Bonjour! Good Day! My DLP planning thread!
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You know you just sang that in your head
This thread is going to follow our trip plans, which are changing by the day! I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback as we figure out how we’re going to navigate our first trip out of the country as a family
So here’s some backstory, if you don’t feel like reading my ramblings, then feel free to skip down to the line of drinks below. This year has been a tough year for our family. At the beginning of the year, my husband threw out the idea of traveling to either California, Paris, or Tokyo to see a different Disney park. This was going to be our anniversary present to ourselves (this year we’ve been married for 10 years, and together for 15). Those ideas went on the backburner in May, when my mother in law passed away. We traveled from NC to Vermont to say goodbye, and then back again in June for her memorial and to spread her ashes. After those trips our vacation account was pretty depleted, so we stopped thinking about going anywhere. Then last Friday, we said goodbye to our beautiful dog Sasha, who we have had for almost 14 years. So we really needed something positive to focus on, something good
Which brings us to a little bit of an impulse buy. Not too long ago I signed up for a newsletter called “Scott’s Cheap Flights.” If you’re interested in international travel, I highly recommend it. On Friday I get an email about a fare sale, one of the destinations is Paris, and it includes Thanksgiving dates! We play around with the dates a little bit, and go for it! So we are flying out on Tuesday, November 21, and arrive in Paris the next morning. We fly back on Tuesday, November 28 and get home that evening.
This trip has been changing since the second we bought those tickets. Originally we thought we would do more time in Disneyland Paris, and some time in the city of Paris. When I started looking at hotels, on the US site they’re running this promo for buy 2 nights, get 2 nights free. And tickets are included! The deals they have going on over there are insane! Even with that deal, we really didn’t want to spend 4 nights of a 6 night trip to France at Disneyland Paris. Like I always say “there is more to see than can ever be seen, more do to than can ever be done.” I had read on different sites that for DLP they highly recommend checking the rates on different country sites, that the promos they run for each country can be wildly different. Over on the UK site they had a similar deal to the US site. On the French site (thank you Chrome browser with translation built in!) they have a promo for 40% off and children under 12 are free.
Here’s what our plans are as of right now :mickey:
Wednesday – Day 1:
Arrive at CDG airport around 7:30 am. Pick up rental car. Head into Paris for the day. Possibly visit the Rodin Museum and another landmark. After dinner, head over to DLP and check into our hotel (right now we are considering Hotel New York and the Sequoia Lodge)Thursday – Day 2
Hit Extra Magic Hours at Parc Disneyland. Their extra magic hours are 2 hours in the morning, so I’m hoping that we will be able to get a lot done in those 2 hours. We plan on spending the whole day there until close (which last year was 7 pm)Friday – Day 3
Rope drop Walt Disney Studios Park, mostly for the Ratatouille ride. Stay there about half the day, until we feel like we’ve hit everything we really want to see. Check out and start driving to Saint Malo, which is about 4 hours away. Check in to our hotel for the night. I just booked our Saint Malo hotel yesterday, with tax was less than $80, here it is:http://www.hotel-chateaubriand-st-malo.com/
Saturday – Day 4
Spent the morning in Saint Malo. Drive to Mont Saint-Michel. Not sure if we will spend the evening here, or if we just want to tour it into the evening.Sunday – Day 5
This is where things are still up in the air. We have a list of places we would love to stop that include:
Bayeux, Beuvron-en-Auge, Étretat, and Honfleur. Depending on time, drive back to Paris and spend the night there, or stop somewhere along the way.Monday – Day 6
Paris. No real plan yetTuesday – Day 7
Fly out :'(I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions as we figure out what the heck we’re going to do over there!
This trip plan just makes me smile from ear to ear. Love your title too! Of course now I’ll never get that song of my head for the rest of the day.
That hotel looks LOVELY!!
What an exciting trip! Have fun!
Thank you so much @missingWDW! Besides the flights, that’s the only thing we have officially booked. For a triple room, the price was really cheap, and it is fully refundable until the day before, so there was no reason not to book it now. I can’t wait to see Saint Malo, it looks incredible.
You better sing that song everywhere you go!
but seriously, your plans sound great! Good job checking out the deals in different countries, we keep snagging the deals for European tourists when we go to WDW via my parents that hotel looks beautiful and what a steal! I had no idea EMH was a thing at DLP! My brother stayed at Sequoia Lodge and loved it. He said it was pretty and reminded him of Wilderness Lodge. Some general tips for a first time international traveler: don’t take a nap that first day you arrive. You may feel like a zombie and want to sleep, but trust me, don’t do it! You’ll screw up your body clock and that will be hard to correct with such a short trip. If you can, sleep as much as possible on the plane. Also, the French drive crazy and it’s wise to pay attention to the speed limit (which is in kph). They have hidden cameras in certain places, especially on highways, that will take a picture of your plate if you’re speeding and fine you. Those fines aren’t cheap and the rental company will slap a fee on top for “processing” the fine.
You better sing that song everywhere you go!
but seriously, your plans sound great! Good job checking out the deals in different countries, we keep snagging the deals for European tourists when we go to WDW via my parents 
that hotel looks beautiful and what a steal! I had no idea EMH was a thing at DLP! My brother stayed at Sequoia Lodge and loved it. He said it was pretty and reminded him of Wilderness Lodge. Some general tips for a first time international traveler: don’t take a nap that first day you arrive. You may feel like a zombie and want to sleep, but trust me, don’t do it! You’ll screw up your body clock and that will be hard to correct with such a short trip. If you can, sleep as much as possible on the plane. Also, the French drive crazy and it’s wise to pay attention to the speed limit (which is in kph). They have hidden cameras in certain places, especially on highways, that will take a picture of your plate if you’re speeding and fine you. Those fines aren’t cheap and the rental company will slap a fee on top for “processing” the fine.
