First family trip to DLP - Feb 2017 - Pre-travel day

[Milpston]

Sunday 12th February 2017 - This will be pretty short as it's fairly uneventful in all honesty.

So here goes with my very unorganised trip report for Disneyland Paris 2017. I intended to take food photos and make copious notes to enable this to be very thorough like a review I did on another site for our honeymoon cruise in 2013. However, I failed miserably missing many food pics and making no notes whatsoever as we were so busy and, unlike last time, had my 2 year old Daughter with us on this trip.

We are a family of four and a half. I'm 37, my wife Sally is 36, my step-daughter Chloe is 15 and my Daughter Emma turned 2 in December. Sally was 27 weeks pregnant during the trip so that accounts for the half.

My pre-trip report can be found here https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho... php?t=1003624
(If the link works as I'm new to this).

So we were booked into the Premier Inn - Dover East for the night before catching the Eurotunnel from Folkestone. It was a fairly late addition to the plan when it dawned on me how early we would have to leave home in Essex to check in 40 minutes before our 06:20 departure. The Premier Inn nearby was already fully booked but this one was only 10 miles or so away. It was a bargain at £31.50 for a family room. Breakfast was not included but we would miss that with our early start anyway.

We decided to have a meal at our current favourite Chinese restaurant in Chelmsford on our way down rather than eat dinner at the pub attached to the Premier Inn. My parents joined us and it was a lovely meal. My thought was that it would likely be our best meal of the week and probably cheaper than the meals over the next few days too. Our table was booked for 13:30 and we finally got in the car for the drive down to Kent at about 15:30.

The drive down only took about an hour and half and we were soon at checking in to the Premier Inn - Dover East.

I think we all know what to expect from a Premier Inn. It was basic but clean, tidy (until we arrived anyway) and perfect for our needs.

By the time we had checked in and got comfortable it was probably about 18:00. We decided to have a walk over to the Brewers Fayre and get a dessert. We had skipped this at the Chinese earlier on. It was a 5 minute walk past the petrol station up to the restaurant.

We were all wrapped up as it was pretty cold. There was a big lump of snow on the table outside which was yet to melt and Emma decided she couldn't possibly go out without taking, "Baby", with her.

It was pretty lacking in a pavement on the walk. Luckily this was just a short road and only for access to the Premier Inn so there weren't any cars about.

So on arrival I thought I deserved a pint. I thought I'd include a picture as it looks much more appetising that all the pictures I have seen of Glowtinis on here and, happily, was about a quarter of the price The girls had a round of soft drinks.

Emma took a liking to a vending machine for sweets. It was one of the ones where you grab the sweets with a claw but at least she got unlimited goes until you actually get a sweet so it kept her happy with the help of Chloe

Next up was dessert. Sally and Chloe had a sharing platter (which I finished off). I had a Dirty mud pie which I have to say was really nice. I amused myself listening to a couple of guys complaining about their meals at the bar saying that their sausages were only cooked on one side etc. However, they had finished their meals before complaining due to not wanting to wait for even longer if they sent them back. I was glad we had eaten before our arrival.

Whilst we ate Emma amused herself playing with the sweets she has "won" from the vending machine. She is a strange child. She never actually eats sweets but can lose hours to lining them up in colour or size order. I suppose that's no bad thing but does make me wonder if she is a little OCD. Certainly doesn't get that from me!

We took the short walk back to our hotel room as we planned an early night due to having to arrive at the Eurotunnel check in for no later than 05:40. As we walked along the corridor Sally picked up a glove of Chloe's that she had dropped and then Chloe realised she had obviously already dropped the other one (this wouldn't be the last of Chloe losing things on this holiday!) Once Sally and Emma were settled back in the room I walked back with chloe and found her other glove just outside the front of the hotel

We didn't bring the bed guard out of the car for tonight so we decided the best course of action was to just push all four beds together. Sally I and I had the double bed with Emma next to us and the Chloe on the far end. Emma doesn't really sleep much anyway and would, no doubt, end up in with us at some point. We gave in to this some time back as although not ideal we had hit the wall in getting no sleep and as we both work this is our best means of survival!

Emma seemed happy with the bed set up and as usual for this time of the evening was a live wire. She was initially playing with her shopkins (she absolutely loves them more than any her of her other toys but calls them, "Chickens") but soon binned these in favour of running and diving back and forth across the beds.

We all finally settled down at about 22:00 after watching The Jump on tv. Sally and I got told off quite a few times by Chloe as apparently there was no giggling allowed in the room tonight. There were a bit of huffing and puffing coming from her side of the room and mutterings such as, "Aren't you two going to sleep?" and, "Can you be quiet?". Q more huffing and puffing and her pulling her covers over her head when we replied with, "Sorry Mum, we'll try and behave".

Just before nodding off I thought I'd better look up the post code for the Eurotunnel for the morning. I also looked up the details for the French side when returning from Disneyland Paris. I took screen shots on my phone for easy access.