Theme Park Explorer - Disneyland Resort Paris

Date of last visit: June 2002.

Age of kids at the time: 7 and 4. Free entry for children under 3.

Travel: Signposted from the A4 autoroute exit 14. Parking is a ridiculous 8 euros per day (as at January 2005). The resort very sensibly has a TGV station so there is at least a good public transport alternative. We stayed at a campsite just over an hour's drive away (Berny Riviere). There are plenty of Disney owned hotels on site, with packages available on the official web site and the high street. These were too expensive for us, though.

The Scores… (details below):

Family Factor: 7/10

The Big Rides: 8/10 (Big Thunder Mountain), 9/10 (Rock 'n' Roller Coaster)

Cleanliness: 7/10

Food: 6/10

OVERALL TPX SCORE: 7/10

For some of what follows we're giving an overall view of our family visits to DLRP, taking Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park together. The mini-reviews of the rides and attractions are, however, separate. This so that if you are only visiting one or other park you can see how much there is to do at each. One day tickets usually only get you into one park or the other - you have to buy a two or three day ticket if you want the freedom to move between both. Check the official web site for details.

The staff all speak English but you'll often find that commentaries are in French (which is fair enough).

Basically, though, Disneyland Park is an impressive visual experience (especially if your family loves Disney cartoons and films and can't get enough of Disney merchandise). The Studios, however, have all the charm of a West Midlands industrial estate, but also the best indoor roller coaster I've been on.

All of our family can really take or leave Disney, its merchandise and other products - we aren't avid fans, but quite like the Pixar films and some of the classic animated cartoons. We had heard great things about the Disney parks, though: their quality attractions, attention to detail and attractiveness. Imagine how baffled we were, then, as one of the first things we saw on arrival was some poor individual in a

Minnie Mouse costume being swamped by a wailing scrum of children wanting the thing's autograph as their gormless parents egged them on. Or the next thing, which was a ridiculous queue (on a weekday) for a very poor fairground ride with some Disney-style bits stuck on it. We later ended the first day of our visit wading through the rubbish in the filthy Disney Village looking (in vain) for a reasonably priced place to eat that we could actually get into.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, though. The care and attention put into the design of Disneyland Park was quite something to behold. The bluff, sandstone mountain that Big Thunder Mountain circles around, the fairytale castle, the spooky Phantom Manor and the sheer detail of Main Street USA all spring to mind. The rides themselves vary hugely in quality, from the su

perb BTM to some really underwhelming kids rides with massive queues. The real disappointment was the Studios Park - completely lacking in atmosphere, but hiding one of the most impressive attractions that the Resort has to offer. We honestly can't recommend the Studios for a family with young kids as there isn't enought to do there.

We had a three day ticket, and spent one day in the Studios (half a day is probably enough, really) and two in Disneyland Park. That was plenty of time to do pretty much everything, including seeing one show. We didn't bother with the parades (queues were a bit shorter when the parades were on).

Fastpass operates on some of the more popular rides, and sensible use of this can really help a family out on busy days. We found that the Fastpass tickets for Peter Pan's Flight ran out extremely quickly, presumably because of its family appeal (so we never got to try it). You can hire pushchairs if necessary (useful I suppose if you came on the TGV and didn't bring your own).

DLP will have obvious appeal to kids (as long as they aren't scared of talking mice with bizarre ears). The quality of the attractions themselves is a bit hit and miss, though...

Some mini-reviews (remember it's up to you to look at each ride and decide what's safe for your kids; this is just our personal experience):

Big Thunder Mountain min 1.02m See The Big Rides below

Phantom Manor Quite intricately detailed mega-ghost train (sorry, dark ride) with clever animatronics and sound inside a Scooby Doo-style spooky house. Our kids (4 and 7) wouldn't go inside

Thunder Mesa Riverboat Huge paddle steamer that sails sedately round the island that BTM occupies, so you get a good view of the coaster and a geyser close to Phantom Manor. It doesn't actually do a lot, but it's nice for a sit down

Pocahontas Indian Village An adventure playground. Useful for about five minutes, but about as exciting as the one outside your average Brewer's Fayre

Legends of the Wild West You can wander around inside the fort that forms part of Frontierland, but we didn't bother

Pirates of the Caribbean Mrs H liked this, I didn't, and the children were scared by it. A slow indoor riverboat ride (with a couple of small drops) through scenes depicting a pirate attack. She enjoyed the detail and the animatronics, I couldn't really tell what was going on and got bored. Don't expect a direct tie-in with the excellent Johnny Depp film, the ride came first by a number of years

Adventureland Play Areas Quite impressively done play areas, with a huge hollowed out tree, bridges, water, all kinds of things. Very big, and little kids could get well and truly lost in there

