We recently returned from 3 days at Disneyland Paris where we rang in the New Year with my family. I grew up in Europe and went to DLP regularly in the 1990s and 2000s, then moved to the Orlando area where I have been an annual pass holder at Walt Disney World. I am very familiar with the Florida parks, so going back to DLP for the first time in 12 years was interesting.
Parc Disneyland is a beautiful park and the rides looked well maintained. However, I found that many areas were poorly managed and could be greatly improved. This is going to be a long post with things I didn’t like about DLP, but first here are some things that I did like a lot:
Parc Disneyland is a beautiful park and the rides looked well maintained. However, I found that many areas were poorly managed and could be greatly improved. This is going to be a long post with things I didn’t like about DLP, but first here are some things that I did like a lot:
- Beautiful Christmas decorations and the tree lighting ceremony with Mickey and Santa was very nice.
- It’s A Small World is so good and the Christmas overlay is amazing. Loved this ride.
- Pirates of the Caribbean is so much better than the one at Magic Kingdom.
- I still love the arcades on either side of Main Street and I wish we had those in Florida.
- The parade during the New Year’s Eve party was incredible. It went on forever; I think they used every character and every float from every parade they have.
- The Big Hero 6 show during the New Year’s Eve party was super cool. Never seen anything like it.
- The Christmas Big Band show at the Studios park with Mickey at the drums was awesome.
- Finally got to ride Ratatouille and loved it. Looking forward to seeing it at Epcot.
- Mickey’s PhilharMagic is so sharp compared to the version at Magic Kingdom. Makes this my favorite, even though the screen is so much smaller.
- The official app was not very useful but we used the third party MagiPark app for wait times, which was great. It has some nice features like wait time notifications.
- It was very busy but lines at attractions weren’t so bad. We were able to do everything we wanted. Small rides were under 30 minutes, popular rides between 30 and 60. Only Crush’s Coaster was over 60 minutes most of the time, but single rider took us only 20. Even Ratatouille wasn’t that bad and took us 5 minutes in the single rider line. Nothing like the 3 to 5 hour waits that several Disney World rides were getting during the same days.
- There are by far not enough cast members. Before the turnstiles there were no CMs to help anyone out (which was needed as several guests in front of us hadn’t exchanged their voucher for a ticket and were sent back to the ticket windows, causing delays and frustration). After we went through the turnstiles at the Studios park there were no CMs to be seen either! I needed to ask something and I was looking around in disbelief that there was not a single CM to be seen and I ended up going to Guest Services. At a Florida park there are CMs everywhere to answer questions. We encountered severely understaffed quick service restaurants and food stands with just one CM (taking orders, handling payments, making coffee, making food, etc.), causing huge lines. This is unacceptable at any time during the year, but especially during the Holidays and during a €99 ($113) upcharge event. There weren’t the usual CMs with signs telling you where the end of the line is and things like that.
- Cast members don’t enforce the rules. Guests were literally smoking everywhere in the parks, even in front of CMs who would not say anything about it. There were many people holding selfie sticks (which are not allowed at DLP either) during the parades and shows and cast members wouldn’t say anything. Guests climbed over fences to stand in places they shouldn’t stand. There was no crowd control at all during the parades or fireworks.
- Many cast members are rude or don’t seem to care. Some CMs at the turnstiles would not even make eye contact. Many CMs would just say “no English” without any further effort to help us or just shrug. After the fireworks my elderly parents found two chairs that were part of a terrace from a food place and a guy behind the counter yelled “FERMÉ” at us and waved his hand to shoo us away. There was no reason why my parents shouldn’t be able to rest there for a minute as the park was still open for another hour. Completely ridiculous. We had many encounters like this. Hardly any smiles, no waving hands, not a single happy birthday from a cast member to my brother who was wearing a birthday button and birthday hat on one of the days. Waiters who just sneer at you and don’t say anything. Frowning faces and no eye contact when leaving the park. I don’t know if this is any different from when we used to visit DLP in the 2000s or whether we are now spoiled by the US parks. We had much friendlier encounters with store and restaurant employees in Paris than at DLP.
- Quick service restaurants are poorly organized. Food seemed even more expensive than at Magic Kingdom: €4 ($4.50) for a coke, €16 ($18) for burger and fries, €70 ($80) for character dinner. I remember the quick service food being bad, but I didn’t remember the poor management and incompetence. Here are some examples:
- We wanted to get a sandwich at the deli on Main Street and stood in a line that went by the food and finished at a register. The lines had metal barriers and were so narrow that you couldn’t move back to get something or even get close without getting in line. So you had to get in line just to see what they had, but none of the food was marked! Every person passing the wrapped sandwiches would pick each one up to figure out what was on it. There was a baguette with smoked salmon and a veggie baguette with very thin slices of carrot that looked extremely similar, causing a lot of confusion. Trying to get the attention of a CM behind the counter was almost impossible and they were not very helpful. When I eventually got someone’s attention and asked what each sandwich was, she also had to pick each one up to look! They were out of many things. The line moved very slowly and of course the hot pizza slices were the first thing in line and the cold stuff was at the end. There was so much wrong with this place and so many guests looked visibly irritated.
- The Ratatouille area in the Studios park had some special food stands for the holidays similar to those at Epcot festivals. My wife got in line for soup. When she got to the front the person said that she had to first get in the other line to pay and then get back in this line to get the food. Many people made this mistake as there was no signage or anyone telling you what to do. When she finally ordered and paid she received no ticket or proof of her purchase! After another wait of 20 minutes in the pick-up line the CM had to remember what she ordered. The poor CMs looked frustrated by this process as well.
