DisneyLand - is it compulsory?

Well, we've booked to take the girls in Autumn half-term. Having spent all of my pre-motherhood years ranting about how evil, pernicious and bland I found DisneyLand, we had a sudden panic two weeks ago, and ended up reserving a slice of pink castle in EuroMouseBlah. We just had one of those moments where you suddenly get a dizzying over-view of how terrifyingly fast the whole thing's going, and try and slap the brakes on for a minute. Half the time, you know, I sub-consciously presume I'm still pregnant. But oh my God, here's Dora, nearly eight, and starting to get suspicious about the Easter Bunny ("It was funny how Uncle Aki was in the garden, just where all the eggs were!") and Father Christmas ("I think I know what I might be getting from Santa!" she said, disingenuously, the morning we found the wardrobe - currently home to a Tardis wrapped in a binbag - looking disrupted.)

We've got to take them to DisneyLand, quickly - before they sneak out of the queue for the Giant Teacups to have a fag. I'm actually looking forward to it, now. Obviously I'll be taking a small Fruit Shoots bottle filled with "Journey Juice" - supermarket whiskey - just to take the edge off being menaced by a gigantic Chip'n'Dale. But just going to LegoLand again wouldn't have been the same, would it. Would it?

Comments

[M. Long]

Totally agree about the comments on Eurodisney. It was fine when it first opened but has never compared with Disneyworld Florida.
Amazed about some of the comments from people who have never visited and the so called class system. Kids are kids, whether they are educated in public schools or comprehensives, they love it.

Fist time we went there our youngest was 16 months old, our eldest 8 years old. We've been back a few times. last time the kids were 26, 18 and 11 respectively and still enjoyed it as much (by the way two of them having been privately educated!).

So yes if you can go to Disney World Florida and if you can have three weeks: two in Orlando and one by the coast to recuperate. Of course there's also all the shopping!

Enjoy

[Minna]

We went last November. The park is zoned. Choose a zone and do all the stuff then move on to the next zone. Try to ignore all the merchandise and take in your own booze for you as that will take the edge off things and snacks for the kids. We spent 10 hours standing around outside in zero degrees and felt as if we had been skiing at the end of the day so wobbly were our legs. I thought it was a bit infra dig and was puzzled by the numbers of loved-up couples enjoying a visit WITHOUT children. Some of the men even wearing Mickey Mouse ears. Also saw French fathers cuffing their children when they stepped out of line - hmmm. Don't queue for anything in the futurist zone it's not worth it, especially the 1950s racing cars. The kids liked it though and having gone all the way there we didn't want to be killjoys but we're not going back.

[D Duck]

Disneyland California is fantastic for kids. Expensive, but lasting memories. Wouldn't go before age 4 as the kids don't truly get it or remember it before that. We went for 2 days but you really need 3 or 4 to take it all in.

[Hayls]

Hi Gypsy,

Yes, 'tis me. Life is good thanks - have decided that maternity leave is better than working so am not going back and am going freelance instead. The baby is lovely. Sitting, almost crawling, and currently using her two new teeth to chew my right nipple...

x

[Jean Jones]

It's horrible, horrible, horrible, and it costs a fortune. Go to Alton Towers instead - it's miles better.

[Whimsey]

Oooh, Centreparcs! Wonderful, wonderful place! Absolutely ghastly in one way, and truly heavenly in another. Whenever I've been (a bunch of 'mums'n'kidz' together) the kids have had just SUCH fun. It costs a fortune, but there are cheap things you can do to take the cost down. When they are older, and don't need to be booked into activities that require another adult to look after them, things cost a lot less.

And it is blissfully non-chavvy as well!

Love it!
(Couldn't take DH though - like yours he's allergic!)

[NiceHam]

caitlin we are off to center parcs soon
dh is allergic to it adn i fear he may pass out.
So as for Florida - lordy I think never. But the boys have never even seen a Disney film so we are ok

[NiceHam]

caitlin we are off to center parcs soon
dh is allergic to it adn i fear he may pass out.
So as for Florida - lordy I think never. But the boys have never even seen a Disney film so we are ok

[Whimsey]

I don't think Disney's particularly chavvy, is it? (Can't be, dahlings, I've been there!)

Seriously, I found it relatively socially mixed all round, though sometimes it's harder to tell with foreigners......

If you want to see a definite social divide, go to Legoland (uber-middleclass) and then go to Thorpe Park (definitely more chavvy).

Overall, Disney has a very solidly middle class image, I'd say.

[Laura Snapes]

"Imagine having to hang out with people whose IQ's are lower than their wastebands!"

I don't imagine these supposedly unintelligent fools would want to hang out with you and your pompously terrible spelling and punctuation either, Burnley Bob...

