Paris Disneyland

[andypooh]

I will be going to Paris in late May to celebrate my 10 year anniversary to my DW. I have never been there. We will be there for 5 full days. We are planning on spending 1 day at the French Open. I want to be able to hit as many of the major tourist attractions as possible. I was wondering what people think of Paris Disneyland? Is it worth spending one of my days at the park? Or will I need the time to hit all the more famous Paris sites? Thanks.

[KylesMom]

There is a wonderful 4-post trip report from David - aka INTERCOTEE pdrlkr from 2011 that I think you would be interested in reading. Here is a link to the first report:

Disneyland Paris pdrlkr

You can search out the remaining three in the trip report forum by title, date or author.

[MNNHFLTX]

My family and I went to Paris during the same time frame in last May. We spent five days in Paris proper and two days (1/2 day and 1 full day) at Disneyland Paris. First, give me an idea of what you consider the "main sites" in Paris? Once I know that I can tell you if you have enough time to do DLP too.

If you want to know what I would consider main sites or "must dos", here is my list:

Eiffel Tower (at dusk, if possible). Buy tickets online to go up the elevator way ahead of time. They sell out quickly, especially the earlier times.
Notre Dame--If you want to climb the towers to look at the gargoyles, go very early, preferrably when they open, so that you don't have a long wait.
The Louvre--I also recommend going early to this museum. Bypass the pyramid entrance and enter through the shopping mall called the Carrousel du Louvre. The lines are almost always much shorter.
The Arc de Triomphe--you can also take stairs (or an elevator, if need be) to the top. Stroll from the Place de la Concorde metro stop down the Champs-Elysées to this landmark.
Musee d'Orsay--another amazing art museum. You could spend a 1/2 day at the Louvre and a 1/2 day at the Orsay.
Versailles--truly an amazing place but would probably be a full day trip from Paris center.

There is also the Sacre-Couer and other sites in the Montmartre area. We did not have time to see this area on our trip.

As far Disneyland Paris, I do think it's worth a day trip anyway (after all, we are Disney fans!) It is a relatively small park, but they have some very unique variations of familiar rides and some fun attractions that you won't find anywhere else. You could do this at the end of your trip and spend one night at an on-site or nearby resort and then take the high-speed train to the airport for your flight home (assuming that you are flying out of Charles de Gaulle airport). Or you could just take the RER train from Paris for the day (it's only about 35-40 minutes).

Also wanted to add that you should bring clothes for a variety of weather (think layers). It was chilly and rainy for much of our time in Paris, so a water resistant jacket is helpful.

[Mickey'sGirl]

I agree with Beth's assessment. You will need to decide how much of your stay you are willing to dedicate to Disney.

[princessimagineer]

I studied abroad in Paris fall 2012 and had the pleasure of visiting Disneyland. I agree with the other posts, make sure you have the time for it, but other than that a day is really all you need. We got a special package deal at the time to visit both parks. I honestly did not need to see the Hollywood studios though. DHS is not my favorite of the parks at DisneyWorld as it is, so my friends and I walked around there first, saw the 10 minute wait for ToT, and hopped on (if anything can wake you up first thing on a gloomy Paris morning, it's dropping 13 stories....).

The magic kingdom park is beautiful. We had lunch at Casey's Corner (located exactly where it is in MK) while it was raining, but a few hours later it was sunny and hot. We noticed that Disney did a fairly good job with the placement of awnings though, because it really was not hard to avoid the rain while hopping around. The castle is much smaller, but extremely pretty, just enough space in the second floor to walk around and look out the stain glass windows, there is even a dungeon underneath! A bunch of the details around the park have a French art-nouveau style, like Space Mountain. Oh and I really liked the ride cue for IASW, compared to DW.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm an architecture major...

It included all the fan favorites as far as rides, but there were some random let down things that were confusing, like this pirate trail my friends and I got lost walking through thinking it was leading us to POTC. Then in Adventureland, there was this one, attraction I guess you'd call it, that was a hall to walk down (inside) and just had glass windows with different dioramas of scenes from Aladdin, sort of pointless, but a good way to escape the rain.

As a fellow Disney-fan, I say it is still worth it though you know you're going to have a magical day anyway.

Am I able to link you to the blog page I wrote about my day trip?

[DisneyFan1979]

I vacationed in France a little over a year ago. We did 4 days traveling through the Loire Valley and Normandy and then spent 5 days in Paris. We got all the traveling info for Disneyland Paris ready before the trip but ended up not going as we decided to prioritize other attractions. Thinking back, I think I would have preferred to prioritize Disneyland Paris over our day trip to Versailles. It was SO CROWDED and the tour itself was so poorly run that I think we would have enjoyed that day in Disneyland much more!

[SBETigg]

The advice we always give new people to WDW is to take your time, don't rush from attraction to attraction, soak up the atmosphere. I would say the same about traveling anywhere, really. I'm not sure Disneyland Paris is worth giving up the chance to relax and enjoy what Paris really has to offer. Five days is not much time. There's already so much to see.

In the end, do you want to be able to say you've been to another Disney park to compare, or do you want to say that you've really seen Paris? This might be a no-brainer for those of us who are not Disney fans. For Disney fans, it's a little tougher to decide. It might be worth adding on a day to your trip instead of trying to fit it in what will probably already be a busy schedule.

Previous Poster mentioned that touring Versailles was badly run and they might have preferred a day at Disney. But do you really want to go to Paris and come back not having seen Versailles? That's the big decision.