Robustly built bunk beds provide escape from adults for children - complete with individual reading lights

The child centred approach continues into the bedrooms. Over 250 rooms are family rooms with bunk beds, whilst other twin bedded rooms are US-style ‘double doubles’ easily capable of sleeping a family of four as well. In the bunk beds there is a separate curtain and each bunk has its own overhead light, making it an attractive escape pod for children to get away from parents complaining about the rides being too fast or the Peter Pan ride too scary. The rooms are robust and clean in design, with again the echoes of the castle in the use of simulated wrought iron hinges to doors and for rubbing strips on the luggage racks. There are also two spy holes in the doors, the lower at child height.

There are no pictures apart from the same image in all the bathrooms of, of course, a frog being kissed by a princess – no girls, if you kiss your husband here there is nothing extra magical to turn them into a prince – although what would I know, as I was without my own princess on this review trip…

The banners are effective and attractive and here show the two colour ways in the bedrooms Bedroom door with archaic hinge set and bolts through the corners - timber in dark oak would have completed the medieval look. Rollover to see the banner lined corridor

Instead of pictures there is much use of wall hung banners, medieval style, throughout the bedrooms and the corridors. As well as supporting the dream Castle fantasy, these are also surprisingly practical, shielding the wall behind the luggage racks from the bumps of suitcases. Unfortunately this is likely to happen more often than it should as the rooms have a surprising lack of drawer space. In fact there are no drawers, only a couple of shelves in the wardrobe, and I would imagine this lack is made all the more noticeable when parents add Snow Whites dress to their offspring’s collection of garments that have to be kept in the room. As stays here are likely to be three or four days (there is not just Disney but also the attractions of a Seaworld and the Champagne region to make longer stays even more enchanting) there needs to be more drawer space for families to unpack into.

The hotel is also targeting business traffic with comprehensive meeting room provision (the Athos, Porthos and Aramis rooms amongst them) and the supply of an internet point on the room desk and WiFi throughout the hotel. Given the hotels proximity to Paris and the fact that Marne le Vallée is on the Eurostar line from Paris and London, there seems a fair chance that this growing region will attract major international companies, although Mövenpick's Swiss cousins Nestlé are already here and using the hotel. Quite how business men will fight their way through the sword wielding Peter Pans in the public areas is another matter – although maybe the hotel can summon up a staff dragon to chase them away, or perhaps its own Captain Hook.

This is not quite so far fetched as it may seem given to pseudo-eighteenth century uniforms staff members wear, all part of the fantasy that the hotel tries to sustain in line with their neighbourhood dream peddlers. Given that Disney create dreams without the aid of additives (no alcohol, no drugs, nothing but old fashioned imagination) I admire the efforts put into making the fantasy world last a little longer in the hotel. Strangely to my eye the most effective and integrated area in which this worked was the bedroom corridors, where design was at its most coherent. In the reception and other public areas the fantasy element appeared applied to a contemporary space and lacked conviction. In the smaller spaces of the corridors there was more coherence, helped by the signage and room numbering, than was achieved in the larger public spaces where design cues were more easily absorbed by the space itself.