Can you put a price on your children’s happiness? At Disneyland Paris, it’s £1,000 a day. That’s what a four-day visit at the end of June cost our family of four.
Taking advantage of two school inset days, my husband and I booked a term-time trip to surprise our children, aged eight and five.
Our eldest loved meeting Darth Vader and the thrill rides like Big Thunder Mountain.
Our youngest adored meeting Tigger – her cuddly companion since babyhood. That hug with A.A. Milne’s fictional character brought tears to my eyes.
But nothing made our eyes water more than the cost: nearly £4,000 for the trip.
I now realise there are ways we could have knocked hundreds of pounds off the cost – I only wish I’d known sooner. Here’s how.
Disney joy: But, like Donald, you can have a huge bill if you take your family to the Paris attraction
Getting There
As we were getting the 7am Eurostar train from London’s St Pancras, we stayed the night before at Premier Inn Euston (£220) to avoid a very early commute. Big mistake.
The hotel had no air conditioning and, on a warm June night, none of us slept well. We should have taken a £45 early morning taxi from home, saving £160 and a sleepless night.
Eurostar tickets (booked two months ahead) cost £546. Had we been more flexible on our travel times, we could have been savvier with our tickets.
It’s usually much cheaper to depart from London in the afternoon – even in the school holidays.
For instance, return tickets can currently be had for £130.65 per adult and £64.83 for children on August 28 on the 13.01 train from St Pancras. That’s a family bill of £390.96, saving £155.04 on the total we paid.
Flying to Paris could also have been quicker and cheaper. British Airways return flights for a family of four from Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle are about £515, and Magic Shuttle bus tickets to Disneyland cost around £60 – that would have saved me around £130, even factoring in a taxi to the airport.
Hotel
We booked a package including four-day tickets to Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park, plus three nights at Newport Bay Hotel with a half-board meal plan. It cost £2,567.84.
The hotel is a ten-minute walk from the parks, allowing us to break up the day and escape the crowds.
The pool was a great way to cool down in the 30c heat – though one afternoon we had to evacuate because a child (not ours!) pooed in the water.
We stayed in a ‘superior’ room with two double beds. It smelled damp, the air conditioning control wouldn’t go below 20c, and a large fridge was dumped unplugged at the foot of a bed.
After complaining, we received an apology and a slightly cooler room. However, the staff explained that French energy reduction laws restrict the use of air conditioning in hotels and other commercial buildings.
Later trains: It’s usually much cheaper to depart from London on the Eurostar in the afternoon – even in the school holidays
I wish I’d known to book via cashback website topcashback.co.uk. By signing up for an account and then accessing the Disneyland Paris website through the link it provided, I could have earned £35 for my Newport Bay stay.
You can earn £50 for staying at other hotels near the park, including the New York, Disneyland or Sequoia Lodge hotels.
And if I had thought to check out my Tesco Clubcard offers, I could have made further savings by exchanging Clubcard points earned when grocery shopping for a hotels.com voucher, which I could redeem when booking the hotel through its website.
Park tickets
Our tickets covered both parks for four days (Thursday to Sunday). One-day entry for a family of four booked in advance at disneylandparis.com costs just over £500 on the Disneyland Paris website, so the four-day package seemed better value.
It also meant we didn’t feel the need to buy queue jumpers – officially called ‘premier access passes’ – that range from £4-14 per person per ride.
I wished I’d known I could have used my Visa bank card to get us into the Stitch Live experience over at Disney Studios without queueing.
We were beaten by more organised families and disappointed my daughter by not getting into the show.
While admission is free to all, Visa Privileged Access would have let us in before the masses to any of the last three showings of the day just by waving any Visa payment card to staff on the door.
Food and Drink
The ‘half-board plus’ plan cost £565 and gave six meal vouchers across the hotel and parks. Breakfast at the hotel’s Yacht Club buffet didn’t require reservations and the kids devoured the crepes each morning.
I should have made dinner reservations at the hotel restaurants as soon as we booked the trip. By the time I got around to it, two weeks before we went, kid-friendly slots were scarce and character dining (where Disney favourites walk around the tables) was fully booked.
Drinks were limited to one soft drink per meal, so we paid extra for more and the occasional wine or beer. This added around £22 per dinner and £35 at the Yacht Club for small glasses of wine with each course.
After walking 20,000 steps, one sunny evening my husband and I treated ourselves to a pina colada at the hotel’s outdoor bar. They came with Mickey Mouse-shaped pineapple slices — and a €14 price tag each. We didn’t order more.
Memories: One-day entry for a family of four booked in advance at disneylandparis.com costs just over £500 on the Disneyland Paris website
On top of included meals, we paid for four lunches. In the main park, a hot dog meal at Casey’s Corner cost £56.
Other lunches in the village included Italian chain Vapiano (£40), Earl Of Sandwich (£38), and McDonald’s (£25). A £6 Alice in Wonderland-themed ice cream and a couple of £4 soft drinks rounded out our bill.
Packing kids’ snacks from home saved us a small fortune and I’d do that again. I spent less than £10 stocking up on multipacks of chocolate chip cookies, dried fruit snacks and crisps in the supermarket before we left home.
Park eateries, including Cafe Hyperion in Discoveryland, were charging £3 for a Mickey Cookie and £3.50 for a fruit bag. Two snacks for two kids for four days at those prices would have cost me £54, so I saved at least £40.
Toys
I dare any parent to escape Disneyland without buying a few toys. We got away with just five purchases: a £30 cuddly Stitch, a £22 fake pink camera covered in Disney princesses that blew bubbles, a £39 design-your-own lightsaber and a £19 magnetic toy that sits on your shoulder.
While Disney is clever in stocking exclusive items in its park stores, I could have brought cheaper Disney-branded toys from home to give the children on arrival at the parks to curb spending.
For example, the Play By Play Plush Soft Stitch Disney With Sound (20cm – almost the same size as my daughter’s purchase) is on sale at Amazon for £17.34, and Star Wars branded retractable lightsabers can be bought for around £24.
But sometimes indulging your kids in a toyshop is worth more than the cost of the gift – even if it makes you a sucker to Disney’s marketing department.
Disneyland is crazy expensive. The queues are long and there’s really not much provision for small children in the way of playgrounds, soft plays or even shade from the raging summer sun. But for four days, it truly was the happiest place on
Earth for our kids – just not our bank balance!
