Just outside Paris, there is a place everyone should visit. It is the unquenchable dream of adults and children, big and small. The world-famous Disneyland Park is the capital of bright emotions and a giant factory of pleasure. Here, I want to gather as much useful information as possible about how to visit Disneyland in Paris. If you have at least one free day and are in the outskirts of the French capital, don't miss the chance to return to childhood and find yourself in a fairy tale.
Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination in the world. / Walt Disney /
Exploring Disneyland in France.
Disneyland in Paris is a place where dreams come true. It will be interesting for everyone, from young to old. There are rides suitable for adults but not for children due to weight and height restrictions. The parade and fireworks bring you back to childhood and give you a sense of magic. It's practically a separate city, with its own restaurants and shops, hotels and parks, cars and trains.
Before entering the park, you will see a hotel of the same name, which looks more like a palace for a princess than a hotel. The rooms here are fabulously expensive, but if you stay here, park admission is included in the price.
The park itself is divided into four zones: Frontierland, Adventureland, Fantasyland, and Discoveryland, each containing at least one interesting and slightly scary attraction. To truly enjoy yourself, you need to explore the entire park.
Tickets and Tips. How to visit Disneyland in Paris.
A ticket to the park costs 50 euros. This price includes all the attractions, which you can ride an unlimited number of times. Officially, you can ride each one a thousand times, but the trick is that due to the huge queues, you will only manage to ride each one once, if you're lucky.
In line, you can stand for up to an hour and a half, can you imagine? But you can pay a little extra and get a FastPass, which reduces waiting time to 10-15 minutes, and in some places to 1-2 minutes. This ticket indicates the time slot for skipping the line at attractions.
In the summer peak season, I managed to ride all the major attractions, and in the remaining time, I enjoyed the less scary but equally pleasant ones. I arrived at the park opening and left almost at night.
Once you have the lucky ticket in your hands, all tourists enter Main Street, the main avenue inspired by a 19th-century American town. Here you can catch the express train that runs throughout the park. Souvenir shops and Mickey Mouse characters are everywhere along the street. In the center, horse-drawn trams ride by.
Spooky Frontierland.
Frontierland is the first zone all tourists head to. Here reigns the spirit of the Wild West with the huge Big Thunder Mountain in the center, steep cliffs, and dark tunnels through which a Wild West train speeds. It's scary but incredibly interesting!
Big Thunder Mountain is surrounded by a cute lake with islands and grottos. Here everyone rides canoes and a Mississippi steamboat.
Nearby is the Phantom Manor, exactly as everyone imagines it. A true Victorian classic. Even the cobwebs are real. The house is intentionally neglected to preserve its eerie aesthetic.
At the entrance to the spooky house, there is a small graveyard, gothic gazebos in a shady garden, and ghostly music.
A small group of tourists is gathered in a room, the light dims, everyone freezes with excitement and even fear, because this hall has neither doors nor windows. Essentially, it's a dead-end room with only one door, the one you enter through. Everyone waits. Suddenly, the floor begins to descend into the basement, and the paintings come to life.
Descending a floor, tourists are seated in train carriages. The train sets off into another world, where ghosts, shadows, fantasies, visions, and mirages reign.
Then ghostly brides will twirl in a dance, then skeletons will come to life. The Haunted House is a spectacular marvel of audio animation.
Adventureland: A World of Adventures.
Adventureland is a world of adventures, neighboring George Lucas's "Indiana Jones" town and the Mayan Indians. Somewhere in the dense jungle is the house of Robinson Crusoe. If you climb higher into the trees, you can visit his domain.
Adventureland is where the Pirates of the Caribbean live, with an ancient schooner docked nearby.
Here you find bamboo forests, waterfalls, skulls, and suspension bridges. You feel like an Amazon, or at least a monkey.
Fantasyland for the Little Ones. How to visit Disneyland in Paris.
Fantasyland is a fairy tale for the little ones. Here, blue elephants fly, like those once featured in the Disney World intro, a children's show we all watched growing up. Nearby lives Pinocchio, Lancelot's carousel, and Peter Pan's realm, where you travel on a pirate galleon.
The big ship sails on the river and then plunges down a hill into an underground river. It's breathtaking. By the way, after each ride, you can buy photos with your funny faces, or just take a picture on your phone.
Alice's Wonderland Maze seems mysterious and enchanting. But the most impressive thing here is Sleeping Beauty's Castle, guarded by a fire-breathing dragon.
The castle has many attractions: stained glass windows inspired by the fairy tale, magical books, observation decks with views of the entire park.
Here one fairy tale flows into another. This park is the embodiment of childhood dreams. Beloved Disney characters, breathtaking attractions, smiles everywhere, balloons, carousels, sweets, gifts, fairy-tale princess castles, pirate ships, magical trains.
Discoverland and Its Star Journey.
The Space Pipe promises that we will see space. Indeed, I saw space so clearly that sparks flew from my eyes. The pipe sped with such ferocity that it took my breath away. It's as if this thing does everything to shake the life out of you )
The Grand Disney Parade. How to visit Disneyland in Paris.
This is the hallmark of all Disneylands. The Disney parade moved me, though I still don't quite understand how. And the cherry on top was the magical Wishes fireworks against the backdrop of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Truly, it was beyond praise!
Interesting facts about Disneyland in Paris.
By the way, a unique feature of the Paris Disneyland is the characters from the cartoon "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" – the beautiful Esmeralda, the poet Pierre who is in love with her, and the hunchback Quasimodo. Moreover, the park's functionality is very well thought out. For instance, to make trash cans less noticeable, they painted them green with a color mixed by the "Disney folks" themselves.
At night, over 200 cats are released from their homes to hunt mice – a very practical move.
Walt Disney himself lived in one of the houses on Main Street. Employees always knew that if the light was on in the window, Disney was home. Today, in memory of Walt, the light in his apartment is never turned off, so travelers can imagine that the kind storyteller is still watching over them.
And also...
Disneyland is a magical world of fantasy created by human hands, where whimsical stories and timeless tales come to life right before your eyes. It’s a place where you can escape the ordinary, dive into the sweet dream of childhood, experience new intense emotions, and create precious memories. Here, you lose track of time, differences in races and ages fade away, and everyone, both kids and adults, feels equally wonderful.
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