Thank you for the tips! We watched a video a couple nights ago, it’s a guy that works with Rick Steves and lives in France. He was saying that if you’re going 52 and it’s supposed to be 50, you’ll get a ticket. Thankfully Alex will be driving, since I’m little Miss Leadfoot over here
Our flight over there is overnight, so I think I’m going to drug my family. I mean that in the best way possible
And any other practical tips you have are so appreciated!
Thank you for the tips! We watched a video a couple nights ago, it’s a guy that works with Rick Steves and lives in France. He was saying that if you’re going 52 and it’s supposed to be 50, you’ll get a ticket. Thankfully Alex will be driving, since I’m little Miss Leadfoot over here
You’re welcome! :blush: Yeah not to say that you’ll blatantly disregard the speed limits only that guy is right. 2 kph over will get you a ticket and the signs aren’t always obvious for you to see the speed limits, and if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do you WILL get honked at! They love the horn! If you’re going too slow, if you take longer than 1 second to move at a green light, if you don’t keep going at a roundabout, etc. and French police are almost military so you don’t want to make them mad! Alex is brave to drive there! The traffic lights are weird, there’s roundabouts, and you can only pass people on one side.
EEeeeeek! Omgosh @kcboston !!! I’m so so so excited to hear all about your pre trip planning to DLP!!!
This looks SO exciting. We have never traveled out of the country and I can’t wait to follow along with you.
Definitely try to sleep on the plane, I went to Europe once (Italy and Switzerland) and the first day I was walking around like a zombie
get a good nights sleep before the morning EMH, so exciting! 
Thank you all for following along! This trip is such a work in progress! This one is a little lengthy, so my apologies in advance!
The first thing I’m trying to tackle is our hotel stay for our DLP days. This is where things get quirky. According to the interwebs, you can book DLP through any country’s site, not just the US site. Each site has different promotions, so depending on your stay, booking through the US site might not be the best option. Right now, the US and UK sites have similar promotions, Buy 2 Nights, Get 2 Nights Free, Children Under 7 are Free. Those don’t really work for us, because we only want to stay for 2 nights, and Cammie is 7 years old (I guess they check proof of age, not that I’d be trying to skirt any rules
) On the French site, they have promos for 30-40% off your stay, and children under 12 are free. And tickets for the length of stay are automatically added, so for 2 nights, you get 3 days of tickets built into your price. So just to give you a basis for comparison, if we are looking at 2 nights at the Sequoia Lodge, Wednesday to Friday. Here’s how the prices compare on the 3 country sites:
US Site: $1,018
UK Site: £678.00 ~ $883 USD
French Site: 502,60 € ~ $575 USDThat’s crazy! So it’s pretty clear that we’re going to book through the French site (Chrome Translate for the win!), but man is the site quirky. It’s not like the WDW site where you select your dates, and it shows you the hotel you want and other options for those dates. No, for some reason this site shows you your hotel for those dates, and maybe for some other dates surrounding your dates, and other hotels for other dates (but usually not for the same dates you selected). Are you confused yet? So in order to really compare hotel costs using the same dates, you have to do a separate search and click on each one individually, or you can only search from the homepage, because that’s the only place that will let you “search” multiple hotels at one time
We are trying to pick which hotel we want to stay at right now, and that’s being complicated by the fact that November seems to be the month they refurb their pools. Thankfully they have indoor pools over there, so even though it’s cold, we’ll still be able to use them if we want. A pool wasn’t really on my radar until I showed Cammie pictures of the beautiful hotel we’re staying at on Saint Malo and the first thing out of her mouth is “Where’s the pool?” Really?!?! Way to take the wind out of my sails kiddo :p So of the 7 Disney properties, only 4 of them have pools. Of the 4 that have pools, only 2 of those pools are open during our stay. So we were thinking of staying at the Sequoia Lodge, but their pool is closed, and it’s too bad because it looks beautiful! Normally I’d brush it off and tell Cammie that we don’t need a pool when we’re there, but the parks close early, so we’d actually have time to enjoy some time at the pool in the evening.
So the two hotels that have pools open are:
Hotel New York
and Newport Bay Club
The Hotel New York has seriously mixed reviews, some of them get bizarre! And the theme is a little loud for my tastes, but I can get over it. For the 2 nights there (with tickets) it would be about $650 USD. Honestly, we really love the look and the theme of the Newport Bay Club. It looks like the Yacht Club, and doesn’t look as loud. The problem? For some reason, the only room that’s showing up as available for our dates is their version of a Club Level room, which costs over $1,000 for our dates! The frustrating thing? If I search for the two nights individually, or 3 nights (with an extra night on the front or the back end), a standard room shows up. So frustrating!! :hmmph: :hmmph:
So TL;DR the little one is making this hotel process more difficult because she wants a pool, and we picked the wrong week to want to swim :p
French site for the win! That looks like a great deal!
That’s a bummer about the weird website and pool refurbs! I can see what you mean about Hotel New York being kinda loud. It’s funny how they’ve based some of their French resorts on WDW’s resorts. I think I would pick Newport Bay too but the Club Level Room, wowzer! Is it possible to pool hop? Maybe you could stay at Sequoia and use Newport’s pool? That’s a great suggestion @starbee, I just googled it and it seems there is no pool hopping under any circumstances there. Even if your pool is closed! They could never get away with something like that over here, they’d have an all out rebellion on their hands
I’m surprised they don’t make a fuss about that, when the French don’t like something boy do they let you know it!- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.