Disneyland Paris

As a Disney fan I have always wanted to visit all of the Disney parks, so I was excited when we planned out trip to Disneyland Paris. I consider myself a Disney Adult. I have been to both Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida and Disneyland in Anaheim, California several times. As a crafter, I have made more Disney related crafts in my life than I can count! This is my sincere review of our experience in May 2025 and the Disney Paris resort.

Did you know that Euro Disney, Disney Paris and Disneyland Paris are different names for the same theme park? The resort is located in Marne-la-Vallée, France. To put the distance in perspective, the Eiffel Tower in Paris is about 29 miles from the town where the parks are located. While that sounds close, it will take you about an hour if you were to drive from one location to the other. We decided on taking the train, which also took about an hour.

The park was initially known as Euro Disney and underwent several name changes before settling on its current name, Disneyland Paris. 

Timeline of Name Changes:

• 1992-1994: Euro Disney Resort
• 1994: Euro Disneyland Paris
• 1994-2002: Disneyland Paris
• 2002-2009: Disneyland Resort Paris
• 2009-Present: Disneyland Paris 

Therefore, Disneyland Paris is the park’s current and most commonly used name, although Euro Disney is a historical reference to its early days. This is probably why you will still hear some people from my generation and older call it Euro Disney.

Is Disneyland Paris worth it?

The biggest question most people have about the Disney resort in France would be is it worth it. I feel like that is a personal choice and depends on what you want out of the trip. There are MANY factors to determine if a trip like this is worth it for you, which is why I am breaking down the parts of our trip into different sections.

Also, since I have been to the parks and hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida and Disneyland in Anaheim, California I will be pointing out some things I noticed that were not the same as the way things are run in the United States.

Disneyland Paris Hotel

For our stay we were at the Disney Newport Bay Club. It is a very nice hotel with boat and yachting them to it. I know that some people are going to say that I was being too picky or one of those problem customers when they read this, but please read the WHOLE story before you decide.

We arrived on a Friday in the morning, so our room was not ready, but we were able to check in and leave our bags with Guest Services so that we could head out to the parks right away. We were told we would get a text when our room was ready. They even double checked our phone number but we never got a text. My husband did get an email but he did not see that right away since we were in the park and not checking email.

Once we got to our room it was way too warm for me, especially after being out at the park. I wanted to be able to come back to a nice cool room. Additionally, my whole family needs it cooler to sleep. The temperature in the room was 23° Celsius which is 73.4° Fahrenheit. If we were outside and it was 74° that temperature would feel fine. Add a little breeze to that temperature and I would call that a perfect day. But for sleeping I knew we would need it cooler.

I tried to lower the temperature just a few degrees but the number would not change, so I went to the front desk. I was told that they have a system that controls it and you cannot adjust it in the rooms. I asked if they could bump it down a couple degrees in our room and they said they could, but they did mention that there was a minimum temperature that they could go down to, which was 19°C, and I said I would be happy with 20° or 21°C and she said that she would ask for it to be set to 20°C.

Since two people from our room were going to go to the pool, I asked them to check the temperature of the room after they were done at the pool. A couple of hours later I got a text from them that they were back in the room and the temperature had not changed at all. They then went to the front desk and asked if the temperature could be lowered to which the person at the front desk said yes and they would have someone do that right away.

We were all at the parks until after the fireworks were over, so it was close to midnight when we got back to the hotel and the room was STILL at 23°C!!!!! I went to the front desk, and the person that helped me said that they would have someone lower the temperature for us right away. I said that this was the third time today that we were asking about this, since around 3:30pm, and everyone told us that it would be done and it has not been done. He said “Well if it does not start to cool down in about an hour just come back”

This is when I cut him off and said “On no. I am staying right here with you until it is fixed. My husband is in the room so if someone needs to physically go to the room he will text me when that happens. If they have to adjust it from a main system, he will text me when the AC kicks in since that would mean someone has adjusted it. You and I are going to be staying together right here until this is fixed.”

This is when he jumped on the phone and called Maintenance. He was on the phone back and forth for a while and he eventually came back and said there was nothing he can do. I told him that I needed to speak to someone that COULD do something about it. This is when the manager was brought in.

The manager told us that their was a law in France that you cannot put the temperature below 23°C in the summer. I called his bluff on that since we had just been in Paris for three nights before coming to Disney and we were able to set the range in the room to be between 19° to 21° and it was perfect. (that hotel had a setting so that the room would not be cooling until you came back and then it allowed you to just set a range and not a steady temperature.)

