Disneyland Paris

[Corkscrewed]

I'm asking for general advice on visiting Disneyland Paris, but this is also aimed at Robb and Elissa, who've been there before. So I'm not sure if it goes here better or not.

 

 

Anyhow, I'm going to France for study abroad this fall. I leave at the end of this month, and while we will be staying in Saintes (closer to Bordeaux, in southwest France), we will be making two trips to Paris. The first trip will be a week after we arrive in the country, making it the middle of September. There seems to be a relatively strong possibility that we will have a free day during one of our ten days in the City of Lights, and I'd like to use it to visit Disneyland Paris.

 

I will be doing more research on my own, but I thought I could use this forum as a resource to aid my investigation.

 

 

So here are the questions:

• Are there any discounts to admission into Disneyland Park? We'll be going only to the magic kingdom park, not the Studios. According to my research, regular admission is 43 euros, or around $55. If anyone knows of any discounts that foreigners (like us) would be able to take advantage of, can you tell me how to get them? Personally, I don't expect there to be, but it's always worth asking!
  
• What is the best form of transportation to the park? As of now, I cannot say where inside the city of Paris we'll be staying (I honestly don't know). So I guess I'm looking for general advice here. Is there a light train line that goes from the city directly to the park, or a bus line, or should we take a cab? Robb, if you didn't stay on property, how'd you get there?
  
• Park hours are 10 am to 8 pm that day. Do you think this is enough time to get all the major and moderate attractions done (I guess the equivalent of E and D tickets) while still being able to enjoy everything at a nice pace? I'm leaning towards yes based on what i know about the park, but alternate opinions are always welcome.
  
• Any suggestions or tips on what rides to go on in what order, what rides to use FastPass on (if they offer that over there), and what to generally try to catch and try to avoid?
  
• Any other suggestions would be greatly welcomed.

 

Thanks for the help!

[Ed]

Transport:

 

The is a trainline called RER A and is the red line that runs throughthe centre of Paris:

 

http://www.frenchculture.com/images/metro_map.gif

 

It takes about 35-40 minutes to get to “Marne-la-Vallée / Chessy” station. And this is Right next to the entrance to Disneyland Paris.

 

 

 

The Park:

 

10 hours is plenty of time to do the Magic Kingdom park. Unless it is horrendously busy then I imagine you will be able to do quite a few repeat rides!

 

They do offer fastpass, on a few rides. I recommend getting one for Peter Pan, as that ride had a 40 minute queue when I went last year in July (Space Mountain was at max 20 minutes...) I'm not sure why but it attracts huge queues... That or the throughput is terrible!

 

 

 

I'm afraid I know nothing of cheap deals, but you might find yourself with an odd ticket. I remember that we didn't plan on going to the Studios park either but we were given a 1 day hopper ticket at no extra cost...

 

Plus if the park is empty you will run out of things to do there.

 

 

Hope this helped!

[Corkscrewed]

Excellent. Any idea on how much a round trip would cost me? (just a ballpark figure, since obviously I'm not sure where exactly I'm getting on)

 

Thanks for the help!

[robbalvey]

I forget what zone the station is it, but I'm pretty sure it's outside the major Paris 1-2-3 zones. You're probably looking at about 7 to 10 euros each way. That's my guess. I'm sure you can get an exact price from the RER Metro site.

 

--RObb

[Louise]

I agree with Ed about ten hours being more than enough time to do the DL park, especially at that time of year. I was there for a long weekend two Septembers ago and we managed to do the majority of attractions in both parks in one day, which was a Saturday too! The Studios park was practically dead, the other had a few people wandering around, but the only attractions we actually had to wait for were Dumbo and a couple of dark rides in Fantasyland. Other than that you shouldn't have any real problems.

[Corkscrewed]

Cool! Good to know about being able to take it easy as well as what to expect in terms of public transportation. Thanks!

[Ed]

Added note, be careful in the Paris stations.

 

Me and my parents got hopelessly lost beucase we went through a ticket machine with our metro tickets, and couldn't get through the gates into the railway section of the station because we didn't have our tickets yet..

 

And the ticket machines were back through the one-way metro gates... We had to walk out of the station and go back around... Take up 30 mins of our day!

 

That was at Nation I think. Stupid french people!

[eggzter]

I was at the park in March this year

one thing I can only warn you about is keep your personal possessions safe.

My wife had her purse stolen on the pirates of the Caribbean ride, its a dark ride with a long queue in some dark tunnels.

Luckily she only had here credit card swiped and about £20 cash, and funnily enough someone found the purse and handed it in to security, they even left here regular bank debit cards in there, anyway after cancelling all the cards the rest of the day was fine.

apart from that we had a great time with very minimal queue times.

 

got to hand it to the Disney management/customer service they were fantastic and helped so much, they even sent an English security guard to pick us up and take us to city hall.

 

As for rides, I would agree do peter pan 1st thing, and then just meander your way around, big thunder mountain had the longest queue of the day at about 45 mins, Indian Jones was about 20 mins and space mountain the same.

[Corkscrewed]

Thanks for the tips and advice! I will definitely be careful around the park. Sounds like we should have a pretty relaxing and wonderful time!