Saturday 2 February 2008

The Dream Castle Hotel

28 January 2008. So here we are, just arrived at the Dream Castle Hotel near Disneyland Paris.

This is a little further from the actual parks than the Disney hotels, just over the main surrounding road that circles the Disney complex and Marne la Vallée railway station. It was walking distance, but at this time of year it wasn't perhaps a good idea especially after dark as the total absence of street lighting and the sneaky presence of some steep wide ditches would have made it a precarious adventure - but at less cost than paying to go in the park and ride Space Mountain of course.

There are shuttle buses to the parks laid on free and they are excellent, coming every 12 minutes or so during the main part of the day and only down to 20-25 minutes before 8:30am or after 9:30pm. They carried on until just before midnight when (of course) they turn back into pumpkins.

The hotel was themed on a romantic idea of a European castle of the medieval period, although the rooms were thankfully not as basic as the theme might have provided!

There were wall hangings and loads of suits of armour (the swords were chained down...) and a full size mannekin of the King facing the doorway to scare you witless as you walk in! Also a couple of thrones are placed so you can play at being royal, but sadly there's no-one going to start lopping heads off at your say-so.

The public areas such as lounge, restaurants and bar had lots of paintings showing scenes that could well have come from children's story books around the theme of castles and medieval royalty and knights.

The restaurant was good, we ate breakfast every day and had one evening meal there too. In the morning there is bacon and egg, though the bacon was too thin and crispy for our taste. But little matter as there was plenty of other stuff that we did enjoy. Fran was impressed at the soaps provided which were l'Occitane liquid soap, milk shower cream and milk shampoo. Yep guys, means nothing to me either but I'm assured the ladies will understand! As far as I'm concerned it lathered when mixed with water and didn't smell repugnant - so it earned a casual "yup!"

The shuttle from the airport was a VEA shuttle bus and cost 17 Euros for each person. They run 4 times a day heading back to the airport. But as yet we're not ready to go back so let's unpack and then go for a look at the Disney Village!

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