I was at Disneyland

I always thought that Disneyland was for kids. So whenever someone suggested going to Disneyland, I would say no. This time round, I agreed to go when Irene suggested going to Disneyland. Irene had been to France three times and visited many places. I guess it was not right to let her go Disneyland alone.

We really enjoyed Disneyland. With good preparation, we made the best out of our day. Here I shall share some tips with you.

The tickets are cheaper if you know 5 days in advance which date you are going. I bought the tickets via internet. It cost 29€ for a ticket with a date printed while an open date ticket cost 47€ for a park. Add in 10€ more if you want to visit 2 parks within a day. As each park is big, it is better to concentrate your full day on a park. We chose to visit the Disneyland Park instead of the Walt Disney Studios.

Once the tickets were bought, I printed them myself. Having the tickets printed and sent to your home will incurred delivery fees. At the entrance of the park, we avoided the long queue to buy tickets and also the long queue to validate our tickets. There was a separate queue for internet tickets and only a handful of people bought their tickets in advance via internet.

Avoid going on a weekend or Wednesday if possible. These are the days where Disneyland will be very crowded. We chose to go on a Thursday and as it was during the low peak season, there were not too many people. We usually waited less than 10 mins for each ride and attraction.

There are many restaurants in Disneyland and most of them sell the usual fast food style sandwiches, beverages and dessert. We made sandwiches in the morning and brought fruits, water and titbits. There are benches all over Disneyland. We did stop for hot beverages before the parade and the queue took us 30mins. It seems that everyone had the same idea as us. Have a hot chocolate while waiting for the parade to start. The parade started at 4pm and by the time we had our hot chocolate in hand, we could not find a good position to watch the parade. Suddenly, you would realise that there are really a lot of people in Disneyland. I could not imagine how it would be on a summer weekend. If you like parades and have kids, go find a place along the kerb way, way in advance. If you do not like parade, take this time to go do the rides. There would be fewer queues.

We arrived shortly after the opening of the park and left when it closed with a candle celebration at 7pm. We started at Fantasyland with the boat ride of 'It's a small world' (wished I had the time to do it twice) and continue to discover the Discoverland, Adventureland and Frontierland. For major attractions with high demand, we got a fast pass. It is actually a ticket giving you priority (direct access) at a given hour. So there was no need to queue. We could do other attractions before our fast pass appointment.

At the end of the day, we were dead tired. We were glad that we came by the RER train instead of driving. RER cost about 6.50€ one way from Paris to Disneyland. Car parking for a whole day cost 8€. However, after a long day, none of us would like to drive. Also, there are rumours that traffic is always slow during the rush hour to Paris.

I had fun at Disneyland. There were little girls dressed up as princesses. Robes can be found in the boutiques. They cost around 45€ each. The boutiques sell the usual Walt Disney stuff. Irene got a lovely Mickey in Paris mug. Though the weather was not that great that day, we still enjoyed ourselves greatly. It is really not difficult because there's a kid in every adult.