Disneyland Paris Trip Report, Stayed Onsite

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We just returned from a 3 day/2 night package at the on-site Sequoia Lodge at Disneyland Paris. This was the last leg of a 16 day trip between London and two different parts of France. I'm going to write a trip report since I don't see many reports on stays at this park. 

Initially during our trip planning, we talked about staying at our hotel in Paris and taking the train to Disney. My 6 year old DS was getting really tired at the end of each day in Europe from all the walking and activity. He was also the one who was most looking forward to DLP so I knew he would be dragging at the end of the night. Since the park is close to an hour by train, I decided that it would be better for us to just stay at Disney for 2 nights instead of spending all that time back and forth. I made this decision to stay on property while we were already in Europe so this was a very last minute decision and booking. I was able to get a nice discount on the room because of a Disney+ promotion so I booked us into their version of a club room stay called the Golden Forest Club at the Sequoia Lodge. Booking an on-site room at DLP includes park tickets in the package for the number of nights you book + 1. So we got 3 days of tickets to both parks at DLP with our 2 night hotel stay. It's not like WDW where you have a choice to add park tickets and can change up how many days of park tickets you want to add.

My prior Disney experience since I had kids has been 4 trips to Disney World over the past 8 years and one DCL cruise last year. Based on what I had read ahead of time, I had expected to be completely underwhelmed by DLP but we ended up loving it. 

Day 1, Saturday -

We had breakfast at our hotel in Paris. I did a final load of laundry at the local laundromat because I love going home with mostly clean clothes. I finished packing our suitcases while my husband took the kids to get lunch at McDonald's near our hotel. We checked out and got on the train to DLP around 12:30 PM. DLP is the last stop on the branch of the red line that goes there. Once we got off the train, I read there were shuttle buses to the hotels so we asked at the station where they were. They were easy to locate so we waited for the bus to come to take us to the Sequoia Lodge. The buses for all the hotels came within 10 minutes of us getting there including our bus. It was a short ride over to the hotel. You have to put all your bags and luggage through their security machines. Check-in time was 3 pm so our room was not ready. They gave us our passes and we headed toward the parks. The hotels are located around a lake adjacent to Disney Village which is a small version of Downtown Disney. When you exit Disney Village, the first hotel you encounter on the lake is the New York Hotel (Marvel themed). Sequoia is the middle hotel on this lake, and the Newport Hotel is the furthest hotel on the lake. There are 2 more Disney hotels that are not directly on the lake. They're not too far as I saw the signs for them and my husband walked over to check them out one day. 

Before entering Disney Village, there is a line for security and you put your bags through their machines again. Once you get past Disney Village, you will see the entrance to Walt Disney Studios Park first on the left. Further along the path is the entrance to the second park, Disneyland Park. The DLP app shows the wait times and show times for everything so based on that, we decided to go to the Walt Disney Studios Park. First we tried to see the Frozen show but the current show was full and they were having people line up for the next show which was over an hour later. Instead we walked into the Mickey and the Magician show that was starting. It was 30 minutes long and it reminded me of the shows we saw on DCL. Most of the shows we saw are presented with one character talking in English while another character responds in French. The dialogue is written so you can follow along even if you only know one of the two languages.  After this we stood in line for about 20 minutes to ride the Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin. This ride just goes in a slightly fast circle and is like something you find at a local amusement park, nothing special. It was underwhelming but DS found it fun. We walked back to the hotel after this to find out what room we had been assigned and to take part in the afternoon tea time for the club level room. It was about a 20 minute walk back from the inside of the Studios Park. 

The tea time was a huge spread of mostly desserts which were all good. There was also some fruit like sliced watermelon which was very refreshing. The only savory food was a few types of tea sandwiches. The club included non-alcoholic drinks like juice, soda, coffee, tea. For the juice and soda, they poured it for you into a small glass so this meant smaller portions of your preferred beverage compared to the giant cups we get in Florida LOL. You can purchase alcoholic drinks and I think they bring them from the bar located in a different section of the first floor. We were supposed to receive a text with our room assignment but had not so we went to the desk to find out our room was on the 5th floor of the main building. After the snacks, the kids and I walked back to the parks. This time we went into Disneyland Park. It had started raining. They did have a lot of covered walkway areas in Disney Village and Disneyland Park so we didn't get horribly wet. We were so excited to head to the parks that we had forgotten our ponchos in the room. I had a scarf that I tied on my head, DS had a hoodie, and we made DD a makeshift "shower cap" from a large ziplock bag. She decided after a while that she would rather not wear that and just get her head wet. Once we walked past the castle and into Fantasyland, the kids tried to pull the sword out of the stone. Then we rode the carousel, It's a Small World, and Dumbo. The carousel was nothing special, it's all horses and I don't remember what the carousel in WDW is like to compare. We walked right onto It's a Small World with the app showing a 5 minute wait. This ride was more vibrant than WDW. The kids enjoyed trying to identify all the countries as we passed by. The song is sung in French and I didn't even hear it clearly until the end of the ride. It also didn't get stuck in my head like it always does in Florida. Dumbo was closed for a while but it finally reopened so we ran over there. It had like a 15 minute wait which felt like forever because they only have 16 elephant cars on 1 Dumbo ride. I know WDW has 2 sets of Dumbo that they load so double the capacity. Again, underwhelming since we ride the Elmo version of Dumbo at Sesame Place all.the.time but we had to ride it to prevent DS from a meltdown and of course DS found it fun. After this we left the park around 7:30 pm and walked back to the hotel for dinner. It took us a solid 30 minutes to get from Dumbo to Sequoia Lodge. The rain had been on and off but it had stopped by the time we walked back.

We had dinner at Hunter's Grill in the hotel. This is a buffet and I had read that it focuses on meats. What this means is that they had a dish with boar, a dish with venison, and a lamb dish in the buffet in addition to chicken, beef, fish, and pork. The kids devoured the Mickey shaped ravioli and said it was so good. To compare, they usually don't eat ravioli back at home. DS ate up all of his crunchy chicken nuggets. They had Mickey shaped potato cakes (I wanted to call it a tater tot but it wasn't as crunchy) which both kids also loved. There was no ketchup by the potatoes, I had to hunt it down in the salad bar. There was some very soft chicken with bones prepared in a French style and DD loved this. I really enjoyed the French style lamb stew and rice. Everything was prepared in French style of cooking because it wasn't exactly American tasting but it was all so good. I don't think I had anything from the salad bar but it was also very extensive. The dessert spread was also huge. A lot of the desserts were repeats from what we had already seen at tea time so I just ate the leftover desserts the kids didn't finish. We really enjoyed this meal, it hit the spot. The waiter initially looked at our cards and said we couldn't eat dinner but we explained we wanted to pay for dinner. He was like "ah, you will pay!" I guess he mostly encounters people on "full board" or "half board" which are their versions of the meal plans. I didn't add full/half board to my room when I booked it because I didn't know where we would eat but this must be very common to add to based on the waiter's reaction. We couldn't charge anything to the room at this hotel so we had to pay for dinner at the end of it. That was new as we had not encountered this elsewhere in Europe. Same experience when we visited the bar and shopped at the gift shop.