First Time in Disneyland Paris
Did you know that there’s a Disneyland in Paris? Well, it’s actually not located in Paris, but you can reach it via a 50-min train ride on RER A. Like most kids, I grew up watching tons of Disney movies. Some of my favourites are: Pocahontas, Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, the Nutcracker and Peter Pan. I’ve never really had the opportunity of going to Disneyland since the closest to my hometown is the one in Orlando, Florida. No one in my family has ever really been a huge fan of amusement parks. I guess we just don’t really like being in the middle of a crowd and waiting in line for hours. This is still 100% accurate today. I usually try to avoid going to places during rush hour, or attending events that are over crowded.
Recently, my sister decided to visit me at the last minute and I thought we should do something special. I had a couple days off of work, and we thought we would give Disneyland a try. That morning we woke up super early to watch the sunrise at the Eiffel tower, then we directly headed towards Marne-la-Vallée, where Disneyland is located. It was a super smooth ride, and it was sunny out :)
We got there just before it opened, so we didn’t have to wait in line to get in. We weren’t aware that if you purchase your tickets online, in advance, you basically save 50% (duh!) so we ended up paying €79 instead of €40 online. We also obviously couldn’t resist the temptation to buy some Minnie Mouse Ears headbands (€10-15). Once we were all set, we went straight to Sleeping Beauty’s castle in order to take a few shots before it would get too crowded. We managed to get some cool ones as there wasn’t that many people, the sky was clear, and the light was perfect! Then we started walking around to find some cool attractions.
Disneyland park is divided into 4 main lands: discoveryland, fantasyland, adventureland and frontierland. We first started walking around discoveryland, but didn’t really get into this vibe. We went there to experience our childhood fairytales and stuff, so we immediately switched to fantasyland. Good decision! We started off by doing the “It’s a small world” boat ride! This was my fave attraction; it’s quite long compared to other rides, and the work that they’ve done is amazing. Also the waiting line is never super long, it goes fast! Then we did Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups, which was super short but so much fun. Finally, we waited 1:20 in line for Peter Pan, which was supposedly the best attraction of the park. I mean it was really great, but way too short!
Afterwards we were a bit tired (5am wake up call!) and hungry, so we headed back to the park entrance. We walked through adventureland on our way back and saw a giant pirate boat and Aladdin’s passage. Overall we had fun and it was a really nice city break; the park is really beautiful and I can’t imagine how excited I would have been if I had visited when I was a little kid! I think it’s worth going on a week day, and buy fast passes to skip lines. We didn’t because it got so crowded then even the “fast pass” lines had started getting crowded, but next time we will!