For the first stop on my mission to visit all of the Disney parks outside of the US, I chose Disneyland Paris! I studied abroad in Paris when I was in university so it was the perfect choice for Little Vacationista's first Europe trip. We kicked off our trip with a 2-night stay at Disneyland Paris (followed by 3 nights in the Loire Valley and 4 nights in Paris...blog posts coming soon!). It was probably the most laid-back Disney trip I've had because purchasing the Disney Premium Access Ultimate pass meant I didn't need to wake up early and spend the day refreshing for ride reservations all day...more on that later.
Disneyland Paris is made up of two parks: Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios. The entrances are right next to each other making it easy to hop between parks. There's also Disney Village outside of the parks...like a Disney Springs-type area with shops and restaurants.
Booking
Booking a vacation package directly through the Disneyland Paris website was super easy. You can select your accommodations and they automatically include the park hopper tickets for your stay. You can also add on extras such as transportation, dining plans, skip-the-line ride access passes, photopass, etc. and they provide all your tickets/vouchers when you check in to the hotel. We booked hotel accommodations for 2 nights, which automatically included park hopper tickets for 3 days. We also added plenty of extras, which I'll talk more about below.
Transportation
We decided to book the Magical Shuttle from Charles De Gaulle airport since we were heading straight to Disneyland after arriving in France. I added this to my booking and they emailed me the voucher a few days before our trip. It included directions to find the Magic Shuttle as well as a link to the site with shuttle times. Upon arriving, we cleared customs (long lines!) and grabbed our bags. Then we followed the directions to the Magical Shuttle pickup, which was a bus stop just outside the terminal. When we arrived, it was kind of a mess of people. There wasn't anyone there to check you in, you just wait for a shuttle to arrive and the driver will check everyone in. We waited about 10 minutes for a shuttle and, despite the chaotic-looking line, we all made it onto the shuttle with little excitement. The shuttle takes just about an hour to get from the airport to Disneyland and stops at various Disneyland hotels.
Hotel
There are several Disney hotels to choose from. The Disneyland Hotel that is right at the park was closed for renovations during our stay so that wasn't an option. I ended up choosing the Hotel New York - Art of Marvel because I loved the theming. There aren't Marvel hotel options in the US so I was excited to check it out. It's about a 10-minute walk through Disney Village to get to the parks so also super convenient. Disney's Sequoia Lodge and Newport Bay Club are right next door, but they felt a lot like Wilderness Lodge and Yacht Club so I decided to skip those.
The hotel itself had great theming and just opened in 2021 so is very new. Would definitely recommend it for your stay. Check-in was quick when we arrived. They gave us our Magical Passes, which were our room keys, dining passes, and park tickets. They also gave us a voucher to exchange in the gift shop to get our Photopass card.
The room itself was clean and modern. Little Vacationista's favorite part was that the TV was in the mirror in the room.
Another reason I wanted to stay here was that only hotel guests have access to Superhero station - it's a little area with a few selfie spots and a character meet and greet. You have to make a reservation in the Disneyland Paris app beginning 7 days before your stay but I didn't have any trouble finding a reservation. The button appears under your hotel bookings in the app.
The hotel also has a pool and a few dining and bar options, but we didn't have time to check them out.
Dining
The nice thing about booking a Disneyland hotel is that you can make your dining reservations 12 months in advance (60 days for non-hotel guests). I was able to easily get the reservations I wanted in advance. I was very excited that they had dining plan options when we visited since dining plans had not returned yet in the US parks and opted for the biggest dining plan there: full board extra plus. For this option, you get breakfast for each night of your stay, lunches and dinners for each night of your stay (eligible quick service or table restaurants), as well as:
✔ Soft drink at every meal
✔ 1 meal (lunch or dinner) on your last day in the restaurant of your choice
Your Extras (per person per night booked):
✔ Extra Plus Snack and Drink
✔ Extra Plus Drink
Maybe I didn't do enough research on dining plans before going but the plan itself was super confusing to use. Unlike WDW, the meal plan is only accepted at select locations so we couldn't use it for most of the snacks we wanted. Make sure to check the eligible restaurants so you know where they can be used. You don't actually have to use the drinks, lunches, and dinners at set times. They load all of your meals, snacks, and drinks on your Magical Pass card and you can ask for a printout at any of the eligible restaurants to see what you have left. Some basics:
Breakfast: We never tried breakfast because we were jet-lagged and didn't wake up in time. Breakfast is generally buffet style at your hotel and there is a set time that it is served. We had 2 breakfasts available each because we stayed 2 nights in the hotel.
