Fiona-Rhiannon August 2022 Trip Report

We enjoyed a fantastic 4 days and 3 nights trip, staying at Disney Hotel Cheyenne from 3rd to 6th August 2022. Hotel Cheyenne is lovely and quaint.

We travelled from the UK via Eurostar at St Pancras. I booked special assistance and we were whizzed through bag checks and passport control. We arrived about an hour and a half before our train, but probably could’ve left it till an hour before. Our return journey we done the same, though it didn’t seem entirely necessary in France until we got back to the UK for passport checks.

We also had the Disney Express check in service: helpful for luggage, especially on the last day as we left it there and enjoyed the park until we had to go. When we arrived we realised we needed to go to the hotel anyway because City Hall was rubbish, honestly, so we went to get our priority cards and activate the photo pass.

We had pre-booked Half Board meal plan, and upgraded 2 of those meals to Princess Dining at Auberge de Cendrillon and a Character Breakfast at Plaza Gardens.

The food and atmosphere at Bistrot Chez Rémy’s was by far our favourite dining experience. My Teenage son had the vegetable stew with plant-based Meatballs – he’s a meat lover and he really enjoyed this dish. I had the roasted cod and crushed potatoes and they were delicious!

Captain Jack’s was Day 2 dinner, and though the food was nice & the restaurant looks good, it seemed really dark in there. Either I need new readers, or they need to change the menu writing from a tiny black scrawl because I could hardly read it! I had the Smoked Chicken & vegetable salad and the Chicken and Prawns with Rice. I wasn’t keen on their desserts though, and around the table we had all of them, which nobody seemed keen on. Of course i also treated myself to a lovely cocktail.

Auberge de Cendrillon was lovely: I had the warm scallops & cauliflower, the Beef Casserole in a red wine sauce (with the best cheesy mash!), again, our table wasn’t hyped by the desserts, but we also had the celebration cake.

Plaza Gardens Character breakfast started off lovely: Food was the standard Hotel buffet style breakfast (which we all really enjoyed every time) and characters were rotating round parts of the packed restaurant. Tigger was cute and kept bopping his nose on my phone as I did a selfie. Rabbit was cute too as was Pinocchio and Geppetto loved our Pinocchio tops.

One downside of this experience was that we felt Captain Hook was so rude. At first we thought he was being cheeky as a villain, but he’d barely allow us to take photos meaning most of our group missed out, and kept pushing me away, using his hands to signal to hurry up (after 1 photo) and would just quickly move on. It was rather disappointing, so I mentioned it to a member of staff who turned out to be the restaurant manager. She was horrified but quickly made it up to us; she did offer for us to come back for free for the evening meal, but it was our last day, so instead she sent us straight over to Mickey as we hadn’t met him yet, and gave us a queue jump.

I am a foodie – the 30th anniversary snacks are really cute if you’re into that sort of thing. The Beignets are soooo delicious. I had the chocolate one and I really wish I hadn’t brought it on the last day for the train home, cause I could’ve eaten so many more!

As a group, we had 2 priority cards, and these were honestly a god send. I don’t know if we just got lucky as some people we spoke to in queues reported issues with getting times to come back etc, but we flashed our cards at the premier access line and got on every ride we wanted almost immediately. We ended up doing Hyperspace Mountain 4 times, at one point we rode twice in the space of 15 mins, because it was my son’s favourite. Only attraction we got a time to come back for was to meet Stitch. Now Stitch is my son’s favourite so this was an absolute priority for us, and our time was an hour after we queued. In the meantime we did a ride during that time to keep him occupied. Stitch was very popular.

My boy has Autism & ADHD, and it was a lifesaver. We also used the priority areas for the parades and Illuminations, and for the line at the hotel breakfast.

The weather was gorgeous, and although the parks always said at full capacity, I didn’t think it seemed too busy – until the night we stayed for the illuminations! It was heaving!

Little tip: if you want to watch it but don’t want to deal with the crowd and young kids being up that late, I’m pretty sure it’s on Disney + – I realised when it started that I’d watched it a few weeks ago.

The 30th anniversary parade is amazing, I don’t know the lyrics as they’re mostly in French (well, there’s the familiar Disney songs from films in English, but the 30th anniversary bit is in French), but it didn’t stop us dancing and trying to sing along! We had so much fun with those, especially the baby in our group!

I’m also the type of person that treats travelling with kids like a military operation. Prior to leaving for Disney I made lists for us for our priority rides and characters etc.

Well, that pretty much went out the window, as we just did whatever came up and we could get to. But we still got most of what we wanted done.

Only downfall I would personally say, as someone who went to Florida for the 50th last year, was that I didn’t think much to the shops. Main Street shops don’t have quite the same vibe as Florida does, and I was gutted I couldn’t find special photo frames etc like I did last year. Of course, that didn’t stop me spending a lot of money! I was gutted I didn’t take the opportunity to get much retro Euro Disney merch though.

Pin Trading also didn’t seem as big as Florida in terms of cast members trading; a lot of them just wear pins they like and won’t trade, but you can buy nice ones in the shops, and Paris had a bigger variety of lanyards. Ears also seemed to be in a bigger variety at Paris.

It was our first time ever staying on Disney Property, and though I’ve done a day trip to Paris before, most of our group hadn’t been before. If you’ve been to Florida, you know it’s not quite the same vibe and some people seem much ruder! It was all still so magical nonetheless, and a fantastic Disney Fix!