Disneyland Paris in April

[ZiggyForever]

Hi everyone - DP has treated us to a long weekend in Paris in April and we're staying in the Disney New York Hotel in the Disneyland resort in order to visit the parks on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd April. I think we get an extra couple of hours in the parks because we're staying on-site, but apart from that, is it going to be horrifically busy? Would it be worth buying fast-track passes (or the equivalent)? I have no patience for waiting in queues

Any other tips for our visit would be really welcome - thank you!

You don't buy fast passes they are free. You get an extra one each per day as you are staying in a Disney hotel. Read the dibb website for explanation of fast passes they,are only available for certain rides.
If you haven't got patience for queuing then probably the parades and shows rather than the rides will be best for you.

2014newme Thank you for responding - I thought there was some sort of pass you could buy to avoid queues, like you can in Alton Towers . . . but maybe I'll just have to queue

No, you cannot buy passes at DLP. You get one each for staying at one of the hotels. Chose your ride to use it on carefully! We use it on Ratatoullie.

Otherwise you need to use the fast past tickets at the following rides. You get a ticket and return at the allocated time.

Fastpass

How busy can be seen here. Thursday should be ok. Friday will be busy. I'd plan on doing your major rides on the Thursday. Use fast pass and do rides when parades are on. See parades on the Friday when park is busy and queue time will be long. What do you want to see?

sorry that should be Friday/Saturday.

You only get 1 free fastpass foe staying in the hotel if you are staying in an upgraded room (for you it would be an empire state room) however you can collect fast passes throughout the day from the rides themselves. I would suspect quite busy in april and its their 25th anniversary so more people visiting.

You can only get the free fastpasses for 7-8 of the rides there, and can only hold one fastpass per park at a time. So if you got a fastpass for 11:30-12:30 you cannot then pick up another one in the same park until 12:30.
It's the 25th anniversary at the parks at the moment (started on Saturday) so it's going to be incredibly busy, there's a new parade and nighttime show that everyone is travelling to see. If you want a good spot for either of these, be prepared to bag a spot 1.5-2 hours before they start and wait. You can spread out and tag in and out while you wait, but people can and will try and push you over/out of the way to make space. I watched the parade when I was there on Sunday and I arrived at 4:30 for it (starts at 5:30) and was about 3 rows back in the crowd.
Your extra magic hours will get you into Disneyland park from 8-10am, but only a small amount of the park is open then. It's a good time for photos and a few of the smaller rides. Disney Studios park opens at 10 but people queue for it from 9am and usually get let in at about 9:45 and will run to the 2 newest rides to start queuing (Crush's Coaster and Rataouille). If you want to go on Crush, get to Studios for 9am and make a beeline for it. The queue is usually about 200 people deep before the ride queue line even opens! Ratatouille has fastpasses but even with them it's gonna be a 20min wait or so.
Download the Disneyland Paris app and have a look at it, it has live wait times and you can get an idea of the times you'll be looking at queuing, plus you can check it in the park and run to rides when the wait drops on them.

Great info, thanks everyone! Will definitely download the app too