>At 10.34am on Monday, the final Eurostar “Disneyland Express” will depart from London St Pancras International. The direct high-speed rail link to the heart of the theme park east of Paris has been running since 1996, except for a pause during the Covid crisis.
>But Eurostar is now ending the service because of extra red tape brought in as a result of Brexit.
>The UK government negotiated for British passport holders to become “third-country nationals” – with a hard European Union frontier installed at St Pancras station for outbound passengers.
>The design of the Eurostar London terminal never envisaged that checks would involve stamping passports – and, from next year, taking fingerprints and facial biometrics from UK travellers to the EU.
>These checks vastly increase the time taken for each passenger, and therefore the space needed.
Brexit – the neverending shitshow that just keeps on fucking-up good things, but somehow politicians have to pretend is not the dumbest act of self destruction in the UK’s last century or so.
First I’m hearing of even the disneyland trains being cancelled. This sucks. Another brevity benefit I guess.
ProRail blocked a schedule where the Eurostar would be able to run for safety reasons:
>From 2036, Eurostar’s operation in the Dutch capital will be moved to the less convenient Amsterdam Zuid station.
It’ll be like having the Eurostar arrive at Bank.
Brexit. The gift that keeps on giving. Sigh.
I still can’t believe the vote was even allowed to count after the number of lies that were peddled.
It’s beyond me that we never actually had a plan for how brexit would work when the referendum happened.
Take it to Brussels, then switch to a coach for Amsterdam.
That’s great news because schipol airport is an absolute beaut to transit to..
I wonder if just taking it to Paris, then switching to the cheaper French rail network works out cheaper?
Amsterdam must be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Every time I’ve been the number of obnxious British stag parties behaving like yobs everywhere has been too depressing for words.
Small minded pig ignorant idiots voting to stop access to Mickey…
Took the Eurostar on Monday to Paris. It’s absolutely correct the terminal was not built for these checks nor was it designed to house large queues. Half term is over yet the queues looped around almost the whole station the queue was like a game of Snake around the area I never seen something like this. Passport control was a couple of e-gates with one small popup booth behind it for the French officer for stamping and 2 regular manned booths, so essentially 3 counters for manual checks. Since Eurostar has a train running every hour it’s hard to imagine how 3 counters can manually check 1000~ passengers per hour
Losing the Disney connection is going to kill Eurostar.
And people want to service to stop in Ashford and Ebbsfleet again
15 comments
Brexit border checks cross-Channel travel:^1
>At 10.34am on Monday, the final Eurostar “Disneyland Express” will depart from London St Pancras International. The direct high-speed rail link to the heart of the theme park east of Paris has been running since 1996, except for a pause during the Covid crisis.
>But Eurostar is now ending the service because of extra red tape brought in as a result of Brexit.
>The UK government negotiated for British passport holders to become “third-country nationals” – with a hard European Union frontier installed at St Pancras station for outbound passengers.
>The design of the Eurostar London terminal never envisaged that checks would involve stamping passports – and, from next year, taking fingerprints and facial biometrics from UK travellers to the EU.
>These checks vastly increase the time taken for each passenger, and therefore the space needed.
^1 https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/eurostar-amsterdam-rotterdam-stop-trains-2024-b2351384.html
Brexit – the neverending shitshow that just keeps on fucking-up good things, but somehow politicians have to pretend is not the dumbest act of self destruction in the UK’s last century or so.
First I’m hearing of even the disneyland trains being cancelled. This sucks. Another brevity benefit I guess.
ProRail blocked a schedule where the Eurostar would be able to run for safety reasons:
https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/geheim-rapport-prorail-blokkeerde-variant-waarbij-eurostar-in-2024-wel-grotendeels-blijft-rijden~a451b9ec/
>From 2036, Eurostar’s operation in the Dutch capital will be moved to the less convenient Amsterdam Zuid station.
It’ll be like having the Eurostar arrive at Bank.
Brexit. The gift that keeps on giving. Sigh.
I still can’t believe the vote was even allowed to count after the number of lies that were peddled.
It’s beyond me that we never actually had a plan for how brexit would work when the referendum happened.
Take it to Brussels, then switch to a coach for Amsterdam.
That’s great news because schipol airport is an absolute beaut to transit to..
I wonder if just taking it to Paris, then switching to the cheaper French rail network works out cheaper?
Amsterdam must be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Every time I’ve been the number of obnxious British stag parties behaving like yobs everywhere has been too depressing for words.
Small minded pig ignorant idiots voting to stop access to Mickey…
Took the Eurostar on Monday to Paris. It’s absolutely correct the terminal was not built for these checks nor was it designed to house large queues. Half term is over yet the queues looped around almost the whole station the queue was like a game of Snake around the area I never seen something like this. Passport control was a couple of e-gates with one small popup booth behind it for the French officer for stamping and 2 regular manned booths, so essentially 3 counters for manual checks. Since Eurostar has a train running every hour it’s hard to imagine how 3 counters can manually check 1000~ passengers per hour
Losing the Disney connection is going to kill Eurostar.
And people want to service to stop in Ashford and Ebbsfleet again