Disney Studios

Trip Reports

Please read and see the experiences of some of the people that have already been there

A Special Thanks to Debbie and her family for the many photographical contributions

Ok then will send you some pics. The hotel was of the usual standard, very clean, and the breakfast was superb, much more variety than previous years. the hotel was very crowded and there did seem to be more younger children there than we've known before. (Doesn't that sound mean? it's just that in previous years there haven't been many young children in Sequoia Lodge so it's been quiet and peaceful! Ours are now 20 and 15 so I guess I'm getting intolerant of young children. (Shame on me.)

The Parks were both very busy, the Studios was as normal, fairly boring, a lot of fences due to the new construction work being carried out, hopefully when that's complete it should make it more of an attraction.

The Park itself was buzzing, so pretty I thought at one stage I was going to explode!

It's the first time I've been for Christmas and will definately be going again, it was also my 40th while we were there so that made it extra special. Can't fault anything at all, the parade was magnificent, the snowfalls were magical and the carols and Christmas themes around the park were lovely. In fact Wayne had to force me to leave the park on more than one occasion.

I LOVE Christmas.

Regards, Debbie

September 2003 - Simon Coatsworth

I think we pretty much did everything we could in the time we had and came away with fantastic memories. A number of experiences I would share with you:

In particular, we all loved; the atmosphere of the different 'lands'; the Fantasyland rides (Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White); the Fantasyland 'experience' - the castle, the dragon, excalibur etc; Thunder Mountain in Frontierland (I lost count of the number of times we rode this); driving the cars in Discoveryland (for an 8 and 6 year old, this was probably their favourite!); Pirates of the Caribbean - (marvelous); the Tarzan show; Moteurs- Action (bringing the 'actors' from the crowd was a bit cheesy and long winded)

I loved the roller coasters and did each one a number of times. The Rock & Roller Coaster was the only big one that my daughter, Sophie could ride. She did this once with my wife, both of whom came off scared to death! I did it lots of times - alas on my own.

I would recommend the guide book that we used. It was called, I think, "The Brits' Guide to Disneyland Resort Paris". I can't remember the author's name but it was an excellent and invaluable aid that we had with us at all times.

We were unimpressed by:

The food - Quality - mediocre at best and Cost - extortionate - the best meal we had was in Cinderella's ballroom which was good but very expensive for what otherwise would have been an average British restaurant meal. Planet Hollywood was appalling and I can see why it lost so much money. The only decent cup of coffee that we had in the stay was in McDonalds!
The character breakfast - this was a rip off of the biggest magnitude - we had the same breakfast that we could have had in the hotel (although there were some sausages and eggs) with a scattering of characters that the children had seen in the Park. The children enjoyed seeing the characters, getting photos and autographs and we got closer to the characters than we might have done otherwise, but I did feel this exercise was one of the few purely money-making activities there.
The Disney village - I am afraid that this was like a bad British seaside resort. It has none of the charm that I would have expected of Disney and seems to be run by third party operators and concessions. It did not make for a particularly pleasant walk to or from the hotel
On our last day (Monday 1st September, the operators closed some of the attractions, or reduced capacity by closing part of the rides. They also kept many of the Fast Pass machines shut! I am sure this was due to entering low season, but the consequence was disappointment and longer queues than necessary on some rides

We had very few moans and the important thing is that the children came away with memories they will never forget. I can probably send you some photos to include in the website if you like.

I hope the above was useful.

Kind regards

Simon Coatsworth

September 2002 - a Trip report from Rosemary

Because the studios are not large, we were able to go to everything a few times, if we wanted to. This park was really not busy even at the weekend and is very different from the other as it concentrates mainly on film making. This is reflected in the parades featuring 101 Dalmatians, toy story, etc. By the way, at Disney studios and the main park our youngest daughter was picked out of the crowd to dance in the parade with the characters. According to our friend, they have not done this before. Anyway, back to the studios, it is a lovely entrance and everyday the main foyer had two or three characters signing autographs at the main entrance. Once in there are plenty of roaming bands, street artists and French comic sketches going on although we avoided the latter like the plague! All the while, the piped music is film themes such as bond music, Casablanca etc. The attractions are defiantly suited to the over 8’s with the best being the Rock and Roller Coaster featuring Aerosmith. In our opinion, this was better than Space Mountain. Our eldest children rode this repeatedly and never got tired of it. Armageddon is very impressive once you get past the introduction although very scary for small kids. Moteurs action is a brilliant live stunt show that cannot fail to impress. the studio tram tours is also great fun with a trip into "disaster Canyon" where a huge oil tanker explodes before slipping towards the tram............thank goodness for the 200 tons of water that bursts the damn just at that moment! Flying carpets is really the only fun ride for kids. Animagique is a cute show where Donald Duck encounters stars from Disney films and the kids loved that. Cinemagique is a brilliant interactive film starring Martin Short that pays tribute to the movies but involves the audience (you may get wet!) Very cleverly done and we really enjoyed it. The art of Disney animation is not really my cup of tea and although it has the best building, (a huge sorcerers apprentice hat), it just shows you should never judge a show by the building. It was twenty minutes I shall never get back. There is also something called a zapp zone but we were advised this was more to do with the making of a French TV programme so we never tried that. Overall, it is a fine sideline for a day although after the parade at 1:30 we went back to the main park only returning for the rock and roller coaster for an hour each evening. Bye for now Rosemary