[Burnley Bob]

I would never, ever expose my children to this ghastly, tasteless, Yank corporation. Thank God it really isn't compulsory. Imagine having to hang about with people whose IQ's are lower than their wastebands!
This is one of those times to be thankful for the class system in this country, which protects decent families from peergroup pressures of socio-economic groups CDEF+G. 'B's as well most I shouldn't wonder. It is occasion to be even more grateful for private schools, which protect our children from an even more serious type of peergroup pressure - to conform by dumbing down.
The Times has really gone downhill in the last few years. There's really only The Telegraph left now for the proper sort of person.

[Laura Snapes]

I first went to Euro Disney for my fourth birthday (1993) and loved it - at the time it was far quieter. I've been several times since, the last time in March of this year, during the Easter Holidays - the queues were crazy. Surely from the overcrowding experiences of the park's very first day, they should have learnt something about limiting the number of people in the park at one time. Saying that, I went in mid-November 2006, and it was blissfully quiet - you could sit on a ride and stay on it as long as you like. To the comments about the hotel service etc above, I completely disagree. I've never found the staff to be anything other than accommodating, friendly (but not overly-so) and efficient. It's the cleanest theme park I've ever seen, graffiti-free and well-maintained considering that it's 15 years old. You don't have to take Euro Disney so seriously - part of the reason it works so well is that it seems like a complete dreamland, so far away from everything else, so I think that even children suspend their belief when they're there.

[Katyboo1]

Steve
Yes! This is what amazed me. The worst offenders in every category of horrible experience we had whilst in EuroDisney were adults without kids.

I'm sorry people if you were deprived as a child and kept in a coal cellar for whatever reason but Disney is for children. I too wanted to go to Disney as a child and never made it. But I didn't then go twenty years later and trample over the bodies of small children in my rush to shake hands with a plastic mouse.

I found it utterly depressing for example that when the characters came out to rove about the streets and sign autographs (which in itself is weird, freaky and wrong), that my child never got within a whisker of Winnie the Pooh or whoever, because as soon as the character appeared they were invariably mobbed by grown ups with cameras and autograph books.

The same happened during every Disney parade. After the first two where we virtually had to throw our child twenty feet into the air to see anything, we gave up going to the parades altogether.

I do think that holidays should be fun for ALL the family, but there has to be some acknowledgement that this stuff is geared for children and not for adults who missed out the first time round.

The enjoyment for grown ups should surely be from the buzz they get watching their kids believing in the fantasy, much like Christmas. Not because they buy into it themselves.

We had a friend who actually helped paint EuroDisney. He told us that he was on the Aladdin ride where they had planted real bamboo, when one of the park executives came round and demanded they rip out the real bamboo and use painted plastic because that would look more like bamboo! Says it all really.

[margot maynard]

I quite often go to the Eurodisney site and add a carefully thought out holiday to my shopping cart. Then I look at the total and remember that for the same price we can have a week in a an old house in a small French town, where we can cycle to a bakery and I can bore my children about Medieval architecture. And we go and do the latter ... I have now brainwashed them so succesfully that they truly think this is the better choice.

[Whimsey]

MM - that's entirely the problem with going across the Channel. Great countries and places, ruined by the inhabitants! Tsk, tsk.

:)

[Steve Faulkner]

Over the past 15 years our family have visited Disneyworld Orlando 4 times and Disney Paris 5 times. My advice to anyone planning to go to Paris- DONT DO IT. We went for the final time earlier this year. Horrendous, queues queues and more queues. Our 7 year old hated it, 90% of visitors were adults with no kids get a life.
Save your money and make it to Orlando the real deal and take an etra week at the beach to enjoy the weather and recuperate. Best time to go? end of Nov start of Dec very Christmassy snow machines but 80 degrees.

[Delilah]

I'd like to put in a plug for Dollywood, Dolly Parton's theme park in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Much cheaper than the cookie-cutter MGM plasticfests like Disney; food is great (and cheap); rides are great (they run a deli-style electronic queuing system); and lots of side entertainments focussing on folk music and country crafts (glassblowing, anyone)?; clean, safe (yes, they turn people away if they don't like the look of them, or for wearing revealing clothing - but they do have discreet gayfest events). You can even take your dog and put it in Doggywood, which backs onto the theme park so you can say hi to your dog while you're in. Google Dollywood to find out more. When the wholesomeness gets too much you can visit Ripley's Believe it or Not museum in Pigeon Forge, or go camping in the Great Smoky Mountains national park, both nearby.

[MM]

Yes, Whimsey, it's curious how these pesky 'foreigners' can ruin a trip abroad...

[Andrew Milner]

Do you still need security clearance for Disneyland in the US?

[Andrew Milner]

Do you still need security clearance for Disneyland in the US?

[Tony]

I've never been to the Disney parks in the US, so my comments are about Eurodisney where I've visited 3 or 4 times.

My wife and I first went to Eurodisney within a few weeks of it opening in 1992, and with no experience of anything to compare it with we were impressed. The crowds weren't silly, the staff were friendly, Disney characters wandered around the park, and some of the restaurants/rest areas had some great entertainment - I recall stopping for lunch somewhere and being entertained by a fantastic country band. Overall a good experience.

