RebelHawk
42
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2004
My wife and I are just back from a wonderful DLP trip. A little bit of background on us, we are east coast dwellers, DVC owners at WDW VGF and love ABD and DCL trips as often as we can go. We spent a total of 8 days in Paris, France with 2 of those nights at the New York Hotel. Since this was our first trip to DLP we decided to splurge and book a VIP Tour. The minimum time booking for this tour was 5 hours but wanting to make sure we had plenty of time to do everything we ended up booking a total of 7 hours with our CM guide.
We were staying in the Opera area of Paris and spend 4 wonderful days touring Paris which included a two day private guide we arranged with Secrets of Paris. On our fifth day in Paris we had our hotel concierge arranged for a taxi to take us over to the New York Hotel which we had booked with our DVC points. From our Marriott hotel we had about a 45 minute ride leaving from the hotel at 8AM. Arriving without incident we dropped our luggage with bell services and walked over to the Disney Village to get a cup of coffee and just slowly wandered around. We also had purchased our park tickets separately from our room reservations so we stopped by a redemption kiosk and scanned our printed email confirmations and received our 2 day park hopping tickets. Since we arranged to start our VIP tour at 10AM we turned back around and walk back to the hotel to meet our guide. Our hiring of the CM for this date turned out to be a massive benefit as it was crazy busy. Nicholas, our CM guide, even commented that you know the park is busy when there is a line for Alice's Curious Labyrinth.
When we walked back into the lobby just before 10AM we noticed a cast member with a big fancy D badge on his chest and we introduced ourselves to Nicholas our new best friend for the next 7 hours. After a brief introduction we got down to business of what we wanted to accomplish that day. Since this was our first trip we asked that we focus on rides as a priority and more specifically the thrill rides. Without missing a beat we headed directly to the Studios where we started a whirlwind tour of ride after ride. For the rides with short Fast Pass lines we used those, in the case of long FP lines we went into the ride through the exit and were whisked onto the rides with minimal waits. Now, I'm a thrill ride junky and love to think that I'm immune to the effects of motion sickness but I have never rode and re-rode so many thrill rides in such rapid succession that by the end even I was walking a little sideways through the park. By 11:30 we had ridden everything we wanted to ride in the Studios and walked over to Disneyland. We decided to go ahead and break for a quick table service lunch. While we ate, Nicholas left us saying he would come back to pick us up in 30 minutes. Once he returned it was off again on a mad dash through park to hit every single ride we had even the most remote desire to ride.
In just three hours we managed to ride or see everything at Disneyland that we wanted to do and I suggested that we head back over to the Studios to roll back through our favorite rides over there. By four that afternoon we paused at a "food and wine" kiosk for a glass of wine (for my wife and I of course and Nicolas stuck with water) and reviewed what we had done and if there were anything else we wanted to do. Tired and a bit exhausted from our nonstop barrage we decided to wrap our tour up at 4:30 instead of our original scheduled end time of 5PM. Nicholas threw out many options and told us very clearly that he was with us until 5PM. After we politely told him we were finished for the afternoon he offered to put us in the VIP viewing area for the upcoming parade but we had 6PM dinner reservations so declined this final offer as well.
After bidding Nicholas farewell for the day we wandered around on our own after picking up another glass of wine from a regional food kiosk and killed some time before our Remy reservation. We enjoyed our dinner then it was back to the room for a nap before fireworks that evening. Unfortunately our nap turned into more than that and we didn't wake up until just after 10PM but we figured we had another day and we could catch the fireworks then.
The next morning we had already decided on a sleep in day so we got up and walked over to the parks around 10AM. Having ridden everything the day before we figured this would be a slow day and soak in the atmosphere kind of day and all I can say is mission accomplished. We spent the entire day slowly wandering the lands and areas of the parks. We did a little shopping and a lot of relaxing. By the end of the day we realized we hadn't gotten into a single queue or ridden a single ride, no regrets. The next morning we caught a cab and back to Paris where we went for a couple more days on our own.
