Many of the best prices for holidays that you see advertised are based on four people sharing a room.  I have to say that such a level of overcrowding had never appealed to me despite the fact that I love a bargain and so I was shocked to find myself agreeing to such a trip. It was my friend’s birthday and he wanted to spend four days at Disneyland Paris. None of us had money to burn and so we opted for the cheapest deal and I was left wondering if we were facing disaster.

Power Struggle

Amid fears of fallings out, sleepless nights and general bedlam we set off on our adventure. It was hard enough to squeeze four people and their luggage into my car and so things were not looking good. When we entered the room the first hurdle to overcome was deciding who should sleep with who.  Three guys and one girl all unrelated meant this was not a foregone conclusion but we soon resolved that issue. We then set about unpacking our things and that’s when the first major problem arose. We all had various gadgets and gizmos which required charging and there were insufficient power points to accommodate them. I managed to incense one of our group by commandeering a couple of the plugs for two hours and he was sufficiently annoyed to see me remove my things to a point in the corridor. I made a mental note to take a 4 way adaptor next time.

The Bathroom

Apart from constant episodes of tripping over bags things went well for a while and we set out for some time in the theme parks. Everything was fine until we returned to the room and all needed a shower before sleeping. Here you are totally reliant on everyone getting their skates on but one of our number was in the bathroom for almost an hour leaving the rest of us dead on our feet waiting until after midnight to access the bathroom. On subsequent nights the person concerned was relegated to last place in the queue much to his annoyance.

Sleeping

I was pleasantly surprised at how easily I drifted off to sleep. Exhausted by the travelling and the wait for a shower I was out for the count but awoke in the early hours because the bathroom abuser was crawling around the floor, clearly still asleep, wailing that his couldn’t find his bag and searching feverishly around the room. I was annoyed at the disturbance but he soon shut up. The following night I was again sleeping soundly when forced into consciousness by the fact that the bed was shaking. Fearing an earthquake (in Paris!) I sat up to find that the cause was my bedfellow convulsed in laughter. The hilarity was due to our friend shouting at the bathroom abuser for snoring. He then proceeded to beat him with a pillow which gave me a fit of the giggles.

During our stay it became apparent that four people in a room is indeed a state of overcrowding. The bathroom and lack of power points were problematic as was the lack of storage space and we even had to queue to use the bedroom mirror. All this was tolerable but I discovered that the serious issue was our friend the bathroom abuser and chronic snorer. Four in a room can work but it depends on which four! I know who I would leave at home!

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Article by Sally Stacey