The Disneyland Paris Hotel – Positives and negatives.

I am a big Disney fan… I have been to the parks in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Orlando and Paris… Not to mention the Disney cruise…  I am still missing Shanghai…  Did I not say I was a fan?

In all these trips I had never stayed at the Disneyland hotel… I had stayed at others within the Disney complex (Orlando and Paris) but my husband had insisted that for our next adventure with the kids we were to invest the money on the convenience of it…

I was not very convinced but agreed to give it a try…

The price difference from the second best Disney Hotel to the Disneyland Hotel can be more than 30% increase… So…

Was it worth it???

Yes…ish…

If you have small kids like me… It is definitely worth it… due to the proximity with the parks… You can come and go as wish… We came back to the room for an afternoon siesta every day and we were in the room less than 5 minutes after exiting the main park gate…

The hotel itself is beautiful… Typical American style of large rooms, high ceiling, carpets and wall papers… All immaculate and spotless… However, a bit soulless too….

The room was very comfortable, although we had a hiccup when we arrived as we were given a room different from what we were told it would be our room when we checked in… On the back and forth of changing rooms it took us an hour and walking the hotel from on side to the other can be very annoying… Not to mention having to explain the situation to about 5 different members of staff who did not seem to communicate with each other… This may seem petty but not what you expect when you pay for the privilege to be in the best hotel in the complex…

The Disney details are everywhere in the room… In the wall paper, in the slippers, in the bubble bath… Even the mirror is carved with Disney characters… Beautiful and cozy…

One would say that when you go to a Disney Park you are not to stay too much at the hotel…

Again… Yes…ish…

The Disneyland Park hotel has a few common areas… A swimming pool, a spa, a kids club, an arcade room, a princess beauty saloon, a cafeteria / bar and 2 restaurants…

There are 3 buildings linked by a passage on the second floor which crosses the whole hotel… It is a quite clever passage but long when you need to go from one side the other.

The Swimming pool… it is tooooo small… The hotel is huge… Full of kids… It was packed… It looked like a bathtub and it was not the peak of the high season… For what it is worth, a bigger pool would be super welcome to the hotel.

The kids club and the arcade room were also well attended and in my opinion added to the comfort of the parents…

The restaurants we only used for breakfast… Normal buffet breakfast.. Not outstanding…

But when we comes to breakfast…when we reserved it I paid the supplement to have breakfast with the Characters… I probably should have read better and it is partially my mistake… But the breakfast was not at the hotel but inside the park at the Plaza Gardens Restaurant…

When we got to it, there was a huge crowd outside the restaurant stomping on top of each other in order to get in, with no guidance, no organization and not information… A total inferno, as the attendant herself described… It took us 20 min to get seated for a booking which costed hugely more expensive… I just don’t understand why they do not do that in the breakfast room of the hotel… In the end, parents were stressed, kids stressed, all  that should have been a pleasure did not go well at all…

We were negatively surprised with the breakfast experience. Disney prides itself for being an organized environment and it allows itself to run a restaurant with reserved seats to be in such chaos… There is no excuse and as I was told it was not only this time…

Another consideration is the Characters presence at the hotel… I expected a lot more!

Parents are paying a high premium and for that they should be rewarded with a lot of comfort and convenience. I remember when we did the Disney Cruise, the Characters were everywhere and my kids had the chance to see them, talk to them, take photographs with all them… In the Disneyland Hotel, I saw them at the 2nd Floor common area for a limited period of time… Not enough at all… Maybe the hotel should consider, having character greeting the guests at check in and saying good bye at check out… Also, walking through the premises to greet the guests… It would value to the stay and happiness to the kids…

As I said the experience in overall was good… Worth it because of my kids age… Nothing else… So, if you do not mind walking a bit longer or taking the shuttle bus, you may consider saving the money and spending it at an extra souvenir…

XX Valentina.