8 Tips Before You Start Your Park Day

Opening time is too late. We would much rather be waiting at the entrance before the park opens than arriving as everyone else is already pouring in.

Aim to be at the park entrance around 30–60 minutes before you expect to get in. For an early Disney Hotel start, around 7:45–8:00am is a good bet for us.

Those first few minutes can be golden. You can get quieter Main Street photos, enjoy the park before it feels busy and put yourself ahead of the first big wave of queues.

If you have Extra Magic Time, the same principle applies: do not treat the advertised start time as the time to arrive. Be through security, at the entrance and ready to go.

Have a plan before you enter. You do not need a minute-by-minute itinerary, but you should know the first thing you want to do.

That might be Big Thunder Mountain, Peter Pan’s Flight, another priority attraction or simply getting an empty-ish castle photo before Main Street fills up.

The important bit is deciding in advance. Standing just inside the entrance discussing where everyone wants to go while hundreds of people walk straight past you is a frustrating way to waste the quietest part of the morning.

Pick your first target, head there and then decide what comes next once you have got that first priority done.

Download the Disneyland Paris app before you go, get logged in and make sure your trip is set up properly before park morning.

Add your Magic Pass and the people travelling with you where needed. If you need to use a virtual queue or another feature that asks who is taking part, you do not want to be trying to sort accounts and trip details while everyone else is already booking.

The app is also where we keep checking live attraction wait times, character information, show times, restaurants and the park map. You can use it for a huge amount of the practical side of the day.

And keep checking it. Wait times can change quickly, so something that looked like a bad idea 30 minutes ago can suddenly become the best thing to head towards.

Seriously: this is not the day for new trainers.

We can easily hit 30,000 steps in a Disney day and sometimes closer to 35,000. On top of the walking, there is a lot of standing around in queues, waiting for shows and moving between the two parks.

Wear shoes you already know are comfortable for a very long day. Your feet still need to be working by the time you are waiting for the nighttime show, and if you are visiting for several days they need to do it all again tomorrow.

Good shoes are not the exciting part of planning Disneyland Paris, but bad ones can affect almost every hour of your day.

Bring a refillable bottle rather than repeatedly buying bottled water around the parks.

There are drinking-water points around Disneyland Paris where you can refill it, and you can find the water locations in the Disneyland Paris app when you need one.

We have found this particularly useful around Disney Adventure World, including the newer Frozen area, where having a bottle with you means you can just top up and keep going rather than hunting for somewhere to buy another drink.

It is cheaper, easier and one less thing to keep stopping for during a long park day.

One of our favourite Disney morning rituals is having breakfast once we are already inside the park.

Look out for the kiosks offering coffee with something simple such as a croissant, cake or crêpe. There are usually different combinations and deals, and we normally spend around €7 for the two.

We would much rather get into the park, use the quieter first part of the morning and then stop for coffee and something to eat than spend that valuable early time sitting over a long breakfast before we arrive.

Coffee and Main Street is a pretty perfect way to start the day once you are already inside and the holiday is properly under way.