Summer at the Sequoia - Intro and Day 1

[Nimbus]

Introduction

Time for another trippy, this time covering our recent trip to Disneyland Paris. We've been to Disneyland in California once and Walt Disney World in Florida numerous times, but never to the closest Disney resort over the Channel in Paris.

This trip report will be in a similar format to my Portaventura trippy - more photos and less words. Well, now that I've managed to extract the corrupted photos from my phone. Stupid SD card.

So, without further ado, the cast members...



Steve - me, DH, 43, Systems engineer.



Michelle - DW, Physiotherapist.



Hannah - DD, 11, still not yet earning a wage, hyperactive theme-park lover.

Tom, the guinea pig, was on holiday at the grandparents.

This holiday consisted of flights from Manchester to Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport with Air France then transfers via the VEA shuttle bus. This took us to the onsite Sequoia Lodge hotel for 4 nights - from Tuesday 20th August until Saturday 24th August 2013.

On with the show!

Day One - Tuesday 20th August 2013 - Travel to DLP

One day the start of our holiday will occur at a decent hour - like 9am - so we can have a nice long sleep beforehand. But not this time. Like pretty much all of our past holidays, we're up just after 5:30am to get to the airport at 6:30am. The taxi, as always, came early throwing me into a minor panic before we set off to the airport.

We'd checked in online and printed out our boarding passes so we only had to drop off our bags. So it shouldn't take much time, right? Wrong! The queue at the "bag drop off" desks was just as long as the usual check-in queue.

After a quick brekkie of brioche, we went to the gate for boarding. The plane took off a little late but otherwise the flight was pretty good. We were served a couple of croissants and a coffee on-board and the staff seemed reasonably friendly. In general, I'd say Air France was ok.

I can't say that I was impressed with Charles-de-Gaulle airport though. For starters, it smelt... awful. Like a blocked toilet. It was also very confusing and busy, had only one desk checking passports, and there was a distinct lack of signs to the VEA bus. But, eventually, we found the big red shuttle bus to DLP. The driver wasn't very helpful though. In fact, he wasn't helpful at all. We had to dump our luggage into the cramped hold ourselves.

Still, after waiting for the bus to fill up with other Disneyers (is that a word?), the trip from the smelly airport onto Disney property took only half an hour.

Soon we arrived at our moderate onsite hotel of choice - the Sequoia Lodge...



For the first and only time I've stayed in a hotel, we had to have our bags scanned before entering. I'm not sure whether I should be concerned or not about that. Checking in took a while and the woman behind the desk (not sure where she was from - she didn't sound French) wasn't exactly the most welcoming nor keen to provide any information beyond where we could get breakfast.

The good news was that our room was ready. Hoorah!

On our way down the long reception hallway to our room listening to the piped birds tweeting, we found this guy just wandering around:



Mickey Mouse! We hadn't been onsite for long and already we'd met the big guy himself.

Our room was located conveniently close to the main public areas and on the same floor, so we didn't have to walk far nor use the elevator/lift. Thankfully we weren't in the far corner of the north wing. Here's our room:



And from the opposite direction:



Yep, pretty much like every other room in the main building of the Sequoia.

Bags dropped off, it was time to hit the parks. Out of the back of the hotel...



...(all those bloomin' trees get in the way) and around Lake Disney.



Yep, that's a panoramic picture showing the Newport Bay Club hotel in the distance. And Michelle and Hannah just at the very right hand edge. Here are some more views around the lake and PanoraMagique, the big balloony thing:





Then, through Disney village and into Walt Disney Studios - Paris' answer to Hollywood Studios.

By now, it was about 2pm local time and we hadn't eaten anything since that croissant on the plane. For some reason we didn't stop in the eatery in Studio 1 but stumbled onwards into the park proper. Having never been here before, and having forgotten to pick up a park map, we wandered around lost for a while unable to find anywhere to eat (there are only around 3 places to eat in WDS. And about the same number of toilets).

Eventually, we discovered the very, very busy Blockbuster restaurant. Two meals here were more than enough for the three of us.

After this, we headed across to Armiga...Armagged...Armageddon (I always have trouble spelling that . Still, it's not the end of the world, eh? ).



We queued for ages for this. Then, when we finally made it to the holding area just before entering, they announced a "technical problem". We waited for a bit longer whilst the announcement continued to say, "wait patiently" but finally we all had to leave because they couldn't fix the "issue".

A little disgruntled, we visited Cinemagique instead. Not bad but not amazing either - more for adults than kids, so Hannah found it a bit boring.

When we exited, the daily 4pm parade had just started. Due to the massed crowds, we couldn't see too well (especially Hannah) but stood and watched it anyway.

Just before it ended, we rushed to Stitch Live! This was very amusing - just like Turtle Talk at Epcot over in Florida.

Enough of the left-hand side of the park, it was now time to investigate the Toy Story Playland area over on the right.



There's Buzz standing guard with the Toy Soldier Parachute Drop behind him. We fancied going on this (the Parachute Drop ride not Buzz) but it was also having technical problems and was currently closed. We considered the RC Racer ride for a minute or two but decided against it. Instead, we joined the queue for Slinky Dog's ZigZag Spin.



The queue took ages and the ride itself was over in 30 seconds. The park really did seem to be busy. We've never been to Florida when it was this busy. We then left Toy Story land...



...and fought our way through the crowds to the Cars Quatre Roues Rallye ride opposite Crush's Coaster. Here's Hannah in the 30 minute queue:



...and a view of the ride itself:



Great fun and very whizzy!

We then tried to see the Art of Animation show but it was closed. It was 6pm but this attraction had already stopped for the day. In fact, we noticed a number of the attractions seemed to be finishing early. The exit area to the Animation show was still open though so we looked around here for a while.

And, of course, we glanced through the large shop in Studio 1 before exiting the park.

For dinner (posh tea), the decision was to go to Planet Hollywood - the first restaurant we saw on leaving the park!



The service here was good - our server was reasonably pleasant - and the food was ok (though not wonderful). However, the ambience was somewhat lacking. It was like being in a canteen with plastic sheets on the tables, tables crammed together and lots of noise.



Blimey, I look tired in that photo. Thank goodness it's out of focus.

Anyway, the BBQ burger and brownie and ice cream dessert filled the gaping hole in my stomach. So, job done, it was back to the Sequoia Lodge via the Disney Village. We had a evening of unpacking to look forward to! Joy.

Next: Day 2

[NatsyNoo]

Great start! Thanks for sharing!
Fab that you got to see MM on arrival!

[Guest]

Fab start !
love the new look of the SL.
Your DD looks very happy in your pics

[Nimbus]

Thanks for the comments.
Hannah does indeed look happy in all our photos. Or daft. One or the other. Sometimes both.
Whereas DW and I just look tired.

[Helen & LittleD]

Great start, thank you for sharing

[Lillie]

Great read and fab photos, looking forward to the next few days 😊

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by xhallofamily

Great start, thank you for sharing

See more...

Originally Posted by Lillie

Great read and fab photos, looking forward to the next few days 😊

See more...

Thank you for reading!

BTW, the reports from all 5 of our days at DLP are now complete and available.

[Gill H]

Great start. We have never yet eaten at PH or Rainforest Café - the London ones are awful so we avoid!

[fd1972uk]

Good start.

Pity about missing some rides though.


FD

[RachelM]

What a good start. Away to read the rest now.