[BevS97]

Hotel: Holiday Inn Disneyland Paris
How booked We booked through the Holiday Inn Website, and paid 124 Euros/night for Bed and Breakfast for a Superior Room.
Rooms Our room had a double bed and bunk beds. The room had a slight circus theme but I wouldn't say it was heavily themed in a Disney way. There is a curtain around the kids beds and they have their own tv. There is a wardrobe, some drawers, a safe (no charge, program your own number), a vanity unit, hair dryer in the bathroom. No Mickey Toiletries but there is a squirty Dove soap dispenser in the bathroom and a sign saying they can provide anything you have forgotten. The room is not huge, it would have been crowded with a cot up, but for the amount of time we were in the room it was not a problem.

Food Breakfast is served till 10am each morning, it's a buffet with cereal, fruit, bread, crossaints, pain au chocolate, ham, cheese, jams etc, and also sausage, bacon and scrambled eggs. I wasn't that impressed with the hot food, just because the sausages and bacon weren't what we are used too, but the breads and croissants were nice, and there was plenty on offer. No problems with queuing etc, we were able to get to the food very easily.

Hotel Facilities We used the swimming pool which was very nice, it was a rectanglar pool, with a large childrens playpool attached. The normal pool is not terribly deep but there are places where children can't reach the bottom. The children's pool is very shallow, and has a fountain and a slide. The whole area was very clean, and there were plenty of towels available to use.
There is also a small Disney Shop but this is closed in the afternoons, and so we only saw it open a couple of times.

We didn't eat in the restaurant so I can't comment on the food. In the restaurant there is a small childrens area with a tv and colouring etc, so they could go there while you finish your meal.

The bar area is very nice and relaxed and they were quite comfortable with the kids playing.

TransportationTo get to the hotel we took the VEA shuttle from the airport, not all of these buses go to the off-site hotels, but when there were only a few families left on the bus the driver asked us where we were going and took us to the hotel rather than taking us to the station to transfer, which he could have done.
The pink buses to and from the parks are fine, they run about every 15 minutes, sometimes more often. They stop at all 4 hotels, in this order: Explorers, Kyriad, Holiday Inn, Movenpick. It can get a little busy at certain times when people are trying to get on at Explorers before the Holiday Inn people have had a chance to get off, but it wasn't a huge problem. The only time we had to wait a long time for a bus was after Wishes, when we waited about 25 minutes and then gave up and got on a Santa Fe bus. It's about a 10 minute walk from the Santa Fe to the Holiday Inn along a proper pavement beside a fairly busy road.

To get back to the airport there are only 4 pickup times from the Holiday Inn, the last one is 6:30pm and we wanted to leave earlier than that, so we could have taken the pink bus to the station and then got on the VEA bus (they run on the hour every hour, not sure if our 6:30 bus left the station at 6 and got to the HI for 6:30, or left the HI at 6:30 and got to the station at 7, but either way that bus is drivng round DLP for a long time before it sets off for the airport)
Instead, we opted for a taxi, it cost 70 Euros (the bus was going to be 40 Euros) and took about 25 minutes. It was quite a hair-raising ride, but I would go for the taxi again.

Other comments
We thought the Holiday Inn was a really nice hotel. The whole place has a very upmarket classy feeling, and I would have no hesitation in staying there again. My only slight negative is that it is a bit far to walk to the parks, although it can be done.

Date of trip 16-19 August 2005