Disneyland Paris with kids: my advice

Friends who go to Disneyland Paris with children regularly ask if I have any tips. The park feels like my second home, because every year I try to go to 'the most magical place on earth' (or certainly in Europe) for a few days and nights. Here goes!

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The park

Disneyland Paris actually consists of two parks: Disneyland and Disney Adventure World, which until recently was called Walt Disney Studios Park. The first is the park you know from the photos, with Sleeping Beauty Castle. The second one is next door, and has themed areas around Pixar and Marvel. This is also the park where a large Frozen area will open soon. Normally, you buy a ticket for the two parks and hop from one to the other throughout the day, although you can also buy a ticket for one of the two parks. If you go for the latter - the price difference is usually just over ten euros - it is therefore important to check which park has that one attraction that you or your children really want to do.

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In principle, if you keep going and are lucky, you can do all the attractions once in one day. The queues are usually between half an hour and an hour for the popular attractions, in some cases (see below) it may be longer. If you want to make sure you can do it all, do some popular attractions multiple times, or just want to visit the park at your leisure, it's great to book an overnight stay (or two).

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The hotels

Do you want to go to Disneyland Paris for several days? In the village where the park is located (Marne-la-Vallée), you will find several hotels and Airbnbs, but it is even better to book a Disneyland hotel yourself. This is because the area has six hotels, each with its own Disney theme. When the park opened in 1992, they had a clear link with American regions, such as Route 66 (Hotel Santa Fe) and the Wild West (Cheyenne) or 1930s New York (Hotel New York) or 1920s New England (Newport Bay Club). Today, the link with the Disney characters is clearer: Hotel New York houses the Marvel characters, in Santa Fe it is already Cars what's going on around the clock and at Newport Bay Club, you'll find Mickey and his friends in a marine outfit.

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The price differences are also big: Santa Fe and Cheyenne are the cheapest hotels on the domain, so expect a decent Ibis hotel when it comes to rooms. The Disneyland Hotel - with the princesses as the main theme - is, on the other hand, very luxurious and expensive. My favorite remains Newport Bay Club, because it has an excellent price-quality ratio.

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There are several reasons why you should choose such a hotel, not one just outside the park:

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1. Your admission ticket is included in your overnight stay, so you often end up cheaper, especially in the low season than if you were to pay for your ticket and overnight stay separately.
2. You can get to the park an hour earlier, which you should definitely use because it allows you to do the attractions with long queues (such as Crush's Coaster or Ratatouille in Disney Adventure World) without having to wait more than an hour during the day. Buy a chocolate chip cookie at the Starbucks in Disney Village - the shopping area between the two parks - and enjoy an almost empty amusement park!
3. They are all a 15-minute walk from the park, so you'll be right at your hotel after the fireworks (which start around 9 pm in the winter, around 11 pm in the summer).
4. When you go with children and book a trip of several days, it's nice to get out of the hustle and bustle for a few hours and go swimming.

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Attractions‍

Disneyland Paris targets a wide audience, so there are great attractions for all ages. As a parent, it is mainly a matter of assessing what a child can do: some seven-year-olds are not afraid of going overboard, but are afraid of the dark. There are five attractions you might be unsure about:

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1. Indiana Jones: This one goes upside down once, but is completely outside.
2. Crush's Coaster: This is an indoor roller coaster in the dark that doesn't go overboard but goes quite fast. There is always a long queue here, so if you want to do it, plan it in the hour that you can enter the park earlier as a hotel guest.
3. Tower of Terror: This is a free fall into the dark. He can be a bit scary or violent, but in principle, he's fine for most older children.
4. Hyperspace Mountain: This indoor roller coaster overheads and rides mostly in the dark. It is a fairly old roller coaster that gives him a bit of a shock, so don't do it with children who are too young.
5. Avengers Assemble: Flight Force: another indoor roller coaster that goes overboard, but feels a lot smoother.

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Children who are about seven years old are usually enthusiastic about Spider-Man WEB Adventure, Ratatouille and Peter Pan's Flight (if your kids are fans of the movie); with toddlers, It's a Small World is definitely a must visit. Peter Pan's Flight is usually done by families, so when everyone is having lunch around noon, that's an ideal time to do it. Just before the fireworks show, on the other hand, you can catch Indiana Jones without having to sit down - once upon a time I even did it all by myself. Going headlong in silence is a very strange experience.

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When you go as a couple with very small children, it can happen that there is an attraction that you both want to do, but that does not work because one parent always has to wait outside. In principle, you would have to queue twice, but you don't have to. After the first parent has done the attraction, they can ask the staff for a 'rider switch' when they get out. With that ticket, the other person older than you can skip the line and do the attraction right away. Also useful when there is one older child who can join the attraction, so they can do it twice.

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Transportation‍

You could come by car, but it's even cooler to take the Eurostar from Brussels or Amsterdam to Marne-la-Vallée. So you don't have to pay for parking and you can get out literally less than 500 metres from the entrance. Extra handy: If you sleep in a Disney hotel, you can also book the Disney Express when booking, a service to drop off your luggage at the Marne-la-Vallée train station and your bags will be automatically delivered to your hotel room. So you can enter the park as soon as you arrive! Have you already booked but forgot the Disney Express? Then simply log in to the site, because you can also pay for that option separately.

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Eat‍

There are a lot of restaurants in Disneyland Paris, and where you eat obviously depends not only on your taste but also on your budget. For lunch in the park, Pizzeria Bella Notte, Cowboy Cookout Barbecue and Restaurant Hakuna Matata are great options; if you're spending several days in the park and need some rest, brasserie Rosalie in Disney Village is ideal. In that zone right next to the park, you'll also find a McDonald's and a Five Guys, but if you're only in Disneyland Paris for one day, it's a shame to waste a lot of time with them.

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For dinner, there are various options in both Disney Village and hotels. At Hotel New York and Newport Bay Club, for example, you have buffets, which are best reserved in advance. You don't have to sleep in the hotel in question to book one, but don't wait too long to do so.

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Advance‍

To get your kids excited beforehand, it's of course nice to (re) watch some Disney classics. For example, there are a number of attractions that quite literally follow the story of those movies (Peter Pan's Flight is a good example), the hotels are decorated according to certain movies or franchises, and you can meet many characters in the park.

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In the case of the Marvel characters, you can just bump into them in Disney Adventure World, you'll see everyone in the parade anyway, and you can take a picture with other characters at fixed places and times. In the case of the princesses, this is not so obvious: you can find them in Pavillon des Princesses, a building behind Sleeping Beauty Castle. The princesses are so popular that the queue here is sometimes more than three hours. So don't get your child too excited for a photo with a princess - even if you'll see them in the daily parade anyway. Do you absolutely want to be photographed, don't have time to wait and do you have the budget because you have something to celebrate, for example? Then you can have lunch at Auberge de Cendrillon. That's a more upscale restaurant - although it's still an amusement park, if you want to eat really fancy food at Disneyland, there's La Forêt Secrète by star chef Jean Imbert - where the princesses come to say hello at your table.

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Oh: and just let your kids walk around dressed up as Disney characters themselves. This is allowed for little ones, but adolescents and adults are not allowed to do that because it can be too confusing for visitors. Before you know it, there's a drunk Peter Pan walking around somewhere, and of course The House of the Mouse doesn't like that. What you can do is “Disney bounding”, a trend where you wear clothes inspired by a certain figure. Are you going to Disneyland Paris with creative teenagers? Then let them scroll through TikTok or Pinterest for inspiration, so that the fun starts with making the luggage!

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Do you have a specific question that I haven't answered yet? Just send me on Instagram!