The French Mickey

In April I visited Disneyland Paris for the first time. Having sold it since launch day 25 years ago I have never been, even though I have been to Florida 3 times! So I was really interested to see how it compared to America. I traveled with my 10-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter along with my niece who is 20. We flew into Charles de Gaulle and jumped on the Magic Shuttle transfer bus that we had pre-booked. This was very smooth with only a 10-minute wait from collecting luggage. We were also the first drop to our hotel stay at the Sequoia Lodge. The first thing I noticed on arrival is how tight security is with a full bag scanner on entry and hand held body scanners, security is something they clearly take seriously. Check in was very smooth and you received all your vouchers for any meal plans, photo pass etc at this point. We made our way to our Montana room, a great size room with 2 double beds, plenty of space for a travel cot and nice bathroom. A very short walk takes you to the Disney Village with an array of shops, restaurants, and entertainment. This is where you can find the Buffalo Bill show (tickets sold separately). As you enter the village from the hotel zone the security checks here are a lot quicker than into the main park and once in you don’t need to be checked again. We had 4 nights stay and planned our days so that we didn’t have to go from one park to another too much, we also picked up a map straight away so that we could see timings of everything and plan accordingly. If you stay in one of the onsite hotels you get early access to the parks from 8 am. We used this time to go on the rides that tended to have the longest queues. TOP TIP: make sure you check which park has the early entry on each day (Studios not every day) and also which rides as they are not all open. TOP TIP: make sure you get fast passes first thing as the time slots go very quickly. You can only have one fast pass at a time so on some days we were only able to get one. Here are some of the other Top Tips I have from our stay. I would recommend you pre-book your restaurants (this is something I can do for you), it is quieter to eat between 5.30pm and 7 pm. I was impressed with almost everywhere we ate which was: Hunters Grill (at Sequoia Lodge), Plaza Gardens, Production Courtyard and Walts, these were all included in our half board vouchers although Walts carried a supplement. We also ate at the Rainforest Café which isn’t included in the voucher scheme but wasn’t that good in comparison. I would HIGHLY recommend the Character Lunch, this takes place in the Inventions restaurant in the Disneyland Hotel. The buffet food here was amazing and we got to meet 5 characters. This really is well organized and you get really special time with the characters, you’re not made to feel rushed at all. This is a much nicer way to meet the characters rather than have to join the long queues in the parks. The illuminations show is on every night at 10 pm, it gets very busy so you need to get your place about 9 pm, and there are lots of jostling here! We paid for the ‘Photo Pass’ and would recommend this. It’s really great capturing lots of action pictures on the rides, you just get your pass scanned and select the photos you want and they go onto your app. The Mickey Mouse show at the Animagique Theatre was so amazing that we watched it twice in one day. Meeting Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers was my son's highlight. We spent the week checking how many steps we had done (26,000 on one day) and saying how special different moments were.

To help save money take snacks with you, grab some fruit from breakfast, take water bottles which you can fill up at the many water fountains, you can also use the mini squash squirters. Overall I was very impressed with the overall experience and know that it won’t take me another 25 years to go.