Back Last Night - Highs and Lows

[numbersix]

Got back last night, 6 days/5 nights in the Sequoia Lodge, travelling by Eurostar from Ashford.

Highs:
- Convenience of Ashford, easy drive, easy to park, easy to board
- Christmas in DLP, great decorations, magical atmosphere
- Sequoia Lodge - a pleasant hotel, nice room, great restaurant, helpful staff
- Big Thunder Mountain - the refurb is amazing
- The whole holiday, a great way to spend Christmas, doing what you want, when you want, with no washing up!

Lows:
- Smoking - it is everywhere, and now supplemented by vaping. Just because people think vaping is less harmful than smoking does not mean that they have to share! and I was amazed by how many people still think it is okay to smoke or vape in queues
- Mobile devices - whilst phones are great for pictures and apps etc, the ‘phone zombies’ are everywhere, staring at their screens whilst they change direction multiple times
- Sequoia Lodge - overall it was nice, but despite all that I have read about the hotel being cosy etc, one word could sum it up - ‘draughty’. The only place that felt vaguely warm was the corridors and lifts! Our air con initially only pumped out cold air, and even when we complained, and it was ‘fixed’ within 30 minutes, it only made the room comfortable, certainly not hot, and that was with the thermostat set at 29.5degrees, which should have made it unbearable
- Housekeeping - had to request more toilet roll as it wasn’t replenished 2 days running. What made it worse was that it took 2 visits to the concierge to achieve a result
- Eurostar coming home - the Marne Le Valle station is bizarre. You have to climb to the top of the station to get your bag, check in and go through security, only to go all the way back down to the lowest part of the station to get the train. The check in area for the Eurostar is tiny for the number of people getting on the train, and people queue everywhere. There only seems to be one toilet in the whole station, which is almost impossible to reach, and when you do get there, you have to pay 80 cents to have a wee!

Having said all that, the lows, as usual, never outweigh the highs. We have been to DLP enough times to realise that you have to go with the flow, and annoying as some things are, we will not let them spoil the holiday, they are just things that could be improved upon. We had a great time, and would thoroughly recommend go8ng at Christmas if you get the chance.

[Ds4ljs]

Here now and totally agree about the vaping/smoking.
Character interactions have been fabulous. Last day today😢

[frazers mum]

Sounds like you had a good time. I would love to go at Christmas.

[darth plagueis]

I was there from 29-01 and the smoking is crazy!

Also this was our first time going DLP and I never knew it rained so much at this time of year here.

If we go again i think it would be around march/ april