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Late June 2019 Disneyland Paris Trip Report
Disneyland Paris Trip Report, June 14-23, 2019
We spent three nights at the Hotel Cheyenne, and the remaining five nights at the Hotel Ibis near the Gare de Lyon in Paris.
Sorry that four of the photos near the start of this report have vanished. They were up, then they weren't.
We left L.A. on a Friday afternoon, June 14, and arrived in Paris on Saturday morning.
This was our 13-year-old's first trip to a place where English isn’t the primary tongue, and her first time across an ocean.
Our 11-hour flight on Nowregian Air from LAX to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport was about $200 per round-trip ticket cheaper than the next cheapest airline. The planes were new with nice lighting (including the ability to dim the windows), a smooth ride and the best air/lowest cabin pressure we’ve experienced on a plane. With one reasonably priced upgrade we were fed twice and got to check one bag and take a backpack & a plastic bag on the plane. The food was fine going there. Not as good on the return flight—in fact the sandwiches we were served for our second meal were terrible. We had back up salads and wraps from Trader Joe’s with us on the way there and better sandwiches from Paris for the way home.
We landed in Pairs at about 10:30am and took the Magical Shuttle (not free like WDW’s Magical Express—it cost 69 Euros one way for all 3 of us—reservations on the internet, ticket printed in advance), from the airport to the entrance to the lobby of the Hotel Cheyenne. Not many people were using this convenient bus service, and we stopped once in another part of the airport so the driver and is assistant could stop & enjoy a cigarette with others in the their company. Two customers also got off & enjoyed a refreshing smoke. (FOOLS!) The ride was a scenic 30 to 40 minutes. The scenery look a lot like parts of Wisconsin.
We were second in line to check in, and the nice front desk woman from Portugal let us go right into our room at noon. Like almost every person I encountered involved in customer service in Paris, she was polite and helpful because I greeted her with “Bon jour” and then asked, “Parlez vous Anglais?” (“Do you speak English?”) If you can’t handle asking that one sentence in French you are an ugly American and an unfit representative of our democracy. Stick to WDW & D.land. If you can politely ask that one sentence after a "Bon jour," the bilingual/English speaking world of Paris will be yours, and you will have no worries for the rest of your days. Of course, the more French you know the better, but you will easily and comfortably get by with that one sentence. Almost everyone in Paris will instantly start speaking nearly perfect English to you. They want your money.
The moderately priced Hotel Cheyenne moved to the top my favorite Disney resort list with this visit, though I will give the Animal Kingdom Lodge another chance in a couple of years. My favorite part about Disneyland Paris is being surrounded by young middle-class families from every major European country. It could be my imagination, but I’ve found tourists who stay at the Hotel Cheyenne to be really friendly to Americans.
The freshly painted western town has aged beautifully.
Our room on the second floor of the Sitting Bull building looked out onto a large attractive lawn where two cats (Superfluff & Action Cat) entertained us every day by pouncing on each other. We got to meet & pet another black cat as we walked to the hotel along the water from the park.
The day we got in we just hung out at the hotel and waked to two fairly nearby shopping malls Val d' Europe and La Valle Village, shown on the map below. At the malls it was interesting to be surrounded by French people without many tourists. We had dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant there. I read that the French consider it rude or uncool to eat while you walk around, and I rarely saw people doing this. I tried to be discrete as I ate my bread.
We spent our first day (Sunday) in France in Paris even though we were staying at Disneyland's Hotel Cheyenne for 3 nights. We slept in and took the RER-A train into the Gare (station) de Lyon in Paris to hang out there for the afternoon & early evening. The first thing we did was to find our next hotel that we'd be staying at starting Tuesday. It was near the train station. (Note there are two Hotel Ibis hotels near the station.)
We enjoyed excellent weather all week, including an evening & morning shower.
My one concern about Paris is the spreading graffiti. It’s colorful, but the late James Q. Wilson’s “broken windows” theory suggests that they should take care of little problems or bigger ones will follow & be more challenging to remove. We didn’t notice any of the air pollution I’ve been reading about. Unlike past visits I didn’t see any swastikas spray painted anywhere, and we also didn’t encounter any yellow vest protesters during the two weekends we were were in Paris.
There are many green spaces around the Disneyland Paris resort, unlike the less scenic areas surrounding Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
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