Kate’s Disneyland Paris Trip Report (Dream Castle Hotel, PYM Kitchen & Family Tips)

Kate’s Disneyland Paris Trip Report (July 2022) ✨🏰

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Related Content You’ll Love:

• 🏨 Dream Castle Hotel review
• 🎟️ Disneyland Paris tickets
• 🎢 Ride planning guide to skip the queues
• 📅 Best dates & crowd calendar
• 📖 More Disneyland Paris trip reports

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💡 Planning your own trip? Picking the right dates can make a huge difference 👉 check crowd levels here

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We’re a family of four with two adults and two children aged 7 and 6. We stayed at Disneyland Paris for 3 nights and 4 days at the Dream Castle Hotel.

This gave us two full park days with park hopper tickets on both days.

We flew from Birmingham to Orly with Vueling. The flight out was fine. Birmingham wasn’t too busy, although we did have to queue a fair bit for security. Thankfully the line moved quickly.

We opted for a private transfer because it actually worked out cheaper than the shuttle bus, and I’m really glad we did. The driver was ready and waiting, very friendly, opened the car doors for us, and helped with the suitcase.

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Dream Castle Hotel 🏨

The Dream Castle Hotel was okay overall. There were renovations going on, but honestly they didn’t affect us much.

The entrance hall is lovely and the hotel was very clean. Work was being done on the centrepiece in reception during our stay, but it wasn’t a problem.

The room was a little smaller than I expected, but still fine for what we needed. One thing to watch out for is the bunk beds — the top one is quite high for younger children. My daughter actually fell off the ladder trying to climb down and badly bruised her leg and chest. After that, we all ended up sleeping in the big bed together.

There was a hairdryer, fridge and safe in the room. The hairdryer and safe worked fine, but the fridge didn’t work. I reported it to staff, who said they’d come and fix it, but nobody ever did.

Tea, coffee, sugar, milk and cups were in the room, and when we asked for more, they gave them to us free of charge.

We chose half board, which covered breakfast and dinner. I’d rate it as okay. There wasn’t loads for the kids, to be honest. Chips only appeared one of the nights and even those had herbs on, which my daughter hated. My son loves meat though, so he was absolutely fine 😄

The pool was indoors and had a slide, two pools, and a hot tub area for over-18s. It was unsupervised and only had about 10 sun loungers, but it was okay. The changing rooms had two private cubicles and the rest was open space, which wasn’t an issue because it was quiet when we went. You set your own PIN for the lockers, and towels were available from reception.

The hotel drinks and food were expensive. We ordered three tequila shots and a small rosé and it came to €31. It was an 18-minute walk to the Supermarché Casino, where we bought food, although that wasn’t exactly cheap either. We made sandwiches and bought crisps to take into the park, which worked well for us.

There was also a pharmacy and vape shop beside the supermarket.

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Day 1 at Disneyland Park 🎢

We got to the park around 10am and queues getting in weren’t too bad.

We spent the whole first day in Disneyland Park and managed six rides. The weather was warm but overcast, which actually helped because it made walking around all day much more bearable.

We decided not to queue for anything over 45 minutes, as we didn’t want to waste too much time standing about. It was magical, and yes… I cried when we first entered.

For me, the classic rides were brilliant: Phantom Manor, Star Tours and Pirates of the Caribbean. They really took me back to when I last visited 29 years ago.

The dragon under the castle is fabulous too, and you can just walk straight in.

We bought ice creams and lollies, which were expensive but pretty much what I expected. My son and I bought a Twister lolly and somehow got our lips stuck to it for about five minutes. It literally ripped the skin off and made them bleed, so maybe avoid that one 😬

The Mickey ice cream was a much better experience.

Merchandise prices weren’t actually as bad as I expected. In total, we spent about £800, although £200 of that was the kids’ own spending money they had saved for the trip.

We left around 5pm intending to come back later for the fireworks, but we were all far too tired. In hindsight, I’d definitely have chosen different flights, as waking up at 3am for an 8am flight made us exhausted on the first day.

