip - we drove and used the Eurotunnel and stayed in a travel lodge type of hotel (B&B Hotel) on our first night and our last night so we had 2 leisurely drives and got 3 full days in the parks.
DCR - the cabin was just what we needed - plently of room for us to spread out, seperate room for the children, no close neighbours for our noisy children to disturb and when they got to the point they needed to run around they could go out into the "woods" and play. We will definitely stay there again
The man and his father that took my 2 children into the pool at DCR after the CM at the pool reception tried to insist I purchased a swimsuit from them so that I could sit by the pool to "accompany" them.
Lows
The weather....hate rain and although it wasn't as bad as it could have been, those heavy showers were a pita and did affect the overall enjoyment of our trip...it would have been so much better if we'd had wall to wall sunshine! The wind stopped the Parachute ride running on Friday morning which was when we had the time to do it, so my DD missed out on that ride altogether
The creepy (yes that was my DD's description of him) CM at the DCR pool reception who said that I had to acompany my children into the pool and although I told him I couldn't go into the pool informed me that I would have to purchase a swimsuit from them so that I could go into the pool area despite there being a seating area next to the pool where you didin't have to wear swimsuits
The 30 minute wait outside in the rain to get into Cafe Mickey on Wednesday night despite the fact that we had pre-booked a table. I can understand them getting a bit snowed under at times and sometimes you have to wait, but to have to wait outside was a bit much...they need a seating area inside where you can wait for your table.
The fast pass sytem not being used on Friday on certain rides in the Studios e.g RnR coaster with ride wait times up to 45 mionute but the fast pass systemn not in use. Same with the Magic Carpets ride
As for the things that seem to crop up a lot in people's "lows" such as smoking and queue jumping...we weren't really affected by either of them. Yes I saw a few people walking around smoking but we just passed them by and it didn't cause us any problems. We didn't encounter anyone smoking in lines or anywhere like that. Queue jumping wasn't really a problem...only really came across it once and that was when we were in the queue to get into Cafe Mickey...the lady behind us spotted someone trying to queue jump ahead of us, but they didn't manage to in the end
So now although we've all talked about what we'll do "next time" I think we need to start saving for our next trip to WDW really and maybe we'll follow the pattern we've started by going back to DLP in 2017 for the 25th Anniversary
Luv Suzy
Over all we had a very good trip. Yes we had a few niggles, but the highs most definitely out weigh the lows
Highs
My DS(8) and DD(10) riding their first inversion roller coaster - RnR - it became my DS's favourite ride of the holiday.
BTM becoming my DD(10)'s favourite ride - she loved it!
Following advice from this board and getting to Crush before the park official opening so you don't have to wait for 60 min or more. After a false start on Wednesday morning when Crush wasn't actually working when we got into the park at 09:45 hrs, DP, DD and DS only waited 20 minutes on Friday morning
Finally getting to do The Art of Animation and my drawing of Mickey turning out really good, even if I do say so myself!
Crowd levels not being as high as some people were predicting. Yes there were some quite long lines during the day, but we used fast pass whenever possible and did a lot of the rides during the evening when things were often a walk on.
Food! We ate at Restaurant Des Stars, Cafe Mickey, EOS, Crockett's Tavern, Rainforest Cafe and Plaza Gardens and enjoyed them all. I remember that thread about whether you have 2 or 3 meals a day at DLP and I would have said we have one counter service and one table service, but we were enjoying the food so much we ony did the one counter service meal (EOS) during our 3 days in the parks! lol
Oh and when talking about food I have a top tip for booking restaurants - use the Guest Services Office at the Studios park rather than City Hall in the Disneyland park. Everytime we walked past City Hall the queue was out of the door, but whenever I popped into Guest Services to book a table there was rarely anyone in there so I got served immediately
The way we scheduled our trip - we drove and used the Eurotunnel and stayed in a travel lodge type of hotel (B&B Hotel) on our first night and our last night so we had 2 leisurely drives and got 3 full days in the parks.
DCR - the cabin was just what we needed - plently of room for us to spread out, seperate room for the children, no close neighbours for our noisy children to disturb and when they got to the point they needed to run around they could go out into the "woods" and play. We will definitely stay there again
The man and his father that took my 2 children into the pool at DCR after the CM at the pool reception tried to insist I purchased a swimsuit from them so that I could sit by the pool to "accompany" them.
Lows
The weather....hate rain and although it wasn't as bad as it could have been, those heavy showers were a pita and did affect the overall enjoyment of our trip...it would have been so much better if we'd had wall to wall sunshine! The wind stopped the Parachute ride running on Friday morning which was when we had the time to do it, so my DD missed out on that ride altogether
The creepy (yes that was my DD's description of him) CM at the DCR pool reception who said that I had to acompany my children into the pool and although I told him I couldn't go into the pool informed me that I would have to purchase a swimsuit from them so that I could go into the pool area despite there being a seating area next to the pool where you didin't have to wear swimsuits
The 30 minute wait outside in the rain to get into Cafe Mickey on Wednesday night despite the fact that we had pre-booked a table. I can understand them getting a bit snowed under at times and sometimes you have to wait, but to have to wait outside was a bit much...they need a seating area inside where you can wait for your table.
The fast pass sytem not being used on Friday on certain rides in the Studios e.g RnR coaster with ride wait times up to 45 mionute but the fast pass systemn not in use. Same with the Magic Carpets ride
As for the things that seem to crop up a lot in people's "lows" such as smoking and queue jumping...we weren't really affected by either of them. Yes I saw a few people walking around smoking but we just passed them by and it didn't cause us any problems. We didn't encounter anyone smoking in lines or anywhere like that. Queue jumping wasn't really a problem...only really came across it once and that was when we were in the queue to get into Cafe Mickey...the lady behind us spotted someone trying to queue jump ahead of us, but they didn't manage to in the end
So now although we've all talked about what we'll do "next time" I think we need to start saving for our next trip to WDW really and maybe we'll follow the pattern we've started by going back to DLP in 2017 for the 25th Anniversary
Luv Suzy
Sounds like a great trip! 
glad you had a great time. 