When the manager said again that they could not go lower than 23°C and I said “Then you better tell your staff that because three different people told me that they could lower it and one even said that the lowest it could go was 19°C. He told me that the winter range can go down to 19°C but we are on summer ranges now, and I asked if since they technically COULD make it cooler could they just do that. I think I said “Them put us on winter range.”

He did have someone bring us a fan, which did help. In the end, we did thank him for his help and said that we would not have even had this discussion or needed him to be called in if the very first person would have said that 23°C was the lowest it could go. We would have known then that the only way we were going to get it cooler was with a fan, and I probably would have asked the front desk if they had one we could use.

One thing I really liked about our hotel is that several times during the day there would be character meet and greets in the lobby. This was a great way to get some time with the characters without having to wait in the sun and heat of the park. Also, the characters were in fun boating themed outfits.

We ate at the hotel restaurant one morning. It serves a buffet of the traditional breakfast foods of pancakes, waffles, fruit, eggs, toast and cereal. There was also pastries, and I have to say that the assortment of pastries was the largest I have ever seen at a buffet! There was also a charcuterie board style section with all kinds of meats and cheeses.

One thing I noticed that I thought was not appropriate was the family at one table coming back to their table with a stack of bread. They then started to make their own sandwiches and put them in a container to take with them! I get that is not on Disney, but it was something I have never seen someone do.

Disneyland Paris Parks

There are two parks, Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park. The Disneyland Park is similar in style to Disneyland in California or Magic Kingdom in Florida, but much smaller. After the main entrance, there is a Main Street with stores and Main Street leads right to the castle.

I was surprised by the lack of places to eat! There are some sit down restaurants where you have to make a reservation, but I was expecting some more grab and go places around the park with food, not just snacks. Even a place called Market House Deli was mostly snacks, but we did have the ham and cheese Mickey shaped sandwich one day.

Something that was very different to us was the use of REAL cups, plates and even silverware! Very few paper plates/cup or plastic silverware. The silverware we did get was bamboo. It made me realize how wasteful we are in the United States.

For sit down restaurants that you had to book a table for, there was an all you can eat buffet, which we never do at the parks. No one wants to eat a ton of food and then go stand in a long line for a ride, or go on a ride that could make you sick! Another restaurant only did character dining and the prices was 100 euro each!

There were a couple of restaurants that featured American food, like Casey’s Corner but we did not want to go to those. We wanted to eat at places we could not eat at in the other parks. We did eat at Casa de Coco – Restaurante de Familia which is a Coco inspired Mexican restaurant. The margaritas were pretty weak. I honestly do not think there was any alcohol in them. If you go to Overland Trail Cafe, which is the little food stand right next to the restaurant you can get Loaded Nachos that comes with the BIGGEST scoop of guacamole you have ever seen!

Even though we wanted to experience different foods, we did eat at Cowboy Cookout Barbecue but mostly because we were hungry and it was the first place we saw. They did have grilled sausage, which we have not seen at other parks so we had that.

Café Hyperion was another one that we tried even though it was American food, but it was mostly because it was close to where we were. It had a lot of indoor seating and there was a stage, so there might be a performance while you are there!

Walt Disney Studios Park is similar to California Adventure or Hollywood Studios, but again, much smaller. We were excited to see some different food options, like the WEB Food Truck. The bowls of noodles looked amazing! But, once we got them they looked nothing like the pictures below. The container was filled with broth and maybe half of it had the noodles and meat in it.

There was a place with with mini pizzas, which started off really good, but then it was ICE COLD in the center. Another one we saw was Laugh’N’ Go! that had grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, but it was not open when we were by it.

One place that I kind of would have liked to go to was Bistrot Chez Rémy, but everything came with a starter and a main dish at 45 euro each! We typically will buy two or three things and then share it among 4 people, so this is another reason we do not do buffet or per plate places.

My biggest complaint about the places to eat would be the lack of staff. There was sometimes just one person running around trying to do everything, which made service slow and lines LONG.

There were a couple of things traditional Disney Rules that I noticed were not followed or enforced at Disneyland Paris. At the parks in the United States, adults cannot wear fully length costumes, like a princess dress, to the park. This is to help keep the “magic” of the characters alive. No one wants to see a Disney Princess in line with her friends acting “un-princess like.”

While we were there I saw someone in line wearing a full length Snow White costume/dress. She had a sash that said Bride to Be on it. At first I thought maybe it was just not a rule at parks outside of the United States, but I did find information about costumes on the Disneyland Paris website.

The other Disney Rule I saw being broken a LOT was the one about stroller wagons, which is that wagons are not allowed. Strollers have a size limit, so that they are not too large for the parks. Every day we were there, there were SEVERAL families with large wagons. I even saw one with a canopy on it. When you are walking around in the parks there are spaces that the wagons fit through just fine, but when you are going down Main Street or in a store, the wagons can take up the space of three people!

