The ultimate guide to Disneyland Paris

We recently went to France for 3 nights including one day at Disneyland with 3 kids - here's everything you need to know if you're doing something similar.

I’m finally getting to write this guide to visiting Disneyland Paris for the first time, after we’ve been home for a week and a half - so where to start…

(Spoiler alert - this post got REALLY long so I split it into 2. This one focuses on 4 days in France, travel, accommodation, logistics and what to take with you to save money whilst you’re in Disneyland, and I’ve got another here on my travel blog with all the details of our actual day in Disney.)

The original plan for the trip (my plan) was to get a ferry to France so that we had our car and could stay in a Eurocamp about an hour away from Disneyland. I wanted to go for about 4 or 5 days, and make one of those days a trip to Disney. However, we live in South West England so are a good few hours drive away from a suitable ferry port. We could drive for hours to the South East, and then need a hotel before an early ferry, or drive for a few hours to the South Coast and then have a 6 hour crossing. The hotel the night before didn’t appeal because hotels for 5 (2 adults, 3 kids) aren’t cheap and young kids (in my experience) never settle the first night somewhere new - it’s far too exciting. So we’d have had lots of “first night” excitement (first night in the hotel, first night at the Eurocamp, and then possibly a first night in the hotel on the way home) and that would have been exhausting and left everyone tired. And whilst the 6 hour crossing probably would have gone by quite quickly, and the kids would have found it very interesting to go on a ferry, there would have then been several more hours driving on the other side and the idea of 12 hours travelling in 1 day combined with having to find our way across France in the dark on the other side and arriving late at our accommodation, just didn’t appeal.

Meanwhile, my husband, just out of interest, looked at the prices of the official Disney hotels…. and nearly fell off his chair. Whilst he was on booking.com though, he found some other hotels just outside Disney, and compared to Disney prices, they seemed very reasonable. And that’s when we stumbled across Marriott's Village d'ile-de-France. For the price of a hotel room at another (very beautiful looking… to the extent we wondered if it was a fake fraudulent AI listing until we drove past it when we were actually over there - be wary as that is possible) hotel we booked a 2 bedroom “town house”. The Marriott is a hotel, with “normal” hotel rooms but also has a whole village of the cutest little houses.

With this plan we were only away for 3 nights (which meant we could afford a little more per night than if we’d gone for longer) but we knew those 3 nights would go better if everyone had a bit more space. Plus, having a kitchen meant we didn’t need to eat out every night, easing stress levels as our 2 year old is always a handful at tea time, as well as meaning we would spend less on food (hotel breakfasts might be nice but they are CRAZY expensive aren’t they?!) and be able to make packed lunches.

3 days in France inc. Disney

This new plan - sans ferry - meant we’d fly from Bristol airport as we live quite close to it (which I appreciate not everyone does). We had a 3am wake up call (and that would be one of the nights our toddler chose to have me up for quite a while before 3am!), but getting up, getting to the airport, and arriving in Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport all went really smoothly. As it was a 6:10am flight, we arrived in France at 8:30am local time, with a whole first day of our holiday ahead of us.

We had 4 days / 3 nights in France, and whilst only one of those days was in Disneyland, staying where we did meant we could spread the Disney experience across the whole holiday (read on to find out how). In a nutshell, our itinerary was:

• Saturday: Get to France, check out Disney Village, check out hotel

• Sunday: Day in Disney

• Monday: Day in Paris

• Tuesday: Shop in Disney Village, fly home

Getting from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Disneyland

I did a LOT of researching and weighing up the pros and cons of how to navigate our way around France once we got there - partly to not spend a fortune but also so as to get the most out of not many days.

The easiest option to get straight from the airport to our hotel would have been a private transfer arranged by the hotel, which they said they could do for €115 for 5 of us (it would be less for fewer people - but more if you had lots of luggage, we just took carry on luggage).

