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| Image via Tom Häkkinen Hôtel l'Elysee, Val d'Europe |
I stayed here with my girlfriend for 3 days in September. We chose to stay here because it was a great deal cheaper than the Disneyland “Sequoia Lodge” hotel, which would’ve been our first choice. I think from the pictures and the reviews on TripAdvisor, we’d managed to convince ourselves that although the price for the room was relatively cheap it wasn’t a “cheap hotel”. However, upon first entering the hotel we were quickly disabused of that particular illusion - the hotel smelt like the Ibis Stevenage. Furthermore, the wi-fi, although free, was tortuously slow and there were some unsightly looking marks on the toilet seat.
Which isn’t to say it was all bad. It was conveniently close to Disneyland with a free shuttle service to take us there and there was free wi-fi (albeit slow and buggy with page time-outs). But we had a fantastic time at Disneyland - I recommend going on the “Finding Nemo” rollercoaster which is great fun.
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| Image via Tom Häkkinen Not unlike the American Embassy, Disneyland Paris is a little piece of the USA on French soil. |
There was one thing however, that really did irk me and which I think merits a complaint. We got terrible service when calling for a cab to take us to the station where we could catch the airport express shuttle. They didn’t call a regular taxi, but some shuttle service, with whom, I’m sure, they have some kind of arrangement. We were already pushing it with time, but we had to wait another 15 minutes for this shuttle service. When we finally were in the shuttle, he didn’t take us direct to our destination, but instead picked-up two other passengers, notwithstanding that we had told him what time we had to be at the station. The driver himself was a caricature of a sleazebag unscrupulous cab-driver, when I complained to him at the end of the trip for getting us to the destination later than we’d asked he tried to blame us for not departing early enough, and then to top it all off when I offered him 50EUR for the fare he pretended not to have any change! It wasn’t until I demanded his name that he finally produced four 10EUR notes. Slimey son of a …
Needless to say we missed our shuttle bus and had to pay another taxi to take us all the way to Charles de Gaulle. This time we found an honest cab-driver from the long cab-rank at the station. The fare ended-up costing 70EUR!
And I’ll leave the story about the easyJet flight and landing at Luton airport for another post!
8 comments:
That is a shame. It is awful to spend the time and money and get crappy treatment in return. I hope the trip had more good points than bad.
Thanks JJ. It was in fact an outstanding trip! We came to see Disneyland and Disneyland didn't disappoint.
As for the poor service, well we can put it down to a lesson learned and a travel experience to share.
I'm glad you had some good experiences on that trip in spite of the bad moments. I had similar cab driver treatment in Manhattan. Looking forward to the Luton airport story. I met my husband in Luton, believe it or not.
Akseli, please go to my blog and read my post for today, 8 Jan 2011 and pass it on to your readers. I want the world to know what happened in Tucson today, in my own neighborhood! Thank you.
Formidable travel writing. Nothing more lowdown than the no change trick.
I always enjoy reading about your adventures.
Roxy, that would explain your familiarity with Hertfordshire! I'll definitely have to write about my Luton Airport experience then - to give you a hint the title have a name something along the lines of "waiting in the non-EU queue at Luton airport". You could spend your entire holiday in that queue it's so long!
Judie, I've just visited your blog today - it's terrible what happened in your town.
Thanks for the complement Snyder, it's always good to hear someone enjoys your writing.
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