We spent 2 days at Disneyland Paris during our trip to France. It was a very memorable experience for a couple reasons. For one, we had never been to a Disney park outside of the U.S. before so it was a new adventure for my wife and I. This was also our daughter’s first time enjoying any Disney park so seeing her eyes light up during the parades and fireworks was pretty amazing.

Disneyland Paris sits to the east of the city. It consists of two parks, Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park. There are numerous hotels to stay at near Disneyland Paris including Disney-owned hotels as well as other partner hotels. Since we were already staying in the city, we decided to just take public transportation out to the parks for the days we went there (more on that in a bit).

Buying tickets

You can purchase tickets for Disneyland Paris online or in person. When we decided to go to Disneyland while in Paris though we had not been planning to go there prior to arriving. While we were touring the city our daughter saw a statue of Mickey and was very excited and couldn’t stop talking about him. Since she seemed so enthused to see him and we were not far away from Disneyland Paris, we thought why not go and check it out!

We ended up purchasing tickets at FNAC, which is a local entertainment store. You can also purchase tickets on their website as well. Children under 3 do not require a park ticket and can enter the parks for free. The tickets we purchased allowed us to visit both parks in a day as we wanted to have the flexibility to switch parks.

Getting there

The easiest way to get Disneyland Paris when staying in the city is to take the RER A line (red line) east to the Marne-la-Vallée/Chessy/Parcs Disneyland stop. For us this was about a 45 minute train ride each way. It is then a short walk to the parks after getting off at this station. Although we did not use alternate means of transportation, one can also take the train from the Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport as well as an airport shuttle bus.

Spending our time

Since we had 2 days to spend in Disneyland Paris we started in the Disneyland Park on our first day out there and then moved over to the Walt Disney Studios Park in afternoon. On our 2nd day we focused mainly on just going back to the Disneyland Park as there were a lot more rides geared towards our toddler in this park and we wanted to ride them all again.

As I mentioned before, this was my wife and my first time in a Disney Park outside of the U.S. as we had only been to Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California previously. Our goals for spending our time here were to get on as many of the rides that we could but also see what differences there were between these parks and the ones back home. Looking at the map of the Disneyland park, it seemed to have a lot more similarities to Disneyland in California than Magic Kingdom in Florida.

Rides/Attractions

In Fantasyland, there is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Voyages of Pinocchio, Casey Jr – The Little Circus Train and the Storybook Land Canal Boats which are very similar to the ones in Disneyland. In Adventureland there is an Indiana Jones Ride as well as Pirates of the Caribbean. In Frontierland there is Big Thunder Mountain and Phantom Manor (the equivalent to Haunted Mansion). The land of the future is called Discoveryland in this park and it contains rides such as Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain (similar to Space Mountain), Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, Autopia and Star Tours.

Some rides and attractions that are in the Disneyland Park that are unique to this park include Alice’s Curious Labyrinth, where you can wander around through a maze and La Taniere du Dragon which is a walk-through visiting the dragon’s lair underneath Sleeping Beauty’s Castle

Over in Adventureland there is also Adventure Isle where you can explore the area around Skull Rock. It has some caves to enter as well as a suspension bridge. Its fun place in the park to take a break for a while and let your kids wander around. It also in this area that you can visit the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.

Adventure Isle

In Walt Disney Studios Park, there are rides and attractions such as Cars Road Trip, Ratatouille: The Adventure, Crush’s Coaster and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. There is also an Avengers land with rides such as Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure as well as Avengers Assemble: Flight Force. There are not as many rides or attractions in the Walt Disney Studios Park currently, as there are in the Disneyland Park. Due to this we did not spend a lot of time in this park. For our family a half day at this park was more than enough to get in the rides that we wanted.

We were also able to see a parade, meet Mickey Mouse and saw fireworks at the end of the night. Overall we had two fun-packed days here at Disneyland Paris and can not wait until we are able to come back one day to enjoy it again.

Have you been to Disneyland Paris before? What were your favorite rides and attractions? Let me know in the comments section below!