France, Paris - Disneyland

Enter a world of magic that inspires the imagination of small and big kids! :) People say - why traveling with a 3y old to Disneyland as she won't remember? I can tell you - she remembers it very well and talks very often about her magic trip to Disneyland. Check this article to get tips on how to plan a trip to Disneyland.

We visited Disneyland on 24th of May, just one day before our daughter turned 3! Why so ? because all the children under 3 years old do not pay a ticket to the park - good deal, right ? ;)

We traveled from Amsterdam to Paris by train - Eurostar. This is the best option for us - only 3h20, good price, no stress to find parking or go through long security lines in airport. Good to know : if you book few months in advance you can get great deals! Also, children travel for free if they stay on your lap or you pay a very good price if you want to book their own seat.

Rather than staying at the Disney Hotel (which tbh was out of our budget), we booked a hotel in the city so we could also enjoy the beautiul Paris.

So we chose Mercure Paris Opéra Garnier Hotel & Spa, a beautiful clean hotel close to many nice restaurants and attractions. The commuting from hotel to the park was 45minutes (5 minutes walking to the train station and 40 minutes by train) and the train ticket costed 5Euro per person. We arrived at the park around 10:30.

The train station leaves you exactly in front of the park and although the queue seemed big, it went very fast.

The first queue is at security. If you have tickets bought online, you go directly at the check in which goes smooth. We have received tickets from a friend of mine so had to go to the cassa to redeem them. This took around 30 minutes, but still fine. There is plenty to see or do for the little ones to not get bored while waiting.

If you plan to visit for only one day, I recommend you to book the ticket via website and to choose only the Disneyland Park (as you do not have time in 1 day to see also the Walt Disney). Also, good to know is that you can buy for some attractions priority pass via the application on your phone.

The park is HUGE so you have 2 options : either plan in advance and visit the places that you really want or go with the flow based on the queues :). We had one target - to see Mickey and for the rest we went with the flow.

We visited followings : Le Carrousel de Lancelot , Mickey Mouse , Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups, It’s a small world , wandered around the whole park to have the vibe of all the other places (especially that our little one had to do her afternoon nap) and closed the day with the Parade which is absolutely amazing.

For the attractions the usual waiting time is around 15-25 minutes, but for Mickey Mouse was 2hours!! Was it wortwhile? I hope so. I do now know.. but we are not quitters and after staying in the queue for 1 hour didn’t want to give up so we continued waiting. It is actually a bit crazy to see all the young children waiting so long for meeting Mickey, but they did organise it quite good - there are non stop short cartoons of Mickey Mouse being played so the kids are happy that they have finally screen time. After that, you go in a small room where Mickey is waiting for you - you take few pictures (with both your phone and also professional) and leave the room. After a 2 hour waiting time, the meet and greet takes maximum 3 minutes. The professional pictures you may buy at the exit and they are quite good quality and they give you also a frame with. Also, you can buy them as JPEG.

After the visit to Uncle Mickey, our daugher fell asleep and we had some Mickey Mouse pizza (12Eur/each) at Pizzeria Bella Notte. Was actually quite tasty and they have also a nice kids menu (9Eur) which we took to go.

We closed the day in a magnifique way - with the beautiful parade which starts daily at 17:30. We went already around 17:15 to get a seat in front and already was tight to find a good one so the sooner the better. Our daughter couldn’t stop waving to all the cute characters and she still speaks about this moment with so much joy!

Afterwards we went back to our train ride and had a nice dinner in Paris!

Disneyland, we really enjoyed visiting you and we will be back!

Believe in Magic!

See below a small sneak peak from our trip :

I hope you enjoyed this little trip to Disneyland and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me via instagram.

Love,

Ioana (foodwithkarakter)