If you're planning a visit to Disneyland Paris you want to fit in as much as you possibly can into your trip, particularly if you're only visiting for a short period of time!
So today I'm going to give you some top tips on how to save time whilst at Disneyland Paris, so you can just focus on the important things, like going on all the rides, meeting your favourite Disney characters and buying those all important souvenirs!
One of the first things that you can do to help save time is when you actually arrive! If you are travelling to Disneyland Paris via the Eurostar, or have gotten a train from the airport to Disneyland Paris, then you can use the Disney Luggage Express. This service costs about £16 and lets you head into the parks straight away!
When you arrive at the train station you leave your luggage with the Luggage Express and they will take your baggage to your Disney hotel, helping you save lots of time and allowing you to head straight onto the rides!
And the great thing is this luggage service also includes your return journey. So on the day of your departure, you leave your bags at your hotel, and they will take them to the train station for you, and you just collect them in advance of your train time. This gives you the maximum amount of time in the parks on your final day!
If you are staying at Disneyland Paris Hotel, this is such an excellent service because you save so much time. I've previously used this service when I came to Disney on the Eurostar and between dropping my bags off and being in the park took less than 15 minutes!
Another way to save time is to be prepared for security when entering Disneyland Paris. To get to the parks you will have to go through bag check. Your bags will go through an airport style scanner and you will walk through a metal detector. If you have anything in your pockets, these can set the detector off.
Whilst you wait be sure to take everything out and place them on the tray provided. You can then walk through the scanner and collect them on the other side and carry on with your day! This will save you having to be searched and gets you into the parks quicker.
My personal favourite perk to staying in a Disneyland Paris hotel is extra magic hours. This is a service that is free to hotel guests, and you get to enter the parks one hour early than anyone else each day!
This is excellent because it means there are far fewer people, therefore the queue times are much shorter. This helps you get on the really popular rides with very short queue times which helps you fit so much more into your day!
If you are staying at Disneyland Paris hotel, yes, you will have to get up early, but I promise you it's absolutely worth it! I've managed to go on Big Thunder Mountain multiple times in this hour, and it's just a walk on for rides such as Peter Pans Flight, which is often over an hour long queue in the daytime.
My suggestion is to go on all those big rides in that first hour, and then you will have the rides left over for the rest of the day that don't get as big a queue. I have done a video all about extra magic hours and how to get the most out of it so check it out below!
If you're visiting during a busy time of year and the queue wait times are quite long, particularly for those rides you cannot miss out on, then you can always purchase Premier Access passes. The Premier Access pass will help you save time because you'll be able to enter much shorter queues and get on rides so much faster.
My absolute favourite ride is Big Thunder Mountain and when I've visited in summer time the queue has been over an hour long. I couldn't leave without going on it, so I purchased a Premier Access pass. I selected a time slot that I wanted to go on it, and when I turned up I simply scanned my QR code and I ended up walking straight onto the next ride. There was no queue whatsoever! So it was super amazing and a really great way to save time.
Purchasing Premier Access passes are really good idea if there's only a few rides that you want to skip the queue on, just the ones you absolutely cannot miss out on. The cost of Premier Access passes cost from €5 and up to €18 per person per ride, but the prices do fluctuate depending on the time of the year you visit.
You can do this via the Disneyland Paris app. Select Premier Access, choose the ride you want to go on, select a timeslot when you want to ride, pay and you are all ready to go!
If you are only visiting Disneyland Paris for one or two days and you want the full Disney experience, and you are visiting during a busy time of year, then you might want to consider purchasing Premier Access Ultimate. This pass allows you to go on all the rides that offer Premier Access one time each.
There are 17 rides that offer Premier Access split across both parks, so do make sure that you have Park Hopper tickets if you want to purchase the Ultimate option so that you will be able to experience all the rides on offer.
The Premier Access Ultimate pass costs between €90 and €190 per person per day. The price, again, fluctuates depending on the time of year you are visiting.
One extra bonus with the Ultimate option is that you don't have to select a timeslot, you can just turn up and enter the Premier Access queue for each of the included rides! If you're visiting a very busy time of year, then it can be a super, super handy way to fit in as many rides as possible.
Another way to save time at Disneyland Paris is to dine in the quick service restaurants. These are like fast food restaurants where you place an order at a counter, collect the food yourself, and then seat yourself. This is the quickest way to dine at Disneyland Paris, as table service restaurants can take between an hour or two hours to get through your meal! There are lots of different quick service restaurants at Disneyland Paris, serving a range of different cuisines, so there is something for everyone!
