Back from 4 days 3 nights. What a trip. I was prepared for a huge drop in standards. I shouldn't have worried. Breifly:
Sequoia Lodge, 5th floor Montana lake room. Refurbed 3 weeks ago. Lovely. Floors 6 and 7 still being updated and are closed to guests. Even our corridor smelled and looked like new.
Promonade work around the New York being done. Some lighting was out at night, felt a bit too dark. Shame.
New security bag check is in place. Much better. The sterile area is now all the village, the cinema area, the new World of Disney and both parks. A new fence, still being built, divides the espelande/plaza between the rail station and the village / parks. You can park hop and park to village hop without being searched again. It also means hotel guests no longer encounter the salespeople and tat sellers between the bus station and parks. It also means you can see the front plaza of the studios in all its glory finally.
World of Disney store - very nice. Not huge, but very spacious and a nice place to browse. The M&M statues outside have people climbing all over the lighting of photos, meaning some spotlights are broken already. Speaking of guests, there is still a definite European feeling in DLP with visitors. Pushing and shoving happens more. Not terribly, but enough to notice. And smoking areas are ignored in the parks. There seems to be a real culture clash compared to the US. Smoking anywhere outside, and in some outdoor lines. It's almost an unenforceable issue. It didn't help the parks were VERY busy. Yes, it was weekend in July, but I've never known it so popular. Very nice to see but maybe not for the first timer. The studios (WDSP) was TOO busy given it's small onstage footprint and design needing constant backtracking across the park. The sooner the actual guest acreage is expanded the better. It's too small now, and on a day like Sunday no longer do-able in an 10am-7pm day.
The parks: Disneyland Parc
The 20th spruce up was noticeable in most areas. Very nice. Main St and Fantasyland looked stunning in particular. Aside from a cleaners strike and protest inside the park on Sunday which meant EMH guests saw the area between the DL Hotel and train station covered in litter. And a thousand managers on walkie talkies herding guests around the peripheral. More than a few little areas had paint or wood issues, but you had to look to see them. Same with lighting issues on the DL hotel. Nowhere near as bad as the GF in WDW but clearly more than bulb issues; whole areas were dark. It didn't detract much though. And the same lighting on the Newport Bay Resort was surprisingly complete. Worthy of note:
Ride show quality was stunning. In Phantom Manor I counted one animatronic (the Mayor) with issues and one smoke machine faulty (the bride finale) but nothing else wrong.
Big Thundermountain went 101 on Sundays opening, and took a while to reopen. Once it did it looked great. All water, including splash, worked. Smoking chimneys. Working machines in mine and line. Smoking TNT explosion. And.... animated fibre optic AND strobe falling rocks (above track)
Pirates of the Caribbean - never looked so good. Get ready for this. Cloud projections. Lift hill pulleys. Fighting pirates projections. Cannon explosions. SWINGING Pirate! DUELLING ANIMATRONIC pirates! All working!! The latter 2 had been missing for maybe years. Aside from missing effects on the 2nd drop which seemed to be swapped for the onside photo flash sadly the ride looked and sounded amazing.
As a note, we rode on Saturday and all the A100s on the left side were static. Dead. This is poor show I thought. We got to unload, and noticed load was empty. Sure enough, the ride was classed 101 until the figures were reanimated. The ride was constantly at 45 minutes wait.
Buzz Lightyear - FAR better than WDW. Longer. Bigger. Better visuals. And removable guns. The pre show Buzz was under refurb though, and the whole area was behind a themed wall.
Space Mountain - 2 rides, 2 issues with onboard audio. Heavy bass but no real music discernible. However, the visuals were amazing. So clear. Almost as if every projector was new. Spinning meteors. Supernova. Comet flyby. Starfields. All so so clear and bright. Lovely.
Small World - perfect. A few animatronics were missing, but at least they were removed and not static. Casual guests wouldn't know.
3pm anniversary parade... at 7pm. Nice to see, but the music was far too short and repetitious. I'm surprised the same comments weren't taken on board since April.
Fantillusion - still stunning. If anything, even more lighting effects than I remember. Sadly the further down the route you sat the less show stops you saw. Knocks DEP and Spectro for six.
Dreams! - simply amazing. As a fireworks show it will disappoint, like Fantasmic! would. But as a show by itself it is stunning. And with park hours for hotel guests from 8am to 11pm every day it was a perfect end to the day with it's 11pm showing. The projections blend with the castle perfectly. The fountains were a surprisingly integral part of the show no matter where you watched from. The pyro was well used. The lasers laughed at ROE. I also noted the projectors were set so far back on the Main St roofs they are invisible unless stood on the castle drawbridge and you looked back.
I guess you can tell I was impressed. Studios report and more coming soon.
