Disney Paris An Overview

A little over a year ago I announced that our trip to Disney World was going to be postponed for a few years.  Just to bring you up speed Allison and I at the time lived in Greece and thought that we would be returning home soon.  As it turns out Allison got another assignment and we weren't going to be near North America, so we decided to push back our epic Disney World adventure till we got back.  Then, a few months ago it came to light that Allison and I would actually be really close to Paris France at the time of our anniversary, and we then thought it would be really cool to head to Paris Disney instead.  We did a bit of research, but only recently can we officially say that the trip is on.  So for the next few weeks' I'm going to write a bit about planning our trip to the happiest place in Europe.

If you're not familiar with the Disney parks in Paris, then today I'm going to bring you up to speed... or at least up to the speed that I am at.  The Disney park in Paris opened as Euro Disney back in 1992, but has since changed its name to Disneyland Paris.  The park was an absolute flop when it opened, and has continued to garner the reputation as being an economic failure.  Since I'm not an economist I'm not really sure if that's true, but as a tourist I can tell you that it's still open, and still updating attractions regularly.  Most people assume that the park consists only of one Disneyland like park, but that is also not true.  There are in fact two parks Disneyland Paris and Disney Studios.  There are also several Disney hotels (themed around American style locations) and a Downtown Disney place for entertainment and restaurants.

While the park doesn't have the history of Disneyland in California, or the sheer size of Disney World, it still seems like a pretty fun place to check out.  It has a few attractions that are unique to the Paris parks, and there are a few classic attractions found at other parks as well.  I assume that many of the attractions will be in French, but I also assume that they're going to try and bring in outside guests, so there'll also be a few things in English as well.  It doesn't really matter to us as Allison and I both speak French fairly well.

Our plan is to visit the parks in the spring for two or three days, this works with our Anniversary, as well as other plans we have in the area.  Since we don't live in Europe or North America, our planning is all going to be done from a long distance.  This is going to be challenging I'm sure, particularly with long distance charges and time differences.  Research wise I've found a few interesting websites on the subject of Disneyland Paris:

There's the official Disneyland Paris website.  It's OK, but lacks a lot of detail.

The best site I've seen is the Disneyland Paris Guide.  Other than the regular updates (the food menus are a few years old) I would say that this is a much better site to research your trip.  It's even more professional than the actual Disneyland Paris site.

Character Central is a great site for all the parks.  While it doesn't just focus on Disneyland Paris, it at the very least looks at it.

When you search the internet for Disney parks other than Disney World or Disneyland California, you really don't get much.  Maybe I'll change that, but probably not much.

As for videos online, I've come across one video that interested me, it's a copy of the official tourist promotional DVD from 2005:



So we're off an running, for the next few weeks I'll be talking a bit more about organizing our trip, what we expect, and what I've learned about this off the beaten path Disney park.