When we have been at the parks in the United States, I have never seen anyone smoking in the parks. This is probably because there are designated smoking areas and since I do not smoke I am not around these areas. I did see signs pointing to the designated smoking areas in Disneyland Paris, but I also saw people smoking in line for rides or in the crowd when we were waiting for fireworks, and several as we were walking out of the park after fireworks.

Disneyland Paris Attractions

Since attractions are the main reason to go to any of the Disney parks, I want to make sure that I talk about the Disneyland Paris Attractions, which will include rides, shows, parades, fireworks and characters. If you have been to the parks in the United States, you will notice some rides that are the same or similar to the ones in Disneyland Paris. I will list some below.

Attractions that are the same/similar to the ones in the United States parks

• It’s a Small World
• Autopia
• Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast
• Disneyland Railroad Main Street Station
• Dumbo the Flying Elephant
• La Cabane des Robinson aka Swiss Family Robinson Tree House
• The Carrousel
• Les Voyages de Pinocchio aka Pinocchio’s Daring Journey
• Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups
• Peter Pan’s Flight
  • The wait time for this was always 50 minutes or more!
• Phantom Manor aka Haunted Mansion
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Star Tours: The Adventures Continues
• Cars Quatre Roues Rallye is similar to Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters

Attractions that are the different to the ones in the United States parks

• Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain
  • This one is best described as making Space Mountain MORE intense/faster and adding in Star Wars images
• Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nainsn aka Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
  • Do not be fooled, this is NOT like the Seven Dwarfs Mine Ride you might know. This is basically a ride like Winnie the Pooh or Alice in Wonderland at the parks in the United States.
• Cars ROAD TRIP
  • Honestly, unless your family LOVES Cars or just wants a ride that is a break from the sun, I would skip this one. It is very far in the back of the park and is a slow moving drive around a path. There is one section where the bus stops and there is a set up where you see a truck catch on fire and water rushes in, like the old school Back Lot ride that used to be in Hollywood Studios.
• Cars Quatre Roues Rallye

I do have a few complaints on the topic of Disneyland Paris attractions. First there was just not enough staff working in the parks. There were some food places where we saw only one employee working the register, which made for LONG waits for your food.

That leads right into my second complaint, which is the wait times. Not just for food but for the different rides and attractions. We were there at the off season so I would hate to see how long the wait times were during the peak times.

Also, across the park the process of loading and unloading people for the rides was really inefficient. At the parks in the states, as soon as people are locked in for a ride they are already counting off and lining up people for the next set of riders. Also, if there is a long wait time you will rarely see a ride take off with an empty seat. Well, in Disneyland Paris it seems that they will allow everyone to get off of the ride before they even start to count off people for the next ride which leads to more time standing in line.

There was one ride that we decided to do the single rider line to get through the ride faster, and when they loaded my husband into his car on the ride he was the ONLY PERSON in it! At the very least, they could have put three additional single riders into that same car.

My biggest disappointment from the Disneyland Paris trip would be the mess and mass chaos at the fireworks. In the states there would have been marked off lines and paths so that if you wanted to cross over from one side of the park to the other, you use the marked off path. Not in Paris. We were packed in so tight and people would just push their way through if they wanted to go from one side to the other.

Disneyland Paris app

The Disneyland Paris app works the same as the ones for the states work, but it is much slower to load. You can see wait times, see places to eat or just find your way around in general.

Disneyland Paris Tickets

One HUGE difference between the parks in the states and the one in Paris is that there is no need for a Park Hopper in Paris! We finished up with one park early and we were able to go into the other park. One ticket gets you both parks!

Disneyland Paris Photopass

Normally we love the Photopass at Disney! You get the photos from the rides and it seems like there are so many photographers around the park which really allows you to get the whole family into the picture more easily. No need to ask a stranger if they will take a family photo for you.

In the 3 days that we went into the parks we only saw one Photopass photographer, and they were only in one park. In total, we only got 8 photos on our Photopass. It would have been cheaper to just buy individual photos.

My Sincere Personal Feelings

While I am glad that I went to the Disney parks in France, looking back I would have done some things differently. First, I would have also asked for a fan in our room right when we checked in.

Second, knowing what I know now, I would not have purchased the Photopass. The fact that there was only one photographer even out on one day made it not worth it at all.

Third, I feel like my whole experience would have been better if I had not already been at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. I expected the Disney in Paris to be the same sort of overall experience. Several of the things I pointed out above just made the whole thing seem less “magical”.