saving money and some other tips
We got back from Disneyland Paris yesterday and it was a very enjoyable trip. We did the trip on a budget, and I thought I’d share my experiences, as well as provide a few tips for others considering going there.
Cheap(er) tickets
I picked up tickets from a website called Picniq, which were slightly cheaper than Disney’s own website:
Accommodation
We considered staying in one of the disney resorts, but it worked out much cheaper to stay in private accommodation just outside the resoort. It’s worth noting than NONE of the Disneyland Paris hotels are actually inside the park. The main hotel (The Disney Hotel) is right by the entrance, but it costs a fortune, so I would only consider it if you really had lots of cash to splash! The other resorts are around a 10 minute walk away, which brings me to the point of why it’s much cheaper to rent somewhere privately, which is just a few minutes walk further away than all of the official Disney hotels. Here’s a map to give you some perspective….
The red dot is where we stayed, and the two parks I’ve highlighted in Blue and yellow regions. We walked to the parks and it was around a 20 minute walk. In a car it would’ve been around 3–4 minutes.
The price difference however was huge!
We would stay in our own apartment with multiple bedrooms, a living room, bathroom, etc, for around a third of the price of staying in one of the Disney hotels.
We stayed here:
However I’ve seen even cheaper rooms from as little as £67 per night for an entire apartment! If you’re looking for somewhere to stay, anywhere inside the big circle on the map above is easily within walking distance. Our apartment was also opposite a huge shopping centre called Val D’Europe, which includes a massive supermarket called Auchan as well as a Lidl, so you can stock up for your apartment with food and drink, which is much cheaper than eating in the park.
Food
The biggest disappointment of our trip was the food inside the park! It was rubbish. We had hotdogs from the main hotdog restaurant on the main strip which cost €50 for the three of us with fries and a drink, and I’ve had better hotdogs out of petrol stations…. absolute crap! We also had mickey mouse cookies and chocolate chop muffins in another place fore about €30, and again they tasted like crap….we threw the muffins away after one bite…… You can get far better muffins out of any supermarket!
The only decent meal we had, which was just outside the park, was in a place called “The Royal Pub” which was nice…..but very expensive for what it is. We didn’t mind paying it for the sheer convenience of being right outside the park…… but generally speaking the park food was atrocious, and we would’ve been far happier with sandwiches taken into the park with us.
Travel
We took the “Le Shuttle” from Folkestone and drove to Disneyland….. be careful about parking in the park itself….it’s $30 per car, per day! If you can get an apartment with a parking space, it will save a lot of money to just walk into the park, or get the free shuttles.
We have an electric vehicle, so we had to stop and charge a couplf of times….once thing I would recommend doing if you’re an Octopus Electricity customer, is to install the register with the “Electroverse” app on your phone…..most of the EV charing points in France (and a lot in the UK as well!) are Electroverse compatible, which means not having to muck around downloading multiple apps to charge…. you just open the Electroverse app and start charging….. also on some charging stations you’ll get a discount for being an Octopus customer as well.
Premium ride access
Some of the rides can have big queue times, so Disney give you the option to skip the queue by paying extra money….. we did this once (for Crushes Coaster) which was a whopping €23 each!!! I honestly regret paying it….. The ride was enjoyable, but I pad it because the queue time was 80 minutes, and we didn’t want to wait that long.
What I didn’t know is that after about 7:30pm, there is literally not a single ride in either of the two parks, where the queue for any ride is more than 15 minutes…..not one…..and some of the rides literally have a queue time of less than 5 minutes.
For example, our two favourite rides by far, we the Avengers rollercoaster and Hyperspace Mountain….. during the day, they were around a 45–60 minute queue……after 7:30pm we waited less than 10 minutes for them….. in fact we went on the Avengers ride a second time (after 8pm) and there wasn’t a queuse at all…we just walked through and went straight onto the ride!
So my tip is, if you can do it…..save the long-queue rides for after 7:30pm if you can….it’s a breeze after that time!
Best rides
This is of course highly subjective, but our top five rides were as follows:
5th Place — Tower of Terror
4th Place — Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
3rd Place — Crushes Coaster
2nd Place — Hyperspace Mountain
1st Place — Avengers Assemble
If I went back, and for whatever reason the queues were too long, and I absolutely had to pay a premium to get on the rides to avoid the queues (which isn’t the case after 7:30pm!) then it would only be for Hyperspace Mountain and the Avengers assemble ride….. nothing else.
All in all, it was a really fun couple of days, and one of the standout moments for us as a family was the Disney parade…..it was brilliant, and we felt like the park tickets for the day were worth paying for this alone, as it felt magical being there watching it go by!
