The Holy Grail of organised fun: Disneyland and Center Parcs combine forces to launch new holiday resort – but is it any good?
Villages Nature, the new collaboration between Disney and Center Parcs France, has a thrilling waterpark, Aqualagon, with slides, wave pool, lazy river and plenty of fountains and climbing areas Credit: Villages Nature Paris
Sally Peck, Family travel and beaches editor
5 October 2017 • 4:02pm
Sally Peck
What happens when Disneyland Paris meets Center Parcs?
This isn't a joke. Banish thoughts of Mickey in a speedo, frolicking in an indoor swimming pool.
The answer is this: you get Villages Nature, the biggest new campus of organised fun that Europe has seen in years. It's America's "happiest place on Earth" fused in a most corporate manner to the favoured holiday park of the British middle classes (well, the French branch of it, anyway; same name, different companies).
And it is, in many ways, a blast - if you are willing to drink the juice and fork over the cash.
The highs
In what was not so long ago a muddy wooded patch of land in northern France, about 20 miles east of Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, there is now a spectacularly frightening water slide called The Rocket.
A few stories up, and in front of a queuing mass of polite and quietly enthusiastic French teens, daredevils, like me, shut themselves into a clear plastic booth.
Canoeing - electric boats are available too - on the lake in front of the Hundertwasser-inspired apartment buildings above the promenade Credit: Villages Nature Paris
Then, with a nod of the lifeguard's head, and a press of a green button, the floor drops out from under your feet and you fall in a whoosh of water through a peach-coloured tube in a journey that seems reminiscent of travelling through an artery.
As your heart rate slows somewhat, you may be brave enough to open your eyes to take in a stripy light show playing across the inside of your tube. And then, soon enough, you shoot out of the bottom of the slide, happily intact and exhilarated.
The Rocket is the most adrenaline-packed punch at this new eco village, but there are plenty of adventures to be had.
The Aqualagon has a lovely view over the lake, for a calm break after the excitement of the slides Credit: Villages Nature Paris
Conceived, as it was, by an Imagineer (that's Disney-speak for a designer), Villages Nature features five "worlds": the "Forest of Legends", which is a pretty wooded adventure playground; the "Extraordinary Gardens", thematically planted with informative multi-lingual labels about things like insects and tadpoles; the "Lakeside Promenade", location of the kids' club, crèche, and plenty of shopping and dining opportunities; "BelleVie Farm", an attractive centre for riding, animal-stroking and bread-making and beekeeping classes; and the pièce de résistance, the "Aqualagon", an indoor-outdoor swimming pool and waterslide extravaganza dotted with trees and friendly lifeguards.
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You can book classes in all of these worlds - from gardening to riding to aqua aerobics - for an extra cost, and you can check children into the kids' club so parents can get some time on their own.
From later this month, the pool building will also include a spa, and by the end of November, there will be 868 cottages and apartments in the woods and surrounding the central lake, where boating is available for captains of all ages; the scale is impressive. (Among the shops on the promenade is an estate agent; eventually, there will be 1,083 cottages and apartments, and visitors can invest - not in a timeshare, but in a profit-sharing scheme - if they have a spare 250,000 euros.)
Stay in an apartment by the gardens and you'll have easy access to the promenade and Aqualagon Credit: Ludovic Le Couster
This means, of course, that if you go for your eco-friendly holiday in the great outdoors, chances are high that you'll be in good - and plentiful - company. Celebrating the natural aspect of Villages Nature is like scheduling a country walk on a golf course or painstakingly applying "natural" make-up; there's rather a lot of art and design behind this project and nothing is left to chance.
At the pretty BelleVie Farm you can take breadmaking or beekeeping classes, go for a pony ride, or find a tractor of your own in the excellent soft play area Credit: Villages Nature Paris
The lows
This corner of northern France, east of Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, is a funny place to have one resort: the weather is about as wet as that in southern Britain and the landscape unremarkable. Two resorts (for Villages Nature sits on the doorstep of Disneyland Paris) seems even odder.
Still, in many ways, this is a logical pairing: Disney had the extra land, and wanted to build a resort to complement its theme park.