- There was a small window in Fantasyland where my dad stood in line behind 8 other people to get coffee. He waited for about 30 minutes and watched the lone guy make waffles in the slowest possible way. To make a Belgian waffle he would put the ball of dough on the iron and then spend several minutes carefully smearing it around with a knife before closing it. This is completely unnecessary; you can just put the dough in and press it flat when you close it. We saw weird stuff like this everywhere and many people would get out of line because things were moving so slowly. They would seriously sell a lot more food and drinks if the CMs were better trained better and stands had more staff.
- Another day we made the mistake of having lunch at Café Hyperion at Videopolis. After standing in one of the huge disorganized lines for 45 minutes we finally got to the register to order and the guy didn’t listen to anything we said or he was hard of hearing. We wanted to order the BB-8 souvenir mug and he had no idea what we were talking about. We kept pointing at the digital screen behind him when the BB-8 appeared, but by the time he moved around it would be gone. I ended up going to another register where the mug was displayed to take a picture and showed it on my phone. Some things in our order were wrong and I waited an extra 20 minutes for the right burger as my family was either theirs. All fries were cold and the burgers were not very good. We ended up throwing most of it away. Two of the drinks were even wrong.
- Chaos. On New Year’s Eve the entire hub in front of the castle was packed with people and it seemed that only a handful of cast members were waving directional cones, but they were completely ineffective. There were no ropes or tape or any paths left open as they normally do in the US parks; the entire area in front of the castle including half of Main Street was full of people with no place to go. I found it very chaotic and even a little frightening. I am used to being in huge crowds at Magic Kingdom, but this was insane. Guests were pushing rudely to get through and my dad was almost pushed to the ground at one time. There was chaos and confusion in other areas as well as there is often no clear signage or not enough CMs to tell people where to go or what to do.
- The Paris parks are technologically very far behind the Florida parks. It really made me appreciate the Magic Bands and FastPass+ system at WDW. There is Wifi in the parks, but it was extremely spotty and slow. The Disneyland app is very simple and pretty useless without restaurant menus, wait times, etc. The PhotoPass app did not work at all while we were there and the PhotoPass website was down the first 2 days. At the Studios park they use this bizarre third party “Lineberty” app to make reservations for Meet & Greets and it was the only way to see the characters. Many wait time signs at attractions are still simple non-digital signs that are changed by hand. CMs were not using mobile devices to scan our event tickets. There is a dining reservation website that is not advertised on the official website. I only found it linked from a third party site, but I had many problems with the website. I made a reservation for 5 people which ended up being for 1. The date on the confirmation page was always wrong (off by 1 day), but then right in the email. Obviously there is no mobile ordering or any of that cool stuff we have at Disney World. It just seemed to me like technologically not much had changed in the 12 years since we last visited.
- PhotoPass+ was disappointing. We love PhotoPass at Disney World so we decided to get DLP’s PhotoPass+ for €75 ($86). We purchased it at the photo store on Main Street. We got it mainly for the ride photos, but I was hoping there would be some photographers walking around for the holidays. I asked the CM if there were photographers walking around and she said “in front of castle, maybe”. We didn’t see any on our 3 days. A lot of the character meet and greets had PhotoPass photographers and the ones we encountered were friendly and did a good job. After going on a ride that takes a photo there are screens with a number code as well as a QR code that you should be able to scan with the PhotoPass app, but this never worked (because of problems with the app) so we always went to the photo desk to have them add it for us. The photo would then appear in the app several hours later. Unfortunately the ride photos we received are all very weirdly cropped. Each photo has a lot of artwork around it and only a tiny portion shows the people, but the photos are cropped in a way that some people are cut off or the photo is completely misaligned. They look terrible. When you download a photo from the app it is in extremely low quality. There is a PhotoPass website, but it was down during most of our visit. The only way you can download the high resolution photos is via the (not mobile-friendly) website and you can only get all in a ZIP file, which makes it impossible to use them on your phone or tablet. You need a computer to do this, which is not very handy when you want to share the photos on social media when you’re in the park. This PhotoPass system is so far behind Disney World, where you can go on Seven Dwarfs and don’t even have to do anything to get a video of yourself on your phone.
- The New Year’s Eve party was disappointing. This was an upcharge event of €99 ($113), which we found quite expensive for what you got. Apparently it was €49 last year, so they doubled the price. We didn’t get any freebies like snacks or not even hats or noise makers like you do at Epcot. The parade, Big Hero 6 show and fireworks were great, but everything was very chaotic and there were not nearly enough cast members to manage the people. There were 10 meet and greets, but many didn’t start until after 9pm and five didn’t even start until 10pm, so with lines more than an hour for most there was very little time to do them. All restaurants seemed to close at 6pm and the guide said that they would reopen at 8pm, so we had nothing to eat during this period. Most of the food stands were even closed. We did find the deli and Casey’s open before 8pm even though the guide said they would open at 8pm, so that wasn’t clear. Fantasyland closed at 10pm. There were some tables selling champagne for €10 ($11.50) per glass. Because of the lack of things to do throughout the park everyone started coming to the hub and Main Street around 10pm and just stood around. But without any crowd management this started to get pretty hectic quickly. Overall I didn’t find it worth the $113 per person if you compare it to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, which have a unique parade and offer free treats. I don’t think that the parade had any unique floats and the Big Hero 6 show seems to be reused from Halloween.
And surely there are some CM's that feel the same way, once in a while you bump into them. But DLP surely does miss the CM experience as a whole. Hopefully this will change in the near future. 