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Collapsing in front of the TV over Christmas and booking holidays as New Year’s Eve approaches are national pastimes in the UK, so keep an eye out for a new promotional push from Disneyland Paris starting today and running until 24th January on all the main commercial networks such as ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

They’re promoting the fact that, from 3rd January to 1st April 2010, you can book a 2 night / 3 day stay from as little as £150 per adult based on 2 sharing at Disney’s Hotel Santa Fe, which can be combined with the Kids Under 12 (so effectively all kids) Stay & Play FREE promotion.

We’ve added the details to our Special Offers pages:

New Year Offer

These special offer prices are available until 15th February, so a last chance to visit during Mickey’s Magical Party. Or go a little sooner and you can catch Mickey’s Winter Wonderland show until March and “it’s a small world” Celebration until mid February.

From 2nd April the New Generation Festival begins, with the Kids Under 7 Stay & Play FREE promotion returning.

Have you visited our Euro Souvenirland Advent Calendar yet?

If not, why not?! To help launch this new website and count down to Christmas, we’ve been posting a fascinating piece of Disneyland Paris history every single day this month. From magazines and guide maps to entire books and brochures, there’s been a new window into the past to open each morning.

Luckily, you can catch up now:

Find all the Advent Calendar items here.

And remember to keep checking back each day — over the big week ahead, these pieces of Disneyland Paris history we’ve got lined up are just going to get better and better. It’s almost… well, it’s almost like Christmas!

The latest park schedules are available on the Calendar, taking us right through Christmas and up to 30th December 2009.

Daily Park Schedules

Events during this incredibly busy period appear to be the same as earlier weeks — even on Christmas Day, Santa Claus makes sure he’s back in Disneyland Park to meet and greet at 10am sharp!

Our Video pages have just been relaunched with a brand new, brighter look.

It’s been over a year since the pages were last updated. Originally launched in Summer 2007, we updated the design in Summer 2008 and only slightly altered it again in April this year, to fit inside the new site style and add HD playback.

So what’s new in version 3? For a start — the pages aren’t entirely black, making things a bit nicer to browse. Other style tweaks include the “HD” and play icons, whilst the categories have been split into several sub-pages. You now see “All” videos first, by the date they were added, and can then filter these using the menu at the top — useful on the packed Entertainment page.

The free downloads for most of the recent videos have always been popular, but in the last design were hidden away. Now they’re right in the middle of the page. And, if your connection and computer are fast enough for HD, clicking the “HD” button on the video pages now saves this preference using cookies, so you’ll always be shown these videos first every time you return. Just click it again to return to normal playback.

Take a look

And to celebrate the launch, how about our 100th and 101st videos?

Video: Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic

Video: Le Passage Enchanté d’Aladdin

Both, as always, available to download directly or via the podcast.

If you’re visiting during the first month of the New Year, you’ll be glad to know park opening times for the second half of January 2010 have finally just been published and guess what… they’re exactly the same as the first half. We can see why they took such a long time to be confirmed.

Monthly Park Hours

If, however, you’re not visiting in January or anytime soon but would like to be, then don’t forget that the mad “Up to 55% off” and “All your meals for Free” offers end at Noon tomorrow. The 55% discount offer is available for arrivals on 22nd, 26th, 27th, 28th December 2009 and from 1st January to 7th February 2010. Click through to disneylandparis.com to find out more.

So having 30% sliced off the cost of your Disneyland Paris holiday wasn’t good enough? Free meals not for you? You’re in luck — as the countdown clock to the 15th December cut-off point for those two offers nears, Disney have just upped their game.

From now until noon on next Tuesday, 15th December, they’re offering up to 55% off certain UK bookings for arrival dates on 22nd, 26th, 27th and 28th December 2009 and from 1st January to 9th February 2010. Yes, a huge 55% sliced off your Disney Hotel, tickets and breakfast, scary!

If you’re thinking of starting or ending the year with a little magic, or fancy giving someone (even better – yourself!) a Christmas treat, it looks like now is most certainly the time to book.

Offer page at www.disneylandparis.com

The offer is only available online at www.disneylandparis.com, terms apply.

We’ve updated our Special Offers calendar with the details — you can always find the very latest and only official Disney offers here.

We’re getting closer and closer to Christmas.

The latest park Programme takes us up to 19th December:

Daily Park Schedules

If you’re heading off for some seasonal magic, have a great time!

Our fourth and final interview for Christmas 2009 is here. Jérémie Noyer talks exclusively with Katy Harris, director of the new Snow White – Happily Ever After mini-show and meet ‘n’ greet, giving the Castle Stage the kiss of life…

Read the full interview

The Interviews site itself has been developed to include special archive pages — so you can see all interviews with Katy Harris, or all the previous interviews in our Disney’s Fairytale Christmas 2009 series, for example. So far around half the previous interviews have been transferred to this new system, more to come soon!