The next option would be to get to the station that’s at the gates of Disney -  the Marne-la-Vallée/Chessy - and get our hotel’s shuttle bus from there. To get to Disney’s station from the airport, we had a few options:

• RER trains (RER A and RER B) - these can take about 80 minutes which is quite a while

• Train and bus - a mixture of RER A (I think) and public service bus - which is cheaper than just train but takes even longer

• TGV train - takes 12 minutes and can be €19 per person if you book in advance… but if you miss your connection (which would be easy at an airport as VAST as CGD) then you’d need to buy another one and they can cost a lot more not in advance.

• Private taxi

• Disney Magical Shuttle - a bus that runs frequently from the airport to Disneyland.

We opted for the Disney Magical Shuttle because it takes 45 minutes to an hour, cost us €70 (our youngest was free) and it was very easy to book online before we left. (I then quickly booked the return journey the night before we left.) They run very often (you can see the schedule on the website before you book) but whilst you book your day, you don’t book your actual bus meaning there’s plenty of wiggle room if your flight is delayed. They give you directions when you book of how to find them at the airport… but be prepared for the directions to not be the best ever… but we got there without any real issues (just a bit of wandering…  but we kept going and it was fine). It took about an hour though to get off our plane, have a loo stop and collect our push chair from the luggage carousel and walk to the bus stop, without rushing. Like I say, CDG is MASSIVE. The instructions tell you you can get a shuttle across the airport and it’ll take 15 minutes or you can just walk and it’ll take 20… we opted just to walk as we couldn’t easily find the shuttle and it was only going to save 5 minutes (and getting on the wrong shuttle felt like it’d be more of a problem than just walking a bit more). It’s got a big counter next to the exit for the bus stop so it’s easy to spot:

If you do want to consider other train and bus options, the most comprehensive guide I found was here; this website is designed to look like the official airport website but just a heads up it isn’t, although it’s great for info.

The other thing about the Disney Magical Shuttle is that it stops at all the Disney hotels, so you can get a look at them (from outside the reception, at least). On our way there, no one on our bus was going to a hotel, so we skipped them and arrived at Disney’s station in about 45 minutes. On the way back to the airport at the end of the holiday, as the station is the first stop, we needed to go via all the hotels in case anyone needed picking up so it was interesting to see them all.

If we were doing the trip again, I’d definitely stick with the Magical Shuttle - it gets the Disney vibe going from the offset, is easy, and isn’t an expensive option (compared to everything else).

What is Disney Village?

Once you’re at Marne-la-Vallée/Chessy, head away from the main road you’ve just come in on and you’ll be headed towards Disney Village.

“Disneyland” is the actual Disney park, with the new Walt Disney Studios Park immediately next door (like, entrances practically touching). But outside of both of those, is what’s called Disney Village - a large area of Disney shops and restaurants. There’s also a big lake (with a hot air balloon you can go up in over the lake, we didn’t do it but it would have cost around £60 for a family of 5 when I looked into it) with the Disney New York (Art of Marvel) hotel on one side and Newport Bay Club hotel on the other.

There’s security to enter Disney Village where you have to put your bag on a conveyor belt like at an airport but that covers the security for Disneyland too. If you do go out around the lake and as far as the New York hotel, you’ll find you need to do security again to get back into Disney Village. But it’s very fast and easy and not daunting. They do ask for the push chair to go through the little walk through metal detector on it’s own though, and then you follow separately - so we’d let an adult or eldest child go first so as to have someone to push the push chair through to (our toddler stayed in the chair). On our first visit we had giant back packs because we had all our luggage and it was still absolutely fine. Everyone was very helpful and friendly and speaking English to help you understand anything you needed to know.

I went to Disneyland Paris when I was 15 and remembered this area of restaurants so had looked it up, and found it was called Disney Village and that it’s free to enter - because it is just shops and restaurants. So I’d decided that it would be a much more fun start to the holiday than going straight to the hotel. I then discovered there was a Rainforest Cafe there - which I’d hoped to surprise my animal-fan-10 year old with… until he learned there was one there and asked to go!

So that was how we properly started our holiday - we got to Disney Village and went to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch. I’ve posted my full review of the Rainforest Cafe over on activibees.com.

