We completed our 4th visit to the St David’s Welsh Festival in Disneyland, Paris. This took place over the weekend of 5th – 6th March and was, as always, a great success (see the Gallery for a selection of photos).
We left Swansea on Thursday 4th and, once again, stopped off at Wootton Bassett to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in respect of soldiers who have lost their lives in recent conflict. Although there was no repatriation that day we sang 2 hymns to a small assembled group, including the Mayor of Wootton Bassett and the chairman of the British Legion, who organised our visit. We also presented our choir plaque to the Mayor.
We then had a carvery lunch at Sally Pussey’s Inn and made our way to St. Pancras International to catch the Eurostar train. We arrived in Paris and were met by Isabelle, who took us to the coach which transported us to Disneyland. This year we stayed at the Newport Bay Club Hotel – the largest hotel on the property and, with 1,083 rooms, one of the largest hotels in Europe.
We were very fortunate to have a completely free day on the Friday and some of the choristers took advantage of a day in the Park. Other members decided to go to Paris for the day, while 8 played golf at Golf Disneyland. Following this we are forming our own golf society and will be arranging further golf days during the summer.
On Saturday we went to the Disneyland Festival Stage in Fantasyland for a sound check and we then performed 3 conc
erts during the day. Once again, we were joined by the Urdd Eisteddfod winners at each concert and this proved a great success. The theatre was full for all three concerts and a tremendous atmosphere was created, each concert ending with the National Anthem.
Sunday morning came too early (!), and we performed another 3 concerts, this time on our own, to very good
audiences. It is estimated that we sang to around 2,000 people during the weekend, from countries all over Europe. After our last concert we had a photograph taken, with ‘Minnie Mouse’ appropriately dressed in a Welsh costume, outside the theatre and presented the Disneyland staff, who looked after us during the weekend, with gifts from Wales.
We then retired to our hotel, where we had dinner in the restaurant and then had our customary ‘afterglow’, which went on long into the night. It was great to have Sue Arondel join us during the evening, as it was Sue who contacted all the choirs 4 years ago when we were chosen for the event. She is also very involved with the Urdd Eisteddfod winners performing in Disneyland and will be coming to Swansea to attend this year’s Eisteddfod.
The Welsh Festival is clearly going from strength to strength and we are delighted to be involved. We had 36 choristers this year and many say that this was the best yet and huge thanks go again, to our secretary, Alan Clewett, for his wonderful organisation. Thanks also to Isabelle, Sogwilli, and Sophie for looking after us and, of course, to Nick, Rhian and Steve for their hard work in preparing the choir.