As for new interviews, join Jérémie Noyer in the New Year for a whole New Generation… not just at Disneyland Paris, but in Disney Animation.

Did we mention the old Memorabilia section became its own website?

Of course! And now, not content with its original 500+ attractions, Euro Souvenirland is entering a phase of rapid expansion, adding one brand new item of memorabilia every single day this month, right up until Christmas! It’s our advent calendar gift to you, something new to discover each and every day. Something you’ve perhaps never seen before, or something that brings the memories rushing back.

Additions so far include this eye-catching pre-opening brochure leaflet and our third full issue of the original Cast Member magazine, En Coulisse. You’d have trouble getting back-issues of these now, but we happened upon a whole stack of them and as you can see already, they make for truly fascinating reading — if you can drag your eyes away from the never-before-seen construction photos and other wonderful snippets of history.

Be sure to follow the site on Twitter, Facebook or RSS to open each new item, or just bookmark the homepage.

Heading towards 2010, which still sounds ridiculously futuristic, Euro Souvenirland has a long way to grow yet. As current plans stand, future phases (we’re staying on-theme here) will include a complete Timeline, a return of the Blog, a dedicated Videos section and a Gallery — where those construction and history photos you might have noticed missing will find a dedicated home.

“Here you leave today and enter worlds of history, discovery and ageless fantasy…”

It’s a bumper Calendar update today, beginning with this week’s Park Schedules:

Daily Park Schedules

Then Extra Magic Hours up to May 2010:

Extra Magic Hours

Hotel pool closures, which were missed out of the Calendar refurb, now have their very own page:

Closures & Refurbishments – Hotels

Whilst another extra page adds Season Dates for events further in the future:

Season Dates – Further Ahead

So now we can keep track of next year’s Summer, Halloween and Bonfire dates without creating several near-empty pages leading up to those months. These useful dates were just announced in the latest brochure, and naturally can’t be found anywhere on the official website.

It’s back inside the parks for our videos, and this time we’re exploring the path below the Castle drawbridge, tip-toeing cautiously into… the Dragon’s lair!

Watch: La Tanière du Dragon

Do we make it out alive? Watch and see…

Against the Tree Lighting Ceremony, Disney’s Fantillusion, Mickey’s Winter Wonderland, Disney’s Santa Claus’ Village, Belle’s Christmas Village, the illumination of Sleeping Beauty Castle and “it’s a small world” Celebration, what does the resort’s second gate have to offer in the way of festivities?

We’ve gone right to top to find out…

Read the full interview

…and to ask where Christmas at the Studios is headed in the future.

Notice anything different? Possibly not, but a few improvements we’ve been putting off for a while have finally been crossed off the “to do” list…

First, the background colour. Since the current design was brought in, it has faded from white to a rather strong blue — too strong. It looked a little garish once you’d scrolled down and had those big blue bars either side. So, it’s been toned down to a gentler shade:

Down the bottom, our footer has needed attention for a while, looking a little tired and ugly. With the change from dark blue to the lighter shade, it has been opened up and allowed to breathe — with three big new advertisement spaces for new pages and features:

Of course, it won’t always be three of the same images there, but right now Euro Souvenirland is in the spotlight (and we’ve not had chance to create any others!).

It’s that brand new website which brought along this next change — the header. Previously it was spread across three lines, with buttons, a tagline and two “jump to” links for the other two DLRP- sites. Now, it’s been simplified right down to two lines, with new buttons for RSS, Facebook and Twitter:

And the partner sites? Hover over the new button and a full list appears, as above. Not just DLRP Today and DLRP Review but all of them — including Photos Magiques and magicforum — making navigation much easier.

These new styles have also been applied to DLRP Today, since it uses a similar design. Expect DLRP Review to finally get the same look sometime in the future.

Finally! The next set of Closures & Refurbishments, covering January and February 2010, have been published by Disneyland Paris…

Closures & Refurbishments

Note to Mickey: There are some people who’ve been checking for these every day with their fingers tightly crossed, others who’ve held off booking until now. You can’t really expect people to spend what it costs to stay at the resort on the mere hope that their favourite ride won’t be closed. If they can be published sooner, publish them sooner.

As it happens, it’s just three from Fantasyland this time — Peter Pan’s Flight and the two other usual suspects.

Park opening times are now available for the first half of January 2010.

January 2010 Park Hours

Once the trail-off of Christmas ends, it’s the usual short hours for both parks.

Extra Magic Hours for March and April 2010 have also been published, so we’ve added those two months to the Monthly pages, complete with colour-coded booking price categories for each day.