If you want to save even more time, then you can mobile order a select number of quick service restaurants allow you to use the Disneyland Paris app to pre order your food. This saves you waiting in queues, which is perfect, because we're all about saving the time here!
Mobile ordering is super simple to do. Just follow the steps to mobile order on the Disneyland Paris app. You choose which restaurant, what food you would like and the time slot you would like to collect your food, and pay in advance. When it gets to your selected time slot, you simply head to the restaurant, open your confirmation email, click the link to let the restaurant know you are there and they will make your food fresh for you!
This is a great way to save time, because during peak dining hours, you can still wait a long time at quick service restaurants. I've waited 45 minutes before at Casa De Coco to get a burrito at lunchtime, so it's definitely worth trying out mobile ordering if you're wanting to save some time!
To see step by step how to mobile order food at Disneyland Paris check out my video below!
Another tip when it comes to dining is to avoid eating at peak times. If you don't mind eating a little bit early or a little bit later this is a great option as this way you will have much shorter queues and it will just be so much quicker to dine!
A great way to save time meeting characters is to try a character dining meal! Sometimes you can wait over two hours to meet characters in Disneyland! However, if you come to a character dining meal the characters come round to your table and meet you whilst you are eating. This is a really great way of having a really nice meal, but also getting to meet multiple of your favourite characters at the same time and cutting out all the queuing!
I love dining at Auberge de Cendrillon, the Disney Princess character dining meal. It is a beautiful restaurant, serving great food and the Princess interactions are incredible! I got to meet four Princesses during my meal and have really fun conversations with them! The encounters weren't rushed and this has always been a highlight to my trip! Plus it saves hours of time as the queue to meet one Disney Princess in the Princess Pavilion is regularly over 180 minutes long and I have even seen it as long as 6 hours!
There are a range of different character dining meals at Disneyland Paris, each serving different cuisine and offering different characters you can meet, so you can choose the one that is perfect for you!
And if you love Marvel be sure to sign up to the Hero Training Centre in Avengers Campus. This experience offers a virtual queue to meet either Spiderman or a surprise Avenger and the best part is you don't have to stand in a queue! You apply for your place in the virtual queue in the Disneyland Paris app, they let you know an approximate wait time and when it is time you receive a notification to head to the Hero Training Centre. This is perfect as you can do anything you want in the mean time and don't waste time standing around in a long queue!
Disneyland Paris has a range of amazing shows that are not to be missed, and often you will get the advice to arrive around an hour in advance of the show so you can guarantee a seat. This is good advice because the shows do often sell out, but if you are only visiting for a short period of time, or you want to save time during your trip, then standing on the spot for an hour is not a good use of your time!
You have two options. One is to try your luck! I have been very lucky to have always turned up to Lion King Rhythm of the Pride Lands, which is one of the most popular show at Disneyland Paris, close to show time and get a seat. This helps save time, but it is not guaranteed you will get in so can be risky. Some shows such as Frozen: A Musical Invitation, this isn't possible as it has such a small auditorium it will reach capacity way before the doors open.
If you are absolutely desperate to see a show I would suggest buying Premier Access passes for them. Lion King Rhythm of the Pride Lands, Mickey and the Magician and Together: A Pixar Musical offer this service where you can pre order tickets so you have guaranteed seats. This means you don't have to wait so long in the queue.
They do recommend you turn up half an hour in advance, but really if you turned up five or 10 minutes in advance, you'd be absolutely fine because you are guaranteed a seat!
The other great benefit with Premier Access is you get your pick of any of the seats so you can choose the view that you like the most and get the best seats in the house!
And finally, use the Disneyland Paris app to see the ride wait times. It can be super easy just to wander around the park and then if there's a long wait, you move on to another ride. But this does mean a lot of walking around and dead time that you could be doing things!
The Disneyland Paris app has all of the ride wait times on it, so you can see which rides are currently busy and which rides have a shorter queue time. This can help you maximize your time in the park, because you're not just wandering around aimlessly!
I use all these tips myself because just like you I want to fit everything in! I want to do everything, I want to see everything! And I've been really lucky to fit so much into all my trips, so I hope these tips will help you!
PLANNING YOUR NEXT DISNEYLAND PARIS TRIP?
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