27,000 steps, 2 parks, and 1 day...my Disneyland Paris trip report

kool_kat

Mouseketeer
Joined
Aug 16, 2008
Hi all,

I have been a lurker on this board since we decided we were going to Paris and going to include a 1 day trip to Disneyland Paris. I'm usually hanging out on the budget board.

Anyways, my husband an I took a week long trip to London last week to visit my dad who is working there, and decided to take the train to Paris for2 nights while there. We were staying in Paris near the Louvre (Hotel du Louvre by Hyatt which I would highly recommend).

I will say that I have only been to Disneyland California when I was three, so my comparison is to Disney World which I know is much larger.

We went on Tuesday 9/6 and the parks opened at 10:00 with EMH at Disneyland Park from 8-10. I read that Disney Village opened at 7:30 so we decided to go early and check that out since we only had one day. We took the metro from our stop to Chatelet stop and then caught the RER A train. We had bought tickets for zone 1-5 the day before and I believe it was a little more than 30 euros for the two of us to get 2 tickets. We had absolutely no trouble riding the train and I would not hesitate to recommend people take the train. I have a little subway experience from visiting NYC, but I live in the suburbs of Knoxville, TN so I am not a city girl, but I had no trouble navigating. It took right at 45 minutes once we got on the train.

Disney Village - even though the website says it opens at 7:30, the shops DO NOT. We arrived about 8:30 and the only thing that was open was Starbucks and maybe another restaurant. We grabbed coffee and breakfast muffin and waited until 9 when a few stores opened. We wandered the stores and I will reiterate there are very few Disneyland Paris specific souvenirs. There was one little section and we saw very little. In fact, it took us almost all day to find an ornament we liked that specifically Disneyland Paris. I know this has been mentioned in other threads, but I wanted to reiterate that so hopefully others won't be disappointed. I will also say that Disney Village was very small. We could walk the whole thing in 5 minutes.

Continued in next post...
 
Our goal for the day was to simply see and do everything we don't have at Disney World or that is supposedly different.

Park opening - We walked over to Disney Studios about 9:30 and noticed that they were already letting people in so we entered and immediately got in the line for Crush's Coaster. It was already lined out quite a ways, but the ride was actually not open yet. They opened the ride about 9:45 and it took us approximately 15 minutes to get through. I LOVED this ride. We decided it was a cross between space mountain and the dinosaur spinning coaster at animal kingdom. I would recommend riding this ride.

Next we headed to Ratatouille and the wait was already 50 minutes. Luckily, single rider line was 5 and my husband and I got placed in the same car just in front / behind each other. We also really enjoyed this ride and likened it to Toy Story Mania without the competition / shooting aspect.

After this, we leave Studios to go to the main park. Here we ride Pirates of the Caribbean (similar to ours without Jack Sparrow), Indiana Jones & Temple of Peril, Phantom Manor, Space Mountain (nothing like ours and more like Rocking Roller Coaster), Buzz Lightyear (same thing, but way better guns / technology set up), did the Curious Labyrinth, and the miniature story boatride (don't remember the name).

We had a Jedi Burger and fries for lunch and a not good cupcake. We also rode the train (which we never do at home). Our goal was to make it until the ending show, but by about 5 we were exhausted. We decided to just eat dinner at the Rainforest Café and call it a day. The Rainforest was dead and we walked right in. Afterwards we caught the train and were back to our hotel by about 8.

Some random thoughts / comparisons:
Disneyland Paris is a lot more run down / dirty / needing a good paint job compared to Disney World. I know they are refurbishing for the anniversary next year, but right now this is a noticeable difference. Also, I would say approximately 25% of the rides were closed. Just very different from Disney World.

Handicap Accessibility - There were no motorized scooters and very few wheelchairs when we were there. Also almost every ride we went on involved stairs at some point in the queing line. I am sure there are handicapped accessible entrances, but for those who usually don't access them but cannot do stairs, you will need to take that into consideration (ie this would have been a very hard park for my husband's grandmother who struggles with stairs but would never consider using a handicapped entrance).

Sweet Treats: They do not offer near the sweet treats that we have in the US (guess that's why the US has a weight problem lol). They did have ice cream stands with 3 selections, but no Mickey bars. We didn't see much other sweets outside of candy apples. No cupcakes, funnel cakes, fudge, etc...

Queing - I had read that the European's don't really que up for lines like we did and I did not find this true at all. All the lines worked just like they do at Disney World and I really did not see a difference.

Final Thoughts - we enjoyed visiting and were glad we went, but one day was plenty of time for us. We could have maybe stretched it into two days, and done a few more things, but it was definitely not a weeklong destination for us.
 

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