Lunch and Dinner: These credits could be used at table service or buffet restaurants for a non-alcoholic drink plus an appetizer, entree, and dessert at table service restaurants or the buffet at buffet restaurants. Note that there is a different children's menu at table service restaurants that kids must order off of. We each received 5 of these on our cards (lunch and dinner for each of the 2 nights plus an extra because of the extra plus option). With the extra plus option, one of the meals during the stay can be a character meal. Note that, even without eating breakfast, we did not use all of our credits.
Extra Plus Drink and Snack: This was the most confusing to us because we could not find a place to use these. They are basically for what they refer to as a tea-time service (but can be used all day). You get a drink and a snack like cake with the drink. We each received 2 credits for these (one for each night stay). Because we couldn't figure out where to use these, we just went to the hotel bar on our last day and asked for bottled waters and juices to take with us so that we could use them all. They insisted they had to give us a snack with them so they packed up a large number of macarons to take with us.
Extra Plus Drink: Again, this can only be used at eligible bars and restaurants, but we each received an extra drink for each night we stayed. Adults can use this for alcoholic drinks and kids could use them for mocktails.
Overall, it was a very large amount of food and we didn't have time to use all of the credits. I'd opt for the half-board next time.
For sit-down restaurants, I went for theming. We did our sit-down meals at Chez Remy (overlooks the exit for the Ratatouille ride in Walt Disney Studios), Auberge de Cendrillon (princess dining in Disneyland Park), Pym's Kitchen (buffet restaurant at Walt Disney Studios) and Captain Jack's (overlooks Pirates in Disneyland Park). My favorite was the princess dining because we saw characters like the mice from Cinderella that we haven't seen in the US. They rotate princesses and we saw Suzy and Perla (mice from Cinderella), Cinderella, Jasmine, Snow White, and Merida.
Pym's also had cool theming with giant and mini burgers and hot dogs.
Captain Jack's was probably my least favorite and it was super dark since it's inside the Pirate's ride.
Rides
Since we only had 2 nights, I opted to purchase the Premier Access Ultimate for each day of our stay to skip the lines. With this, you don't need to make reservations for the rides. You can just access the fast track lane for eligible rides once per day per ride. This was awesome because it meant I didn't need to spend the entire time trying to refresh and book time slots for rides. We just walked around and jumped in line when we saw a ride we wanted to go in. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for shows and character greets and there are certain rides where there is no fast track lane. A few of the rides:
Disneyland Park - this park had a lot of smaller rides and was very similar to Magic Kingdom
Pirates - similar to the one in the US but also a bit different so cool to check out
Phantom Manor - similar to Haunted Mansion but also kind of different so cool to check out
Walt Disney Studios
Crush's Coaster - one of the most popular rides in the parks. It's a roller coaster where the car kind of spins around and was Little Vacationista's favorite ride.
Tower of Terror - similar to the one in the US but I actually liked it better
RC Racer - no fast track available but we only waited about 25 minutes. it's kind of like the boat ride where you go up and down
Ratatouille - pretty much exactly like the one at Epcot
Cars Road Trip - cute ride through Cars
Avengers Flight Force - interestingly there was no line. It's kind of like Rock n Roller coaster but with a lot of head banging against the sides of the harness. Little Vacationista liked it.
Shows
Shows were my favorite part of Disneyland Paris. You can actually pay to book seats for a few shows in the app before arriving. We did this for Mickey the Magician because I didn't want to show up 30-60 minutes before to wait for seats. It was in French but a super cute show that I'd recommend and we were able to get front-row seats.
My favorite show was Together: A Pixar Musical Adventure. This was pretty new when we checked it out and you couldn't actually pay to book seats in advance. We kept missing the show because they'd close the line by the time we arrived so finally arrived 60 minutes early on our last day to make sure we could see it. There was already a line started. The show had an orchestra and Pixar characters you don't usually get to see live and I loved it!
The D-Light drone show happens right before the fireworks (running for about 10 minutes) and was super cool. Don't miss this and the fireworks, and make sure to arrive early to secure a spot.
Characters
Since we only had 2 nights, we didn't have much time for character meet and greets. We did randomly run into Loki walking around the park, and got to see Darth Vader and Jafar.
Summary
Overall, had a great trip to Disneyland Paris. Much less crowded than the US parks. While I probably wouldn't go back, I'm glad we visited once to check out some of the shows and rides that are only at the Paris location. We grabbed our bags and then were off to the Loire Valley to visit some real French chateaus next!
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