This article is reposted from a WeChat reader’s official account, 懒人 33 的吃喝玩乐. Original link.

Christmas Day

It started raining early on Christmas morning. Once again, we asked Mr. Xiao Yang to pick us up and take us to our last hotel in Paris. We didn’t have time for breakfast, so we bought two takeaway breakfasts from the hotel restaurant, with some pastries and the like, and sat in the hotel lobby just to fill our stomachs.

The hotel staff helped move our luggage into the car in the rain and saw us off, and that was the end of our time in central Paris. The new hotel was more of a resort-style property. After quickly storing our luggage and checking in, we headed straight to Disney. The hotel was about 10 minutes from both Disney and La Vallée Village, which was very convenient. However, the hotel didn’t have bell service, so when we got back that night, we had to push the luggage cart to our room ourselves. Thankfully, the room wasn’t too far away.

Mr. Xiao Yang dropped us off at Disney again. The crowds weren’t too bad at that point, so we headed to Disney Studio first.

Disneyland Paris, located in Marne-la-Vallée near [Paris]（http://place.qyer.com/paris/）, France, covers about 1942.5 hectares. It includes the Disney theme parks and Disney resort hotels. It is the world’s second-largest Disney resort by area, opened in 1992, and was the fourth Disney park in the world.

It is mainly divided into three parts: Disneyland Park (more dreamy and fairy-tale-like, princess style), Disney Studio (more focused on behind-the-scenes movie experiences, with relatively more thrilling rides), and Disney Village (with shops, restaurants, and movie theaters, and free to enter). There are also Disney resort hotels and a golf course. Disneyland Park itself is divided into five themed lands: Main Street, USA, Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Discoveryland. Its iconic pink Sleeping Beauty Castle is one of the most magical among all Disney castles. It’s best to check the official website for opening hours and ticket prices before visiting.

I want to call out a Taobao seller here: 全球美国欧洲门票专店. I had booked tickets through them long ago and felt comfortable doing so because all the reviews were positive. Customer service told me the tickets would only be issued about three days in advance. Then on Christmas Eve, they told me they couldn’t book Christmas Day tickets after all and asked me to request a refund. Apparently, all those five-star reviews were from people who actually got their tickets—if you didn’t get yours, there was nowhere to leave a bad review.

Luckily, Disneyland Paris didn’t seem to have any attendance cap at the time, so I hurried and bought Christmas Day tickets directly from the official website.

A couple more thoughts: we had taken our kid to Orlando Disney just that past August and visited all four parks. Since many of the rides at Disneyland Paris overlap with Orlando, we had actually been pretty hesitant about whether to go. In the end, one reason was that almost everything else was closed on Christmas, and if we didn’t go to Disney, we might not even have had anywhere to eat. The second reason was that we still wanted to see how each Disney park around the world was different. Later, friends who were also traveling in Europe at the same time told us Christmas Day really was bleak elsewhere, so coming to Disney felt like a pretty good choice.

After entering, you have to walk down this street before you’re officially inside the park.

At Disneyland Paris, the fast pass system worked by charging separately for each ride, priced per person, and it was pretty expensive. Since there were only a few rides we wanted to do, we didn’t buy it. Disneyland Paris also has its own app.

For this attraction, you ride in a large tram, kind of like the studio tour at Universal.

I’m not sure whether it was because of Christmas, but the various shows in the studio park were filling up far in advance. We showed up right around showtime and basically couldn’t get into any of them, except for the outdoor one above.

Disneyland

By around noon, we had basically done everything at the Studios that we hadn’t already done in Orlando, and then headed across to Disneyland.

By then it was about time for my lunch reservation. I had originally thought that since the pandemic situation in Europe was still serious, I would skip eating inside, but later I found the precautions were decent, so I managed to grab a last-minute restaurant spot.

The food at this restaurant was just barely acceptable, though the shrimp was pretty good. Portions were smaller than in the U.S. The kid finished off all the desserts…

Not long after lunch, before we had gone on many more rides, the kid fell asleep. I went to ride a roller coaster by myself, then met up with my partner and found a spot close to the parade route to sit and wait for the parade. The kid woke up just as the parade was about to end and caught the tail end of it. By then it was already dark.

After lining up for two more attractions, it was time for dinner.

For dinner, we found a restaurant near the carousel and got the usual burgers and fries. But the restaurant’s high chair was shaped like Mickey Mouse, so even the kid, who normally doesn’t like sitting in a high chair, was willing to sit in it.

Fireworks

After dinner, all the rides shut down at 8, so as we walked toward the exit, we also looked for a good spot to wait for the fireworks.

The French-language fireworks show was really nice, and hearing the French version of let it go gave it a bit of an exotic feel. But spending an entire day like this with a small child was truly exhausting, and by the end we were completely worn out and called a car back to the hotel.

We ran into communication issues again when getting a ride. The driver waited for a long time at the wrong pickup location, and in the end we had to pay the waiting fee. It seemed that, aside from in central Paris, ride fares started billing as soon as the driver began heading to pick us up.

Hotel

The hotel was in a townhouse-style setup. Our townhouse had two floors with 2b2b. The kitchen, dining area, and utensils were all pretty well equipped. The hotel didn’t have anything like a breakfast room, but there was a small grocery store with all kinds of food, plus fresh-squeezed orange juice from one of those self-serve machines that juices peeled oranges. We bought milk, eggs, and a few other things that night, and breakfast was taken care of.

The theme of the last day is La Vallée Village (similar to an outlet) + a COVID test. I’m hoping to finish writing it before we head out for spring break.

Good night, Disney~

Paris Trip Series

This article was originally published in 2021, so some of the content is related to the pandemic. However, most of the tips and experiences are still useful, so we’re republishing it on this site.

About the Author

This article is reposted from the WeChat public account of a reader from our WeChat group, 懒人 33 的吃喝玩乐. These are all original, high-quality articles, so feel free to follow if you’re interested.