Originally Posted by davidcalgary29
Interesting replies! I suppose that I should be grateful that my own experience seems to be atypical of most travellers'.
Not to be unpatriotic, but I always thought that YYZ was simply terrible, and especially when it still had that horrible three-terminal layout. NAS also seems to have sanitation problems EVERY time I travel through it, and I can't think of anything more off-putting than the reek of overflowing toilets when I walk through a terminal.
As a fellow canadian, I can sympathize with your opinion of YYZ, which for me ranks second from the bottom just ahead of CDG. In all fairness, I used to think YYZ was bad until I had to start travelling through CDG.
Most of the comments of this thread are true, but I can reinforce some in the following manner. I can state without hesitation that lack of multilingual-speaking staff at this international airport is compounded by a serious attitude problem with the staff pretty much everywhere and implicit attitude that you should speak French at all cost. French is my mother tongue, and I have no difficulty understanding the remarks of the staff at the airport. I mean, there is attitude and then there is Attitude!
I find it completely unacceptable to have french-only staff at the RER station. Gee! That's a no brainer that you should make sure you have ticket agents that can communicate with the persons transiting there. Have you ever withnessed a family of tired japanese tourists trying to buy an RER ticket from a ticket collector? Or Russians? Never mind the fact that the imbecile civil servant spoke miserable anything (including French!), she decided to take a 15minute break despite the fact she manned the only wicket open at that time! The attitude from the security agent checking the actual tickets was hardly better! Try asking him for help: "You need to ask at the wicket!". For cryin' out loud! this is an entry point for international travellers and all their f*****g signs are in French only! Then, the mecanical stairs don't work. This, of course, after the frustration of finding your way to the station following ill-placed and often confusing french-only signs (there is one for the shuttle that, if followed properly, will take you to a washroom.). Waiting for this shuttle is hardly better, with completely confusing signs: there were two "You are here" dots on the signpost, and no indication of the direction in which the shuttle (running a loop between terminal) was actually going.
It is hard enough to find luggage carts, you cannot take them in the elevators (which are themselves hard enough to find)! If that were not enough, there is clearly insufficient space at checkin so queues for various destinations and various airlines often get helplessly tangled. (In attempting to checkin for an AC flight to YYZ, I found myself in the queue for an AA flight to MIA.) The passport control officer (there is in my experience a single one unless you are travelling from the AF-terminal - whichever number it is) is not to be hurried by the long lineups of people impatiently waiting for their flights! Why should he bother? They are just tourists!
Have you ever boarded the RER with luggage? Why in Heaven's name did they not make the RER station platforms level with the train platforms? You're stuck hauling your luggage over this 30cm step and God bless you if you have to transfer... That, of course, assumes you have kept your ticket so that you can actually get out of the RER!
Of course, at the airport itself, once airside, it is next to impossible to take a decent walk to kill all the time remaining. (The idea of seating comfortably somewhere must have been originated from a non-French citizen, 'cuz these guys just ignore the concept.) The whole friggin' terminal is artificially partitioned and you must take stairs to get from one part to the other, lugging your stuff through a usually disgusting cafeteria area full of cigarette smoke.
Transfer is hardly better. I had last summer to transfer in CDG from my arrival gate to my departure gate (AMS->CDG->MAD, EU-only connection), which happen to be identical to my arrival gate. Same plane, same gate, different flight number. Of course, I had to walk for quite a while to get landside out of the dry zone, walk back (again landside) to the correct security area, check again at security and come back precisely where I started. 20 minutes of running and security checks for nothing. The security agent decided that it was suspicious to carry two laptop batteries and kept me waiting 5 minutes for a supplementary inspection.
The whole organization of CDG is designed for those who already know the system by heart and don't really need any indication, i.e. mostly the French residents. CDG is to be avoided at all costs; for all the bad things about YYZ (and I agree it is bad), CDG is worse.