We took two week-long holidays this year. The first, at the beginning of August, was to the south coast of Devon. We stayed, as we have for the last four years, in a caravan and spent our time on the beach and visiting local farms and the like. You could take the kids to just about any beach and they’d have a good time, the only requirement is it isn’t raining. This year, for the first time, our luck with the weather didn’t hold and we were subjected to a couple of truly miserable rainy days. This cemented the idea in our mind to try something different next year and go slightly further afield.
In the last week of August we went to Disneyland Paris. Overall, it was a very good, if tiring, holiday. The first thing I really enjoyed was being able to catch the Eurostar from London and within a couple of hours walk out of the station in France, turn right and straight into the park.
The whole park is a very polished operation and despite my usual corporate cynicism, I did find myself being excited by the whole experience… possibly contagiously from the children. More than any amusement park I’ve been is before they really due try to amuse you at every turn, not just on the rides. One slightly odd detail was the incessant music being played wherever you were in the park; sometimes this worked better than others.
We stayed at one of the (cheaper) Disney hotels, which was nicely themed and entirely adequate given that we really only stayed there when we were sleeping. One of our main concerns was that as we were all sharing a single room, getting to sleep was going to be awkard. However, we were up at 8am each day, into the park around 9am and not back home until after 10pm, so we all flaked out immediately as soon as we got back.
The queues weren’t too bad (with the notable exception of an hour and fourty minutes for Crush’s Coaster) and some judicious use of the Fast Passes allowed us to get on almost every ride in the five days we were there. Ben’s favourite ride was Star Tours, which we went on three times. It has a delightfully 80s overtone that fits very well with “classic” Star Wars. Jessica’s favourite the Buzz Lightyear ride because she loves the “Ooo! The Claw!” aliens. Again, that ride got three goes. By the end of the three days we were pretty worn out and it was definitely time to head home.
The only downside was the food. This was very expensive and rather samey, although we rarely ventured above the fast food level, so perhaps if you’re flush you get a better experience.
I’d definitely recommend going if you have young children, for them it really will be magical. That said, I don’t think we’ll go back for a good few years, partly due to the expense and partly because we feel we’ve really “done” it and going back wouldn’t live up to this year’s experience.