We’d waited for the Rainforest Cafe to open at 11:30, having gotten there at 11:15 (but we were ready for lunch having gotten up at 3am) so were done by about 1 and headed back to the bus shelters at the station to find our hotel shuttle.

Marriott's Village d'ile-de-France Disney shuttle

I’d emailed the hotel a week or so before we went, asking them various questions about how to get around, and they’d replied more than once with very long helpful answers. They mentioned there was a shuttle, but you needed to book from the hotel Concierge… so I’d questioned if we could catch it on the first day from Disney (as we wouldn’t have been to the hotel to book) and they said that’d be fine. What I overlooked though, was that the shuttle stops during the afternoon! From early afternoon until about 5pm there are no buses! So we went back to the station after our early lunch, found the bus stop (which the hotel reception had told me how to find but it was also clearly sign posted) and realised there were no buses for another few hours! The receptionist however had given me the back up plan of a public service bus, bus 34, so we were about to head for that when a different hotel’s shuttle pulled up nearby. We asked about our options, and as he had no one waiting for his pick up, he offered to drop us to the gates of our hotel for €10! Whereas a taxi might have been €30 or more, and a bus was going to be a little more hassle than an empty bus right next to us. 

10 minutes or so later and we were at our hotel - although security were slightly confused to see people walking up the gate! I think most people arrive by car or by a bus that can actually drive up the long drive way to reception!

We went straight to reception, knowing reception wasn’t until 4, incase we could check in early - and we could! We even had a choice of accommodation - whether we wanted to be nearer the main hotel (with the pool, reception and supermarket), or with a lake view, or backing onto a playground. We opted for nearish reception and by the park - much to our 6 year old’s absolute delight.

I’d hoped to squeeze in an afternoon swim, but I’d expected to have to do it without having checked in first- checking in meant we could get changed in our accommodation and not take all our luggage to the pool which was so much easier.

Unfortunately, the out door pool was closed - it was early April so perhaps that was out of season, but Paris was having a freak heat wave that weekend so I’d hoped they might have opened it. The indoor pool was very nice but SERIOUSLY deep. I’m about 5’ 2” and if I stood on tiptoes my face was out of the water. That meant we were having to hold the toddler high, and couldn’t take our eyes off our 6 year old. We also couldn’t really stop watching the 10 year old who can swim for even a second, just incase.

As for our accommodation - well, we loved it so much. We really want to go back again sometime, possibly for longer, as there were lots of facilities we didn’t have time to take advantage of. We did borrow table tennis equipment from reception though to squeeze in a game on the last night, next to the all weather sports pitch, which was next to the park. Whilst the decor in the accommodation was very traditional (in a good way) it had modern twinges and such lovely curtains that you knew everything was very well maintained. I know it’s odd to single out the curtains, but see my reel here if you want to see them close up (along with more views of the house itself).

On the first night, we bought some groceries from the hotel supermarket - it was expensive, we’re talking €1.10 per banana and €1.75 per apple (but oranges were 70c), but it was cheaper than eating out. We cooked a simple but tasty tea of pasta and sauce and ended up eating pasta and sauce or pesto each of our 3 nights there as it was the cheapest way to put together a “proper” meal. We also bought sugary cereal because it was all there was, and a couple of pastries, because it was France! The supermarket would have fresh pastries and bread in the mornings but we were incredibly un-French and bought them the night before.

After an absolutely epic 16 hour day, The kids went to bed at 6pm, us by 7pm, and we all slept well until the next day - Disney day!

Disneyland Paris in a day

So, because this is possibly the longest blog post in the history of the world ever already, I’m going to detail our actual day at Disney here instead. But we caught the 8:50am shuttle from the hotel (which we’d booked the night before so as to secure a seat on it - but there ended up being plenty of room) and arrived at the gates of Disneyland Park at 9:15am, and queued until it opened at 9:30am. And then we were in!