What a beautiful park. I think we enjoyed the unique differences between "our" rides at WDW and DLP more than anything. Being able to ride them practically back to back gave us a chance to see the little things that we love with our rides or wished that we had in Orlando. While this was certainly a splurge and nothing we could afford to do all the time we loved every moment of our time in DLP and know that one day we'll return.
We were staying in the Opera area of Paris and spend 4 wonderful days touring Paris which included a two day private guide we arranged with Secrets of Paris. On our fifth day in Paris we had our hotel concierge arranged for a taxi to take us over to the New York Hotel which we had booked with our DVC points. From our Marriott hotel we had about a 45 minute ride leaving from the hotel at 8AM. Arriving without incident we dropped our luggage with bell services and walked over to the Disney Village to get a cup of coffee and just slowly wandered around. We also had purchased our park tickets separately from our room reservations so we stopped by a redemption kiosk and scanned our printed email confirmations and received our 2 day park hopping tickets. Since we arranged to start our VIP tour at 10AM we turned back around and walk back to the hotel to meet our guide. Our hiring of the CM for this date turned out to be a massive benefit as it was crazy busy. Nicholas, our CM guide, even commented that you know the park is busy when there is a line for Alice's Curious Labyrinth.
When we walked back into the lobby just before 10AM we noticed a cast member with a big fancy D badge on his chest and we introduced ourselves to Nicholas our new best friend for the next 7 hours. After a brief introduction we got down to business of what we wanted to accomplish that day. Since this was our first trip we asked that we focus on rides as a priority and more specifically the thrill rides. Without missing a beat we headed directly to the Studios where we started a whirlwind tour of ride after ride. For the rides with short Fast Pass lines we used those, in the case of long FP lines we went into the ride through the exit and were whisked onto the rides with minimal waits. Now, I'm a thrill ride junky and love to think that I'm immune to the effects of motion sickness but I have never rode and re-rode so many thrill rides in such rapid succession that by the end even I was walking a little sideways through the park. By 11:30 we had ridden everything we wanted to ride in the Studios and walked over to Disneyland. We decided to go ahead and break for a quick table service lunch. While we ate, Nicholas left us saying he would come back to pick us up in 30 minutes. Once he returned it was off again on a mad dash through park to hit every single ride we had even the most remote desire to ride.
In just three hours we managed to ride or see everything at Disneyland that we wanted to do and I suggested that we head back over to the Studios to roll back through our favorite rides over there. By four that afternoon we paused at a "food and wine" kiosk for a glass of wine (for my wife and I of course and Nicolas stuck with water) and reviewed what we had done and if there were anything else we wanted to do. Tired and a bit exhausted from our nonstop barrage we decided to wrap our tour up at 4:30 instead of our original scheduled end time of 5PM. Nicholas threw out many options and told us very clearly that he was with us until 5PM. After we politely told him we were finished for the afternoon he offered to put us in the VIP viewing area for the upcoming parade but we had 6PM dinner reservations so declined this final offer as well.
After bidding Nicholas farewell for the day we wandered around on our own after picking up another glass of wine from a regional food kiosk and killed some time before our Remy reservation. We enjoyed our dinner then it was back to the room for a nap before fireworks that evening. Unfortunately our nap turned into more than that and we didn't wake up until just after 10PM but we figured we had another day and we could catch the fireworks then.
The next morning we had already decided on a sleep in day so we got up and walked over to the parks around 10AM. Having ridden everything the day before we figured this would be a slow day and soak in the atmosphere kind of day and all I can say is mission accomplished. We spent the entire day slowly wandering the lands and areas of the parks. We did a little shopping and a lot of relaxing. By the end of the day we realized we hadn't gotten into a single queue or ridden a single ride, no regrets. The next morning we caught a cab and back to Paris where we went for a couple more days on our own.
What a beautiful park. I think we enjoyed the unique differences between "our" rides at WDW and DLP more than anything. Being able to ride them practically back to back gave us a chance to see the little things that we love with our rides or wished that we had in Orlando. While this was certainly a splurge and nothing we could afford to do all the time we loved every moment of our time in DLP and know that one day we'll return.