Le Pays des Contes de Fees Little river boat ride (mostly outdoors) that takes you past model scenes depicting fairy stories. Quite nicely done and slow paced so the little ones will like it

Casey Jr. Hurrah! A powered Mine Train ride, not too frantic so the tots will be all right. We like these min 1 year old

It's a Small World Difficult to write about as the adult mind tries to shut out the trauma. Slow boat ride, indoors, past scenes of puppet children all singing the same insanely catchy tune. The kids thought it was fun but I was ready to swim for the exit half way through. I can still hear that tune now, three years later. Agh. Think I need a lie down

Alice's Curious Labyrinth Nice Alice-themed hedge maze for children to lose their parents in

Mad Hatter's Tea Cups Pretty standard teacup ride, where you can control the spin speed of the individual cups so it's OK to take the kids on

Dumbo the Flying Elephant Uninteresting flying-elephants-on-sticks fairground ride where you can control the height of the Dumbos yourselves children under 1.2m must be accompanied by an adult

Peter Pan's Flight Very popular, we were too late to get a Fastpass ticket both days so we have no idea what it is Not ridden

Le Carrousel de Lancelot Nicely painted up big roundabout. The queue for this was horrendous for some reason (probably families in Fantasyland finding Peter Pan had even bigger queues)

Pinocchio Fantastic Journey/Puppet Windmill Didn't see these. We decided to have some lunch instead

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Unfortunately our four year old decided he didn't want to go on it when we reached the darkened platform so I had to take him out the emergency exit, which was interesting. It has a couple of scenes that younger kids might find a little frightening, but there's really nothing to it. Sort of a Snow White-themed "ghost" train

Inside the Fantasyland Castle Nothing much happens, but the castle is almost as attractive on the inside as it is on the outside and you can spend a few minutes wandering around looking at the Sleeping Beauty stained glass windows

Orbitron, Machines Volantes We waited about an hour for this as its capacity is hopeless. It's basically the same thing as Dumbo but with rockets

Autopia This looked like it would be fun but was closed when we came to try it. Little petrol-driven cars that kids can sit in and control themselves, good practice for racing nicked Astras later in life. Sounds like a recipe for disaster but I'm sure it's as safe as houses really Not ridden children under 1.32m must be accompanied by an adult, not recommended for children under one year

Le Mysteres du Nautilus Captain Nemo's sub gets attacked by a giant squid. Quite nicely done, actually, and not too scary. You can see the Nautilus on the picture of Space Mountain below - looks good, doesn't it?

Honey, I Shrunk the Audience Our children were terrified of this. Probably just having a funny five minutes. It's a sit down 3D cinema with extra special effects which some kids (it would appear) may get spooked by. Quite well done as these things go, better than Armageddon in the Studios next door

Star Tours From the age restrictions the designers are obviously expecting young kids to be scared of this ride, but it's just a motion simulator with Star Wars theming. It's a bigger version of those simulators that you see mounted on the back of trucks at outdoor events. The film it was running was pretty effective and the simulator certainly shook you around, but the image quality was poor and my French wasn't good enough to follow everything that C-3PO was saying. Cooler by far was bumping into Darth Vader and an Imperial stormtrooper on the way out min 3 yrs, children 3-7 yrs must be accompanied

Disneyland Railroad Great-looking scaled down steam train which takes you all the way round the park, with a station at each "Land". We eventually got on this last thing on the second day of our visit; the queues had been huge (not enough trains running I guess, a bit like back home)

Although there aren't many rides aimed specifically at more adventurous guests, DLP scores reasonably well here because a lot of the other attractions will appeal to adults as well.

Space Mountain - From the Earth to the Moon People get very worked up about this ride, but I have no idea what the fuss is about. As with the whole of the Jules Verne-esque Discoveryland it looks great from the outside (with the mighty cannon that is about to blast you to escape velocity and beyond), but the launch is limp (your "ship" would get about as far as the burger stall outside before flopping back to earth), the special effects are lame and even though it has three inversions the whole thing is in need of a major excitement injection. Which it may now get as it's being completely refurbished for 2005 min 1.32m

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril... Backwards! The only peril here is wondering whether your head will still be attached to your neck at the end of the ride. Incredibly uncomfortable Intamin looping coaster in reverse. The fact that you can't see what's coming is more irritating than exciting. The ride will be going forwards again in 2005, so maybe that'll bring an improvement min 1.4m, not recommended for children under eight

Disney Studios Park

Rides for Kids 4/10

This bleak-looking collection of sheds really didn't hold much appeal for young kids. To be honest they're a lot better off in Disneyland Park next door. The entrance area (Studio One) with shops and restaurants looks quite impressive, but all you can do there is spend money.