The eco theme will need tweaking as the site matures. Some practices work well: rainwater is collected from the roof of the Aqualagon and used to flush loos and for showers in the pool complex.
But more could be done to exploit the nature on-site: an hour-long beekeeping class (taught by a lovely French actor) focused too much on terminology and not enough on experience. Watching bees operate in the farm's hive was fascinating, but a more organised tasting of different honeys - and coaching the children to articulate the differences - would allow for better engagement.
Predictably, food options at Villages Nature are superior to British Center Parcs' restaurant offerings; it would be difficult to be worse. Like the UK version, there are chains: Vapiano, the German-owned, Italian-themed restaurant chain serves pizza and a variety of pasta, but the counter-ordering system needs an update; queues on our visit were lengthy enough to mean that different meals, ordered at different counters, came at radically different times.
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The staff at Pur, etc, a cafe focused on healthy-ish offerings, were charming, but that didn't compensate for an awkward menu - while the juices and coffees were good, there were no sandwiches with actual bread, just unappetising rice-flour substitutes - and clearing your own table at such high prices seems a big ask. Still, for the price of a good coffee, you can sit in relative calm while your young children play happily in the dedicated play area.
The accommodation, however, is inferior to Britain's Center Parcs villages. The design is about on par - easy-to-clean surfaces, utilitarian kitchens - but many of Villages Nature's best-located family options are apartments, and they are built in a way that sound and cigarette smoke easily travels from neighbouring accommodation.
And how French is it, really?
The promenade looks like an American shopping mall. The Aqualagon is built of faux boulders that are plucked straight from Thunder Mountain. The apartment complexes lining the central lake take inspiration, most eclectically, from the expressionist Hundertwasserhouse in Vienna and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. One thing the design of this park most definitely is not, is Gallic.
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And yet, just as my husband and I had concluded that we could be anywhere in Europe (or North America, for that matter), one night before dinner, things took a decidedly French turn.
First a chanteuse popped up with her band by Pur, etc. We listened for a while, then strolled around the lake, over to the farm where, as we enjoyed a drink in the courtyard of the farm, right by one of the best giant indoor soft-play areas I've seen, a mime dressed as an artiste tried to recreate Monet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe.
Five grown-up volunteers from the audience made fools of themselves, to a jazzy background beat, wearing ridiculous costumes that the mime pulled out of the back of a wonky caravan.
This, I suppose, is the certain je ne sais quoi that the Imagineers - or their colleagues - thought might offer Villages Nature a French identity. It's France via Epcot, but my children found both hilarious.
I doubt that British families will make Villages Nature a destination on its own; its offerings are not different enough from British Center Parcs campuses to justify the extra journey.
However, I would highly recommend it as an add-on to a trip to Disneyland Paris for children aged about two to 10. A weekend spent in the woods - even these highly manicured, nothing-left-to-chance sort of woods - is a lovely foil to a day or two at Disney.
Personally, I'd far prefer a weekend - or, indeed, a week - in Paris itself. But my children, ages six and four, came home from their weekend at this readymade outlet of fun joyful. If this is the fast food of family holidays, it's the Leon: wholesome enough, varied enough, with something for everyone.
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Cottages sleeping four people start at €244 (£216) for two nights for a cottage sleeping four people on a self-catering basis in January 2018, but these are furthest from the action. Apartments sleeping four people by the lake cost from €279/£247 for two nights.
All accommodation features free Wi-Fi, fully-equipped kitchens with dishwashers, furnished terraces or balconies and flat-screen TVs. Baby beds and high chairs are available in all cottages and upon request in apartments.
But look for deals with Disney in coming weeks, but in the meantime guests can buy day passes to Disneyland Paris at the Welcome Centre at Villages Nature, which you can fine here. Day pass prices start at €42 for children and €49 for adults, and the bus to Disney costs €1.60.
By far the best way to get to the area (assuming no delays) is Eurostar. Fares direct to Disneyland from London St. Pancras (stopping at Ashford International and Ebbsfleet International) start from £38 one way for adults and £27 one-way for children aged between 4 and 11, based on a return journey. Children under 4 travel for free. For more information or to book Eurostar tickets visit eurostar.com
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