disneyland paris tips and tricks♡

So as some of you may know I went to the ever so beautiful Disneyland Paris for my Summer holiday. It was such an amazing experience and I am desperate to go again. I have definitely got after holiday blues. I had a lot of questions and concerns regarding my first visit to Paris and despite having only been once I managed to gather a lot of tips and tricks if you are planning on making a trip to Disneyland in the near future. Obviously, I am no expert but hopefully these tips will come in handy and not just for the Disneyland in Paris. 

Queues for rides♡

Probably the worst part about the holiday was the dreaded queues. We went in the Summer time which was very busy to go and it took so long to queue for one ride. Sometimes up to an hour and a half! Here's what we learnt.

♡On certain rides you can ride the ride as single riders. So if people didn't fill up the ride and there was an extra space a single rider could fill up that space. Single riders rides are labelled on the park map and there are two separate queues. The Ratatouille ride was queued for 90 minutes but the single rider queue was only 30 minutes and we managed to get on even quicker than that. The only thing is we weren't sat with our family but we still got on and off the ride at the same time!

♡As part of staying in a Disney Hotel you get to go to the park early during Extra Magic Hours which is where the public who may be going for day trips can't access the park. The main Disneyland Park opened at 8am meaning that you have an extra 2 hours to get on certain rides without a massive queue. For the Walt Disney Studio's park, you can get into the park at 9:30am. 

♡As part of staying in a Disney Hotel or having an annual Disneyland pass you have the opportunity to use the fast pass system. I will try and explain it as best as I can. A fast pass ticket is a ticket that allows you to skip the majority of a queue for certain rides. So, for example, you want to ride Big Thunder Mountain. You go to the Big Thunder Mountain fast pass machines and scan your Disney park ticket. You will then get a ticket telling you a time and a half an hour window where you can return between those times and go on the ride. This saves you lots of time. If you know a ride you really want to do, make sure you get to the park early and use the fast pass because fast passes do run out on really popular rides. 

♡If you are planning to get to the park early make sure you queue on rides that don't have a fast pass system or get really busy or queue for fast passes. Crushes Coaster in the Walt Disney Studios park is queued the majority of the day for about an hour and a half. On one of the days when we got to the Studio Park early, we queued for it first and got on in about half an hour. 

♡We were in queues for at least 15 minutes to an hour which is a long time to just be waiting around. I took a book around with me and managed to get a lot of reading done!

Meeting characters♡

Meeting characters is one of the best things to do at Disneyland because where else would you meet them? Here's how to do it! 

♡On several occasions we saw characters walking around the park. We saw Timone, Raifiki and Jafar just walking around. Obviously, they are going somewhere so you can't stop to take photographs but you can still high-five them and interact with them. 

♡You can see characters at the parades which happen every day at Paris that go through the main street. It's so magical and again, even though you don't get to have photographs with them, you can still interact with them.

♡Sometimes we would see different characters having meet and greets around the park. I don't know if these are planned in the sense that there timetabled in and you can know the set times. We never queued to meet the characters but we saw who was having them. Characters having meet ups include - Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, Meridia from Brave, Eeyore, Tigger and Daffy Duck.

♡Another way to meet characters in more of a one on one setting is at character meals. On the first night of our stay we booked to go to Cafe Mickey. At Cafe Mickey we met the man himself, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Tigger, Goofy and Pluto. The good thing about these meals is they spend a good 5 minutes with each table and the characters are so in-character. If you put the effort into talking to them in character, it makes their job a lot more exciting! We also went to Cinderella's restaurant to meet the princesses. We met Cinderella, Prince Charming, Aurora, Ariel and Cinderella's two mice - Suzie and Bella.

Clothing, bags and food♡

♡One thing I was really worried about was taking my bags on rides or leaving them on the side as I took my camera and phone so I wanted my valuables to be safe. Sophie and I shared a rucksack so on rides we would safely secure everything and put each bag strap round our legs so it wouldn't go anywhere. You have to take bags on the rides and you are encouraged to put them under the seats. Make sure on rides such as Indiana Jones, Space Mountain and Tower of Terror where you go upside down and up and down, that all your valuables are secured in zipped compartments and that your bag is tightly closed. 

♡Where comfortable shoes like converse around the park. Bring longer socks to cover your ankles and plasters! It's a lot of walking!

♡If you are going in a particularly big group or you like your snacks throughout the day, we took croissants and fruit from breakfast in freezer bags for snacks because it's much cheaper than buying things in the park.




I hope you enjoyed my tips and tricks for any future disneyland trips you are planning!

Emily xx