disneyland paris this week - first time - advice needed

[sanebrain]

Hi
we head to DLP this week, first time; we are staying in Paris and travelling - what's your best advice, and in particular:

• what time are the parades?
• what time are the fireworks at night?
• how do we get the fast passes?
• what do you advise for a 5.5 yr old and a 10 yr old to go on?
• how do you stay sane?

Thank you (trying to get 2 excited kids to bed...)

You are probably best to hit the tripadvisor disneyland Paris forums for loads of tips or there is also a great website dlpguide.com which has loads of info too. You can also get details of the park closures there too-with the 25th anniversary coming up next year quite a few of the rides are closed at the moment for refurbs.

When you get to the park you will get a schedule with all the details of meet and greets with characters, shows and parade times. I think at the moment the main parade is 5.30pm but there is also Goofy's step into Spring parade at the moment and a Mary poppins spring show on too.

The fireworks are part of the dreams show and they start as the park closes -so if the park closes at 9pm that's when dreams will start. Definitely worths seeing -its a magical show.

Fast passes are only available on certain rides such as ratatouille , Space Mountain etc , you put your park ticket in the fast pass machines and get a fast pass ticket back out with a time for your ride eg 10.15-10.45 , return within that time frame and you enter in the fastpass queue. Fast passes can go quite quickly though so best to aim to get them earlyish on in the day.

Also if you are staying in a Disney hotel you can get Extra Magic Hours from 8am-10am before the parks open to the rest of the public. Some of the rides in Fantasy land and discovery land are open and you also get a chance to get in early to beat some of the queues for really popular rides like ratatouille.

Not sure about keeping sane-It is a lovely holiday but an exhausting one -I think a few days of rest in a quiet room afterwards ? :)

This is the programme for both the Disneyland Park and the Studios for this week:
wdpromedia.disney.go.com/media/wdpro-dlp-assets/prod/en-gb/system/images/show-and-parades.pdf

You will be given a brochure of this along with a map when you check in or you can pick it up at the park gates.

Depending on where you are staying you may get a one-use-a-day Fastpass from your hotel. This will be valid for one ride only and not between the hours of 1pm and 4pm but as elvis has said you can get FPs from the ride machines (for some rides). They run out very quickly, don't expect to be able to pick one up in the afternoon for Ratatouille for instance.

As for staying sane . I would just suspend any inclination towards grumpiness and embrace the full-on-ness that is a Disney holiday. And then make plans for whatever recovery you need afterwards. Thr first time I went with the DCs, I had to schedule in some much-needed time on my own in a darkened room for a few days after getting home. I was used to it by the second time .

Sorry, have just seen that you are staying in Paris and not at DLP itself. In that case scrap what I said about hotel FPs and you can pick up a programme as you go in through the gates. Are you going for one day or several? If it's one day then you will need to plan carefully for both your children to get the most out of it as they may be interested in different things depending on which characters they like, etc. Are either of them into Princesses for instance? That takes a bit of planning to get a ticket from the Pavillion or you could do what we did and book lunch at Auberge to avoid having to queue. It is worth booking at least one character meal as it saves a lot of time on queuing to meet the characters in the parks.