The Disneyland Paris resort has seven hotels on the property, with around 6000 rooms of
accommodation. Each hotel has a theme; in order of increasing price, they are the
Santa Fe, the Cheyenne, the Davy Crockett Ranch,
the Sequoia Lodge and Newport Bay Club
(very similar in price and accommodation), the Hotel New York,
and the Disneyland Hotel.
The themes of these hotels are astonishingly well executed. Walking around the Santa
Fe, which is designed to look like an inexpensive hotel in New Mexico, it is very easy
indeed to forget that you are thousands of kilometers away from the real city of Santa
Fe. Similarly, the Cheyenne looks just like the old western town it is designed to
represent, the Sequoia Lodge looks uncannily like northern California, the Newport Bay
Club (pictured here) looks like a New England resort, and so on. Even the trees and
plants are selected to maintain the illusion in each hotel, and it is very convincing.
All of these hotels are very nice as well, with luxurious accommodations by the Spartan
standards of European hotels, and nice accommodations by American standards. During
holiday periods and the high season, these hotels sell out completely; the cheapest
of them, the Santa Fe, is frequently sold out even at other times. The Davy Crockett
Ranch is especially popular, because it is in the middle of a real forest, and the
hotel rooms look like rustic bungalows (but with all the comforts of home inside). The
Disneyland Hotel is popular with celebrities.
These hotels are unique in many other ways as well. At one time, the Santa Fe offered
a free laundromat, and cereal and chocolate milk in the minibars in the rooms (because
many guests come with young children). The exceedingly cheap habits of Europeans and
some problems with payments have forced the resort to reduce the extras and special
details, though. Europeans can't appreciate it, and either are unwilling to pay for it
and/or will take greedy advantage of it. (For the same reason, the many different types
of excellent restaurants once found inside the Magic Kingdom and at the hotels
have gradually converged
on pizza and sandwiches over the years, as that's all that Europeans understand and
are willing to pay for.)
Anyway, the hotel pictured above is the excellent Newport Bay Club, which holds
the distinction of being the largest hotel in Europe. You are looking south across
Lake Buena Vista in this photo; the hotel is so wide that I had to make it a
panoramic shot—sorry. This hotel is great inside, and the view from the upper
rooms is beautiful (they look over nearly the entire resort). There are two swimming pools,
one indoor and one outdoor.
As I've said, the hotels and theme park used to have great restaurants, until it
became apparent that Europeans just wanted everything to be cheap, cheap, and cheap.
The Newport Bay had a fabulous buffet, and the Sequoia Lodge had a grill that served
all different types of meat (it is converging on hamburger and pizza today). The Santa
Fe had a real Tex-Mex cantina, and the Cheyenne served real barbecue and buttermilk
pancakes with maple syrup. Most of that is gone now, and the restaurants serve cheaper,
more mundane fare, but they are still good restaurants, compared to what you find in
most hotels and theme parks in Europe (for many European theme parks, the only
food available at all is salami sandwiches and soda pop).