The kids all had Mickey ears which I’d bought on Amazon in advance - I paid £6 in total for 3 pairs, whereas they were €20 a pair in actual Disney (and everyone is wearing them). I also bought the older 2 a Disney lanyard each - they didn’t really have anything to put in it (some people had passes for various things but we didn’t) but it felt Disney-ey! We took my 6 year old’s Elsa costume but on the day she decided not to wear it and wore a Minnie Mouse dress she’s got instead - which was probably a good choice for not feeling over dressed and for being comfortable all day. I heard somewhere that those who were dressed as characters got more of a reaction when you meet a princess, but that’d only be if you queued to meet one which we didn’t do anyway. My 10 year old wore a Marvel cap which made him feel the part, my husband happened to have a Star Wars t-shirt, my 2 year old has an Incredibles t-shirt and as it was my Birthday a couple of days after we went, they all presented me with some cute Mickey and Minnie earrings the morning before we left! So we felt dressed for the day but with minimal expenditure in advance. 

I’d read people say they took a spare phone battery, or a mobile charger - I didn’t bother with that, and I was fine - my battery (which isn’t what I’d call great) lasted until the bus ride home at 9:20pm. And that was with me using the app and camera all day. My husband used his less so that our phones would last longer between us. On that note, make sure you download the Disneyland Paris app before you go and get it set up with your tickets. You can then familiarise yourself with what rides you might want to do before you go, and have a bit of a game plan. People go CRAZY with US Disney game plans online - I think it’s good to have a rough idea of what to head to but you don’t want to get weird about it - my other blog post will let you feel prepared and know what to aim for.

Overall, the food was better than I expected and not as expensive as we feared, we hardly queued for anything and did more than we expected in the day - and my husband, who was not at all bothered about going, has raved about it to family and friends since we’ve been home. We got lucky - we didn’t get much rain, the toddler napped easily in his chair at suitable times, the kids weren’t too tired and didn’t bicker, and queues went in our favour. We saw another English family battle with some people who came and stood right in front of them for the Parade after they’d been stood waiting - which absolutely sucked for them and could have put a dampener on any day. So we really appreciated that our day just sailed along really well. But luck aside, we loved how much there was to see and do and everything was very family friendly. 

If you’re going for big scary roller coasters, Disneyland Paris maybe isn’t quite the theme park for you - there are a couple, but it’s not really what it’s about. (Having said that, we didn’t do Walt Disney Studios Park and so there might be more in there.) But if you’ve got kids and you just want a mix of rides, lots to look at and a lovely day together, then Disneyland is your place.

Since we’ve been back, my son and husband have looked to go on a writing course which is £200 a ticket per day - my 10 year old’s reaction was “wow that loads more than Disneyland” - and he’s right, Disney cost us about £350 for 4 of us (the 2 year old was free) and it was a brilliant day that we’ll all love looking back on. It feels a lot, but all days out are so expensive, and Disney is head and shoulders above the rest.

After 12 hours, we went back to the hotel / house, ate more pasta, and went to bed not at all early.

Read the full guide to a Day at Disneyland Paris here.

The rest of our trip to Paris

The next morning we got up, and got the hotel shuttle back to the Disney station, and from there caught the RER A to Paris. I’ve written separately about our day in Paris, but needless to say, the kids were exhausted and it wasn’t such a magical fun filled day as the one before!

That night we were home for yet more pasta and sauce, before getting up the next morning and checking out by 10. We caught the airport shuttle one last time to Disney, and spent over an hour in a massive Disney shop in Disney Village (shown below), where everyone chose a souvenir. This meant we’d done Disney related things on the Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday of our trip (with a stop via the station at Disney on Monday to get the train to Paris) despite only having 1 day in actual Disneyland.

Then it was back on the Disney Magical Shuttle, via all the hotels (we decided Newport Bay Club looked like our favourite from the outside - unless you do the main Disneyland Hotel at the entrance to the park - but that’s crazy money), to the airport where we made our way to our gate in plenty of time because, as I’ve said, the airport is huge and we didn’t want to find we had another 30 minutes to walk at the last minute, and then home!