Thoughts on Disneyland Paris

~ cswada

If you want that Disney experience while in Europe, this is the place to visit, but note the service isn’t up to typical US-standards. While you could purchase a park hopper ticket, it’s not worth it for a one-day experience, even given the size of Walt Disney Studios.

This visit occurred in April 2023

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Buying Tickets

Tickets these days should be purchased in advance. When we arrived at Disneyland Paris, there were many signs saying tickets were sold out. It’s fairly straightforward buying tickets via the website, but note prices do vary depending on the day you choose to go as well as the number of parks. We chose a park hopper ticket for a single day.

One thing to note if you’re looking to save money (admittedly a small amount) is pricing does vary depending on where you’re located when buying your tickets. If you have a VPN where you change your location to France, you’ll be able to purchase your tickets in euros. From my tests of different countries around the world, there are three different price points. (Below are the rates for an adult park hopper ticket for a random date over the summer)

  • Europe (excluding UK) – 114€ (or $125.82 based on today’s rate)
  • UK – £103.56 (or $133.03 based on today’s rate)
  • Other countries – $135.66 (priced in USD)

It’s up to you if you feel it’s ethical to set your country to someplace else to get a better price point. My assumption isn’t they are trying to price discriminate and rather just have an older exchange rate in place). As a result, you could save $10 USD per ticket in the example above by using a VPN. I didn’t feel guilty doing so. There are likely other methods available to save money, but this seemed to be the easiest that still guaranteed the exact date I needed. Just remember to use a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees or you can quickly negate any savings.

Booking Restaurant Reservations

After you purchase your park tickets, you’d generally be all set with other theme parks. But as is the trend with Disney theme parks, you also have to worry about restaurant reservations, especially if you have a large party (we had a party of six). If you want the more popular restaurants, it’s almost a guarantee you need to be a hotel guest and you book your stay well in advance, as they open reservations early for those staying on property (12 months in advance for those on property vs two months in advance for those just visiting for the day). I had hoped to get reservations to Auberge de Cendrillon (character dining with the Disney princesses), but even right at two months out, everything was completely booked. Instead, I booked PYM Kitchen for lunch and Cape Cod for dinner. Even two months out, it was slim pickings.

While it was a simple process to book on the website, I’m not a fan of the way Disney handles their reservations. I would much rather prefer they have the booking window be the same for hotel guests and day visitors, with perhaps an extra reserved allotment for those staying on property. That would at least give a fair chance to make reservations at high-demand areas without needing to book a hotel stay up to 12 months in advance.

Transportation to Disneyland Paris

Access to Disneyland Paris is pretty easy when staying in Paris. You just need to take the RER A all the way to the end. It is a lengthy trip, so be sure to bring something for the kids to do while on the train. We brought along notebooks so they could write and color rather than keep asking if we’re there yet.

There is an option to take a train from CDG airport to Disneyland Paris, but that’s only useful when flying in that same day.

Note that when you get to the final stop, expect a mad house. We arrived just before park opening and there was a big rush off the train, followed by huge crowds and little structure. And on the way out, the timing of the trains don’t work well. We made it down the escalator and had to run before the doors closed, as it would have been at least another half an hour of waiting (not something that would have been easy with tired children). My best advice is to track when trains are departing before you leave the park, which is tough to do when your mind is on other things.

The Disneyland Paris App

Once we made it inside the park and past security screening, we made our way up to the part where I needed to scan tickets to enter the park. So I opened the app and I’m not able to access my tickets because I had no internet access. That’s fair enough, so I connected to my personal Wi-Fi device, but the internet reception was terrible where I was. As I was holding up the line behind me, Disney staff forcefully took my phone and attempted to have me connect to the park Wi-Fi, but that too was painfully slow at the Disneyland Paris entrance. Disney staff seemed to have little patience, and seemed visibly frustrated, but eventually things loaded at a snails pace and I was able to get the whole party through the entrance.

My conclusion is the app itself was a bit frustrating to use, but the issue could be more related to the poor Wi-Fi signals in the park (not to mention that my personal device had difficulty with where the put the pass scanners, as my reception was fine the rest of the day). My main advice here is to load the tickets to your mobile wallet and then completely ditch the app, or do what most people seemed to do and just print out your tickets in advance. We wasted a good 15-20 minutes just getting into the park. You can certainly argue I was to blame for not being prepared before entering the park, but I didn’t anticipate I wouldn’t be able to access two separate Wi-Fi networks to use the app for its intended purpose and I didn’t appreciate the lack of friendliness from park staff.

Just inside this sign is where the scanners are, so I hope you’re ready to go before you enter

Disneyland Park

Once we made it through the gates, we had a bunch of happy campers. The castle itself is on the smaller side if you’re used to the US parks.

To be honest, we didn’t stay long in this park. By the time we made it through security, through the ticketing gate, and into the park, we only had time for one ride before we needed to rush over to Walt Disney Studios for our lunch reservation. Char wanted to ride Dumbo with me, while everyone else went to Alice’s Curious Labyrinth. Dumbo is the same as other parks. Alice’s Curious Labyrinth is a fun maze through some of the characters from Alice in Wonderland (well, it’s fun as long as you don’t lose anyone in your party).

We didn’t return to this park after venturing over to Walt Disney Studios.

Walt Disney Studios Park

For one thing, Wi-Fi reception seemed much better at the entrance to this park. Thankfully, I learned my lesson and added the tickets to my mobile wallet, allowing for easier access into the parks. Still, these automated ticket gates still seemed finnicky and caused a line to form (along with Disney staff yelling at people, which seemed to be a common theme at park entrances).

