I decided for us not to stay in Disneyland Paris itself because I presumed that would be too much for Stephen to cope with seen as though I was pushing it with just suggesting the idea of Disneyland at all. I wanted to combine the trip with seeing Paris itself and decided to stay in the centre but travel to Parc Disney on one of the days. With us arriving late-ish on the Thursday, I thought Friday would be a suitable option. Well it might have been if we hadn’t been flying with Easyjet.

When looking at the redemption instructions on the booking confirmation, I was very aware that we had to go to a shop called Magic Ways to pick them up. There opening hours were generally 9am-6pm. Guess what time our flight was due to land at Charles De Gaulle? 4.50pm! That was cutting it fine but I had no idea that you wouldn’t be given e-tickets and had to collect them from some random place in the middle of the city. If I’d have known I’d have chosen another day to go and would picked the tickets up when I wanted to one of the other days.

This was inevitably taken out of my hands anyway. Our Easyjet flight, in true form, was delayed. ?

Time was ticking away.

Sat in Manchester airport I knew the likelihood of me being able to get the tickets on the Thursday evening was quickly slipping away. Stephen suggested doing the only thing that Twitter is good for, tweeting big companies to complain about their services in the hope of receiving some kind of compensation. So I did.

Easyjet ignored me.

I got followed by two hotels and one person. Hmmmmmm……..

Ok, Easyjet weren’t going to help. Stephen suggested tweeting Expedia to see if they could do anything. They responded! Within minutes may I add.

Yes!!! Maybe they could sort something out. Maybe they could get the tickets taken to our hotel, maybe they could sort out some kind of electronic ticket, maybe they could freeze time??? I don’t know. I was just praying for some kind of help. Then I received this message:

Gah! Ok….. I resided myself to the fact that we weren’t getting to the park for when it opened. I’d convinced myself that we were going to miss half of the day and when we turned up it would have been wasted.

The next day we tried to navigate our way to the centre of Paris. Staying in La Defense, we were weren’t within a short walking distance so we had to get either the Metro or train. Two stops on the train, we were wandering around like tourists trying to find the shop. Ten or so minutes went by and we’d found it. Picked up the tickets and made our way to the train station to start our journey to the park. By this time is was about 9.30am. Checking the tickets I noticed that they didn’t have a date on them. Basically meaning that we could have probably picked the tickets up and used them on what ever date we wanted. ?

Oh well. We decided that due to the other activities I’d planned that there was no point holding off going to the park. We boarded the train and off we went.

We arrived at about 10.20am. I expected massive queues into the park. The train station is just opposite the entrance. You can’t miss it. We went through security; bag checks, metal detector, the usual….. We then started walking towards Disneyland Park. The large pink buildings drew me in straight away. I navigated straight past the Walt Disney Studios Park. We proceeded to fallow the crowds through the barriers. I noticed a sign that said that the park had only opened at 10am. What a relief?!! We’d only missed 20 minutes. I could totally deal with that. So overall the choice to go on that day wasn’t such a bad one.

We spent from then up until about 2pm in the Disneyland Park. We moved over to the Walt Disney Studios Park for about 3 hours and then moved back to the Disneyland Park. Walt Disney Studios Park is much smaller and less spread out.

Now I could review all the rides that we went on but I think that would ruin the surprise. All I’ll say is that my favorite rides were the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and the Terror Towers in the Walt Disney Studios Park.

My top tips for Disneyland Paris

1. Download the Disneyland Paris App! I can’t recommend this enough! I used it on my iPhone and Stephen used it on his Samsung so I’m pretty confident that it’s available in both Apple Store and Play Store. The app lets you look at ride waiting times as they are updated. This meant the max time we queued for a ride was about 15 minutes. Some were as little as 5. We managed to get on most of the big rides within a short wait.
2. Buy your tickets online. We got a Two Park One Day pass which is as it says, a pass that allows you to visit both Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios. As of this weekend the price was about 100 Euros for this. We got the entry tickets but also train tickets to and from Paris for a similar price. We got them through Expedia. So it’s definitely worth checking online first.
3. Be aware that some of the activities, rides and food places start closing at 5.30pm. Use the app to keep an eye on this. Also, some of the restaurants are used for the hotel residents for their meals so might not be welcoming to just park guests at certain times.
4. Some of the rides have French only parts. Welcome to Starport: A Star Wars Encounter is an example. It doesn’t hinder the ride but don’t be shocked that you’re in France, they speak French….
5. The fireworks happen at 9pm around the main castle. We unfortunately didn’t stay for them due to the weather being awful, the amount of walking we’d done during the day meant that we were absolutely shattered and most of the rides and restaurants had shut or were due to close so we had no where to go. Make sure that you factor this in.
6. I couldn’t find the times of the parade before we arrived. We managed to see one at 5.30pm purely by accident. It starts on the stage at the side of the castle and moves all the way round the main roundabout and down the Main Street. If you have little children, I’d advised throwing them on your shoulders to get a good view or make sure that you get a spot right on the curb edge or you may miss parts. The large floats are easy to see above the crowds but those characters who dance on the road are easily missed.
7. Wear a comfy shoes. I can’t stress this enough.

All in all I’d definitely recommend going. I’ll admit that when I fist saw the castle I did tear up. I am a big girl after all!

Xoxoxoxo