Disneyland Paris – 22nd to 24th February 2020
I don’t even know where to start with reviewing Disneyland – our first family holiday as a 3 with the little one only 4 months old. We were adventurous to start with and absolutely exhausted by the end of it!
Staying for 3 nights from 22nd February to 24th February it was off peak season and just at the tail end of the children’s school holidays. We opted for a Eurostar all inclusive package as this suited our need to have everything organised and pre booked. To be honest I will spend hours going through Trip Advisor and never making a decision so it was easier with little time to look for someone else to do it all for me.
We stayed at Campanile Val de France, a 3-star tourist hotel which offered us good value for money and everything we needed. Personally I was just paranoid about having a kettle as I bottle fed my little one and couldn’t imagine any other way around feeds without this little luxury! I won’t admit it was easy but it was just about doable, I managed to sterilise in the sink and we managed without it being too stressful for mummy. You couldn’t fault the provided cot, I tried to request this before arrival but that wasn’t a success so we just re requested this on arrival. The room was big enough for us all and there was very little noise that we experienced.
Breakfast was rather manic! We queued for about 20minutes on both mornings, and it was a little bit packed when we did get a table but it had everything we needed on offer. Fruit juice, coffee, croissants, fruit and yoghurt, enough to give us a good start to the day. But don’t expect a full English breakfast as this isn’t the place for this. We had a walk out to the supermarket which was just a 15minute walk out of the hotel if you follow the path to the left of the hotel. For both evening meals we stayed in the hotel as other than Disneyland for meals we couldn’t really find another option. It wasn’t the cheapest of options but we couldn’t fault the pizzas or salads and sandwiches on offer from the hotel.
Disneyland itself was busy. Stating the obvious there I guess. The security was strict, with bags and people being scanned before entering the park. There were lots of signs to warn about pick pocketers and this wasn’t a huge worry but was something you needed to bare in mind. It’s worth doing your homework before visiting on which rides and attractions you all want to visit. You do need at least two days in the parks to make them worthwhile, we only spent one day and didn’t really manage a lot but that suited us with such a young baby. We managed to a meet and greet with Pluto, and a turn on the carousel. If you get the Disneyland Paris app downloaded on your phone before you visit this works as a handy map and also gives you a ride by ride overview and queue length which is certainly very helpful.
Don’t rely heavily on the baby changing facilities within the park like we did – these are sold as having baby changing facilities, baby feeding places, breast feeding room but in reality all these facilities are within quite a small space so there is little privacy and it’s rather busy. I suspect it will be busy a lot of the time.
I was pleased we chose not to stay within the Disney complex itself, for me personally there was too many people and no opportunity to just take 5minutes really. I would recommend wherever you stay has a free shuttle bus service, you get a package which include breakfast and you should opt for a lightweight travel friendly buggy – I can’t rate our Microlite enough. This just makes travel easier overall and means you have a much needed buggy but it doesn’t add to the hassle of having to carry your everyday one. The Micralite in-particular could be put up and down with one hand and fitted nicely in the trains overhead storage. (see my specific review on this pushchair).
Covering transport there and back is just an entirely different conversation altogether. I pre-planned, over planned, post planned and re planned once again transport and to be perfectly honest it was a waste of time. We experienced baby changing toilets which were out of use, train seat reservations cancelled due to a change in trains. So to sum up all my planning was pretty pointless.