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Day 2 at Disneyland Paris 🎆

We were shattered from the first day, so we had a lie-in and got to the parks around midday. This time we were determined to last all the way through to the fireworks — and we actually made it!

We headed straight to Walt Disney Studios, where our fun began with Tower of Terror — my favourite. The queue was short, so it was a perfect start, although my partner managed to lose his hat.

We managed seven rides on day two.

Our final ride of the day was Ratatouille. We waited until 8:45pm to ride it because the queue had finally dropped to 35 minutes.

We didn’t need to queue to get into Avengers Campus. It was busy, but there wasn’t all that much there in my opinion. We couldn’t do Avengers Assemble: Flight Force because my son didn’t meet the height requirement, although the queue was only 35 minutes during the day.

We didn’t manage to ride Spider-Man Web Slingers either, because the wait stayed between 70 and 90 minutes most of the day.

What was good about Avengers Campus was the amount of characters around. Spider-Man popped up on the rooftops regularly, which was brilliant. We also saw Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Black Widow and Captain Marvel.

We had a reservation at PYM Kitchen, which we’d booked in advance. We arrived early and that was definitely a good idea because even with a reservation there was still a queue. They only hold your table for 15 minutes after your booked time.

Honestly, I found the restaurant underwhelming. It felt plain, the décor wasn’t all that special, and the food wasn’t great. Service was poor too — it took ages for anyone to realise our drinks order hadn’t even been taken. For the €144 we paid, I expected a lot more. I wouldn’t recommend it.

We then headed back to Disneyland Park to do the rides we’d missed the day before. We managed to get a kerb-side spot for the 5:30pm parade, and it was HOT. I had brought water, fans and cooling towels, and they worked brilliantly. The water fountains around the park all worked, so we refilled bottles regularly.

We then went back to Studios to do Ratatouille again and I spent most of the day trying to get into the Marvel Super Hero Training virtual queue, but had no luck.

After that we headed back to Disneyland Park to find a fireworks spot. We found a good place in front of the grass area near the central section in front of the castle, with our backs against the fence.

I would definitely recommend finding a space as early as possible, especially if you can get something behind you. It was absolute chaos. So many people were selfish, trampling over kids and trying to squeeze into any little gap. At one point the whole crowd started chanting “sit down!” My kids joined in, and my daughter absolutely screamed it — which, to be fair, did seem to help 😄

The fireworks and D-Light show were incredible. I cried again.

Afterwards, we hung back for a bit to let the worst of the crowd pass, although we still ended up in a big crush of people and my daughter got a bit scared.

We popped into World of Disney in Disney Village to grab some last-minute souvenirs and let the crowds die down. While we were there, we got chatting to a lovely French man who worked there but was off-duty. He offered to use his discount card for us and gave us 20% off our purchases, which was incredibly kind.

Because I’d read so much on the DLPtips Facebook group about the post-fireworks shuttle buses, we decided to get a taxi back to Dream Castle. I’m so glad we did. The buses were absolutely rammed, and I’d heard horror stories about kids being trampled and parents getting separated.

We paid €20 for the taxi and it was worth every penny. We only waited about five minutes.

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Travelling Home ✈️

I asked reception if they would ring the transfer company to check our pick-up time, which they did kindly for us. Our flight was meant to be at 18:10 and we were picked up at 14:15.

On the way to the airport, I checked the Vueling app and it said the flight had changed to 19:40, but at check-in it still showed as on time. Even after security, the airport screens still said on time while the app and Google said otherwise.

It wasn’t until boarding time that the airport finally updated it to show a delay of 1 hour 10 minutes. Other than that, the flight home was fine.

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Final Thoughts ❤️

Phew! Sorry for the looooonnnnggg post, but reading other people’s experiences really helped me plan our trip, so I hope this helps someone else too.

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Thanks to Kate for sharing her Disneyland Paris trip report! ✨