Sequoia Lodge, 5th floor Montana lake room. Refurbed 3 weeks ago. Lovely. Floors 6 and 7 still being updated and are closed to guests. Even our corridor smelled and looked like new.
Promonade work around the New York being done. Some lighting was out at night, felt a bit too dark. Shame.
New security bag check is in place. Much better. The sterile area is now all the village, the cinema area, the new World of Disney and both parks. A new fence, still being built, divides the espelande/plaza between the rail station and the village / parks. You can park hop and park to village hop without being searched again. It also means hotel guests no longer encounter the salespeople and tat sellers between the bus station and parks. It also means you can see the front plaza of the studios in all its glory finally.
World of Disney store - very nice. Not huge, but very spacious and a nice place to browse. The M&M statues outside have people climbing all over the lighting of photos, meaning some spotlights are broken already. Speaking of guests, there is still a definite European feeling in DLP with visitors. Pushing and shoving happens more. Not terribly, but enough to notice. And smoking areas are ignored in the parks. There seems to be a real culture clash compared to the US. Smoking anywhere outside, and in some outdoor lines. It's almost an unenforceable issue. It didn't help the parks were VERY busy. Yes, it was weekend in July, but I've never known it so popular. Very nice to see but maybe not for the first timer. The studios (WDSP) was TOO busy given it's small onstage footprint and design needing constant backtracking across the park. The sooner the actual guest acreage is expanded the better. It's too small now, and on a day like Sunday no longer do-able in an 10am-7pm day.
The parks: Disneyland Parc
The 20th spruce up was noticeable in most areas. Very nice. Main St and Fantasyland looked stunning in particular. Aside from a cleaners strike and protest inside the park on Sunday which meant EMH guests saw the area between the DL Hotel and train station covered in litter. And a thousand managers on walkie talkies herding guests around the peripheral. More than a few little areas had paint or wood issues, but you had to look to see them. Same with lighting issues on the DL hotel. Nowhere near as bad as the GF in WDW but clearly more than bulb issues; whole areas were dark. It didn't detract much though. And the same lighting on the Newport Bay Resort was surprisingly complete. Worthy of note:
Ride show quality was stunning. In Phantom Manor I counted one animatronic (the Mayor) with issues and one smoke machine faulty (the bride finale) but nothing else wrong.
Big Thundermountain went 101 on Sundays opening, and took a while to reopen. Once it did it looked great. All water, including splash, worked. Smoking chimneys. Working machines in mine and line. Smoking TNT explosion. And.... animated fibre optic AND strobe falling rocks (above track)
Pirates of the Caribbean - never looked so good. Get ready for this. Cloud projections. Lift hill pulleys. Fighting pirates projections. Cannon explosions. SWINGING Pirate! DUELLING ANIMATRONIC pirates! All working!! The latter 2 had been missing for maybe years. Aside from missing effects on the 2nd drop which seemed to be swapped for the onside photo flash sadly the ride looked and sounded amazing.
As a note, we rode on Saturday and all the A100s on the left side were static. Dead. This is poor show I thought. We got to unload, and noticed load was empty. Sure enough, the ride was classed 101 until the figures were reanimated. The ride was constantly at 45 minutes wait.
Buzz Lightyear - FAR better than WDW. Longer. Bigger. Better visuals. And removable guns. The pre show Buzz was under refurb though, and the whole area was behind a themed wall.
Space Mountain - 2 rides, 2 issues with onboard audio. Heavy bass but no real music discernible. However, the visuals were amazing. So clear. Almost as if every projector was new. Spinning meteors. Supernova. Comet flyby. Starfields. All so so clear and bright. Lovely.
Small World - perfect. A few animatronics were missing, but at least they were removed and not static. Casual guests wouldn't know.
3pm anniversary parade... at 7pm. Nice to see, but the music was far too short and repetitious. I'm surprised the same comments weren't taken on board since April.
Fantillusion - still stunning. If anything, even more lighting effects than I remember. Sadly the further down the route you sat the less show stops you saw. Knocks DEP and Spectro for six.
Dreams! - simply amazing. As a fireworks show it will disappoint, like Fantasmic! would. But as a show by itself it is stunning. And with park hours for hotel guests from 8am to 11pm every day it was a perfect end to the day with it's 11pm showing. The projections blend with the castle perfectly. The fountains were a surprisingly integral part of the show no matter where you watched from. The pyro was well used. The lasers laughed at ROE. I also noted the projectors were set so far back on the Main St roofs they are invisible unless stood on the castle drawbridge and you looked back.
I guess you can tell I was impressed. Studios report and more coming soon.
Can't wait to see Dreams again! Oh - and on this topic: Can we expect a Dreams video to show up on your site at some point? That would be wonderful! 