Everyone entering the park has to pass through Studio 1, which is just a large building with stores and restaurants inside.

It seems like there’s really only two main areas of Walt Disney Studios–the Marvel Avengers Campus and a section reserved for Toy Story. There were a few rides outside of those that didn’t fit the theme and there seemed to be construction for a future section of the park, but this place is on the smaller side. This was the main reason why I specifically chose a park hopper ticket, out of fear that there simply isn’t enough to do here (after all, the Disneyland Paris website currently only lists 13 rides in this park). In retrospect, those fears weren’t realized as we did spend all day here and didn’t get to do everything, but if you’re not into Marvel or Toy Story, then this isn’t the park for you.

There are two main rides within the Avengers Campus–the Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure and Avengers Assemble: Flight Force. Char was too small for the latter ride, so Jenn took Alex while Char napped. Alex enjoyed the ride, saying it was like Space Mountain but it went upside down, marking his first time on that type of ride. We then went on W.E.B., which had a lengthy line. Half of the vocals were in French while the other half were in English, which helps those who don’t know both languages and you can mostly pick up what’s going on as a result. Both Char and Jenn’s parents loved this ride.

The Toy Story section of the park had a few more rides, including Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin and RC Racer. Tried as we might, we just couldn’t get the kids interested in RC Racer, so we instead we only went on Slinky Dog a couple of times.

Other rides here include Flying Carpets Over Agrabah (a Dumbo clone but with a far shorter line), Ratatouille: The Adventure, Crush’s Coaster, and two Cars rides. Ratatouille was a fun trackless ride, but it can have lengthy waits. Perhaps the biggest offender of lengthy waits is Crush’s Coaster, which sat at 60-80 minute waits well into the evening. We ended up not going on that ride simply because of the wait. Lastly, the kids enjoyed the two Cars rides. I didn’t go on Cars ROAD TRIP since Char decided to also nap at this time, but Jenn described it as it’s similar to the Tram Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood. And the kids loved Cars Quatre Roues Rallye, a ride where cars spin around quickly and barely misses hitting other cars on the track.

On your way out of the park, it might be a good idea to stop by the Monsters Inc door where you can scream very loudly in an attempt to see if you can get the volume bar to max out. It’s a fun way to get that last bit of excited energy out of their systems before the long train ride back.

Fast Passes?

Some of the more experienced Disney-goers might ask if Disneyland Paris has a Fast Pass / Genie+ experience. They do, but rather than bundling in that line-skipping experience for multiple rides at a single price, you have to pay for each line you wish to skip. While it may work if you only want to only want to skip one line, I don’t like the thought of paying a fee for each ride. If you have a desire to only go on Crush’s Coaster and don’t care about anything else, this is your chance.

Dining at PYM Kitchen

We arrived right on time for our reservation and had to wait about five minutes to be seated. The restaurant is a buffet and overall has good theming to it. The quality of the food was fine, marginally better than average theme park food, and service was decent albeit a bit slow.

Drinks come in beakers, making it fun for kids to live out their science fantasies (no? kids don’t have those?). They also bring a fresh pretzel to every table. When you’re ready to eat, you can just go up to the buffet when you’re ready to go get your own food. They do have a kids section of the buffet if you want french fries or sliders. There are truly only two complaints with the buffet. They are slow to refill items after they are out and the desserts here are uninspiring (unless you like something that’s overly sweet or has radioactive colors on it).

They also had some jumbo-sized food on display, but I’m not sure if they were intended to be eaten? They aren’t cut into smaller sizes and there wasn’t anyone looking to help serve guests, so I’m going to guess you can eat it if you can flag someone down, not sure it’s worth the effort. It didn’t look that appealing to me in any event.

Dinner at Stark Factory

If you made it this far, you might wonder why we came to Stark Factory when we had reservations at Cape Cod. The problem is how spread out Disney Village is. I assumed it wouldn’t take more than 15-20 minutes to walk to the restaurant from Walt Disney Studios, but in reality it would have taken closer to double that amount of time, given we had to make our way to the entrance of the park, then go around all the construction and road closures, then make it around a lake to make it to the restaurant. Thankfully, there was no booking fee when making reservations, so I just had to cancel the reservation. It’s not feasible to go to Disney Village for dinner from the theme parks.

So instead we went to Stark Factory, a quick service restaurant that seemed to source its foods from the same place as PYM Kitchen (and indeed they share the same restroom). Overall, I’d say it’s a lesser version of PYM, so it’s worth a visit if you otherwise don’t get a reservation at PYM. If you go to PYM, it’s probably not worth a visit. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of the restaurant, but it wasn’t anything remarkable.

Conclusion

Walt Disney Studios was our last Disney park on the list before we could honestly say we have been to them all, so I should at some point soon rank them all. In the meantime, know that Disneyland Paris would satisfy that Disney experience but for marginally cheaper prices than you would find in the US.

That being said, the service is not up to typical Disney standards and the food, while perfectly acceptable, is not awe-inspiring. That’s not to say that everyone working here was mean to us—on the contrary, we encountered quite a few friendly, helpful employees—but we did find quite a few who were more interested in controlling the crowds than helping create a positive, memorable experience. But I will say that despite the smaller number of rides, Walt Disney Studios is the more interesting park compared to Disneyland Paris. If you’ve done the parks in the US and only have time for a day here, spend your day at Walt Disney Studios and don’t opt for a park hopper ticket.

Have you been to Disneyland Paris? How was your experience?

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