Flying Carpets Over Agrabah We seemed to wait ages for this even though we had Fastpass, goodness knows why. Completely ordinary fairground ride with carpets that go up and down on arms. A trip to Carpetright would be more fun - there are more impressive rides at Barry Island

Art of Disney Animation Might be of interest to older kids if they are feeling artistic and want to interact. Ours weren't and didn't

Television Production Tour This looked interesting (you get to see an operating TV Studio), but it was closed in the morning and there was too much of a queue in the afternoon

Studio Tram Tour A bus takes you round a backstage area, the tour narrated by one Mr. Jeremy Irons on a TV monitor. A lot of it was quite tedious, really, and I would guess that they must have changed parts of it by now seeing as Dinotopia and Reign Of Fire didn't exactly set the world alight. The highlight though was Catastrophe Canyon, which is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see more of at the Studios. I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say our youngest thought it was happening for real and presumably therefore that we were all going to die. Very effective

Moteurs, Action! Stunt Show Spectacular This was a terrific idea and must have swallowed half the budget for the whole park. The brilliant stunt supervisor Remy Julienne has designed a car/truck/jet ski/motorbike stunt show based around a Mediterranean village film set with action all the way, and letting you in on what happens behind the scenes. My wife found the whole thing boring, though, so don't expect all of your party to be equally impressed. The show is about half an hour which might be too long for very young children, although ours liked it well enough. Big screens show the action being filmed and the stunts are quality stuff. One of the cars broke down but the stuntmen worked around it and carried on regardless

Rides for Parents 6/10

The Studios Park is really aimed at adults and older kids. The fantastic Rock 'n' Roller Coaster isn't nearly enough to make you think the Studios are good value, though - it needs more good film-themed thrill rides (and apparently a Tower of Terror is earmarked for the park, although it won't be open for a few years yet).

Armageddon Special Effects Dozens of people are herded into a space station set and then baffled by a string of optical and physical special effects. Quite fun, but a bit too noisy for very young kids

Cinemagique A half hour film starring Martin Short (is he still famous?) about the history of cinema, with a couple of twists - a live actor who appears to become part of the film (a bit like Purple Rose Of Cairo or Last Action Hero) and a few physical special effects. The kids were fidgeting after a few minutes, but the adults quite enjoyed its homages to famous movies

When Disney gets a ride right it gets it very right indeed. BTM has great detailing (even in the queue line), is ideal for all the family (over 1.02m, anyway) although its speed and some dark bits in tunnels may be a bit much for the youngest riders. The way the ride is integrated into the scenery and the convincing overall effect of Frontierland shows all other parks the way to do it. It's even fun to watch from a distance, with water jets shooting out and people waving to the trains from the big river boats. You'll probably need to use Fastpass for Big Thunder - the queues got very big at times.

The Rock 'n' Roller Coaster (Avec Aerosmith) is a truly excellent launched indoor coaster and easily my favourite attraction in the Studios. The launch has real punch (there's about the same acceleration as the upcoming Rita ride at Alton Towers, 0-57 mph in 2.8 seconds, faster than a Ferrari Enzo). This plus a thumping soundtrack (with speakers on the trains), great lighting effects and a couple of smooth inversions add up to a thrilling ride which I'd have got straight back on if there'd been time. The ride was late opening but I was passing it at pretty much the moment it came back on line, so I didn't take a lot of notice of the pre-show on the way to the ride itself. It seemed to consist of a lot of rock memorabilia and Aerosmith (on what looked like a high-definition TV screen) designing a mega roller coaster in a recording studio. I have no idea why they would want to do that, but I'm glad they did. It's a pity this ride is hidden away in the Studios, but bodes well for the redesign of Space Mountain, if they can do it to the quality of this ride using the latest technology

The parks themselves were clean and the theming in Disneyland Park (there isn't really any in the Studios) was pristine. The restaurants were more grubby, though, and the Disney Village was disgusting. Admittedly that isn't actually within the main gates but it helps form your overall impression, especially as it acts as a corridor between the expensive hotels and the parks. The DV was so poor that something must surely have been done about it since we last visited or they'd never get any return custom

We couldn't get into a proper restaurant in the Disney Village and had to settle for the massively overcrowded McDonalds. On the parks themselves we ate in the restaurant in Studio One, the Pizza Planet in Discoveryland and Pizzeria Bella Notte. The choice of meals was poor, the Pizza Planet was heaving with people and less fun than you would expect (it does have a small indoor play area) and the food itself very average (pizzas, chips, chicken nuggets). We learned to leave our evening meal until we got back to the campsite