Fast forward to 1996 and I went again as part of a corporate event and stayed in one of the Disney hotels. Again, the crowds weren't bad (though it was February), there was some fantastic entertainment around the park, and overall I enjoyed the trip.

The next time I went was in 2002, with my 6 and 7 year old daughters. OK it was the summer holidays, but the crowds and queueing were beyond belief. Forget using the park railway, the queues for that were impossible so we walked, and walked, and walked. On top of the crowds I was disappointed that the Disney characters and entertainment I'd seen on previous trips had gone. The kids enjoyed some of the shows, but we struggled to get on more than 2 or 3 decent rides. Overall a disappointing day out.

Our final (and we'll never do another one) trip to Disney was in 2006. We went at a different time of year thinking that keeping away from the summer holidays would keep the crowds down. Well, we paid the E180 or whatever it is to walk through the doors, and soon wished we hadn't. Crowds everywhere, 90 min queues for the popular rides, and E10 for a disgusting burger. Never never again, my kids were very upset by 3-4 pm as we'd only mangaged to get onto a handful of rides due to the overcrowding. We've no intention of ever going back again, the only way I'd go back is if Disney pay me and it would need to be a decent amount too!

What a completely rubbish experience Disney has become, it's very sad to see the way it has declined.

[LM]

My husband grew up 20 mins from Disneyland in LA and I've never been, despite a decade & a half (now) of visits to LA. Apparently the big thing for them to do in high school was to turn up late in the day after school for 1/2 price admission or something & go on all the rides for cheap. Sort of like us hanging out round the station square in the town I grew up in, only far more branded and anodyne.

Caitlin - based on the feedback here, I think you should cancel EuroDisney and come out to LA instead; if you do it in the summer, Dora & Eavie can also learn to boogieboard on the beach and we'll even come down & show you the "real" LA (we're always up for a visit to lala-land). And you can even get whale-watching just down the road too...

[Whimsey]

Katyboo - yes, you definitely have to watch out for foreigners tryingto queue jump. The trick is to make sure you know exactly who is in front of you (eg, fat guy, wife in red top), and then stand effectively straddling the queue line so no one can push past. If they do try, you say 'there'sa queue, mate' and stop them, physically. If they try and get on in front of you, you haul them back and yell, and make such a damn fuss to the attendant. The problem, of course, is foreigners. But there really has to be zero- tolerance for queue-jumping.

Most British theme parks are very good, and say things like 'queue jumpers will be evicted from teh queue'. You have to be vigilant though. One favourite ploy is a couple of kids trying duck and weave past, and saying 'we're just joining our mum/dad/older brother' etc etc. Yeah. Right. Get them to point them out. Hold the kids back till you've established verbal contact and confirmation, and even then, personally, if the kids are over ten, they should damn well queue up themselves. (Make allowances for desperate kids who had to be taken to the loo an hour into a two hour queue.....!)

But it is, of course, completely insane that we are required to queue at all. They should just issue numbers like in shoe shops and deli counters.

[Mindo]

Kaitlin,
We took our 2 children to Disneyland in LA when they were 7 and 4, and then again when they were 13 and 10. The first visit was a washout as we were all jetlagged but they very much enjoyed it the second time around (and so did we!). My son is now 21 and has taken himself on 2 trips to Disneyworld, absolutely loves it and can't wait to go again. BTW he also enjoys Smashing Pumpkins concerts and Formula 1 so Disney seems to have wide appeal. I'm sure you'll have a great time.

[Katyboo1]

We took my oldest child as a farewell to being an oldest child when I was pregnant with our second. We stayed in the pink castle at Eurodisney. It cost a fortune. It was without doubt the most miserable, hideous holiday I have ever endured.

It is freezing. The sun never shone once. There is no real concept of queueing and I waited for forty minutes with my three year old to go on the Dumbo ride only to have someone push in front of me at the last moment.

The food is hideous, expensive and the opening times of the eateries are just randomly pulled out of a bag. There are not enough places to eat, even if you are prepared to force the stuff down your neck.

There are not enough rides for small children and not enough shelter from the scything wind. There is nothing else to do and the park is small and set in what looks like 1950's communist cabbage fields miles from anywhere.

The service in the hotel was terrible. We had just put our child to bed and hung the do not disturb sign on the door when we were harrassed by the cleaning woman insistent on giving us a turn down service that we didn't want. I had to forcibly evict her from our room. All the information they gave us at the concierge desk was wrong and the day I asked for a paracetamol and they said: 'We don't provide drugs at Disneyworld' I thought I would actually commit murder.

There was no magic at all. The nicest day we had was when we paid an astronomical sum for a taxi to take us to the nearest town and went to a Chinese restaurant.

The only Disney thing I would recommend is the character breakfast, which despite costing an arm and a leg really made our daughter happy. The rest of the time was purgatory.

To give you some spark of joy. It was six years ago. It may well have improved in spades since then.