Disneyland Paris – lots of tips for your trip with little children

• If you are staying at the Ranch there is a shop there – see comments under Disney’s Davy Crockett Ranch.
• Carrefour at 10 min drive from the Ranch; we love shopping at the French mega stores because even compared to the wonderful Belgian supermarkets (which are paradise when you come from a small German town) they are amazing in their selection. The problem is that you can waist loads of time in a shop of that size when you don’t know where to find what you are looking for. If you decide to shop there, I can recommend the take-away sushi section. It’s delicious and does not even need heating up.
• My recommendation is definitely to bring your food from home to save time and money when you are there
  • Plenty of water
  • Healthy snack ideas: bananas (cut in half so if only half a banana is eaten, you can keep the rest without it turning brown and messy), grapes, carrots (pre-pealed or washed at home), yoghurt (don’t forget spoons)
  • Sandwich bread which will keep fresh for the duration of your stay
  • Ham, cheese, butter, mayonnaise or anything else you like on your sandwiches
  • Bring some plastic containers and freezer bags for your lunch and snacks as well as paper towels or napkins
  • For babies I would recommend just bringing ready-made microwave meals, there is at least one baby corner (there may be more) with a microwave where you can feed little ones in peace and quiet
  • For evening meals the easiest is to bring food that can easily be heated in the microwave or in a pan (anything that does not involve cutting as there are no cooking knives). If you have a toastie maker, that might make for a great alternative to microwave food.
  • For breakfast the shop on the Ranch is ok, you can get baguette, croissants and chocolate croissants (we always bought extra chocolate croissants to take along for during the day).

Disney’s Davy Crockett Ranch

We chose to stay at the Ranch for the convenience of having a kitchen with fridge and microwave which allowed us to prepare our own food and easily heat up milk for our daughter.

The Ranch (static caravans) is situated about 15 min drive from Disneyland but it is still part of the Disney accommodation options. There is no shuttle service so you need to take your own car. We were not very impressed with the static caravan not even for our half price deal. Here are some things that might be useful to know:

• Baby bed (which is a travel cot) can be asked for, no sheets are provided for the small fold up mattress. Even though we had asked for a baby bed, there was no high chair when we arrived, so be sure to ask for that explicitly if you need one. The travel cot only fits comfortably in the living/dining room area. We moved a bed side table, pushed the double bed over and managed to squeeze the cot next to it so that our daughter could go to sleep while we were still up.
• No small cutlery available other than tea spoons, in fact the forks were the most giant forks I have ever seen and I would have brought cutlery for both of my children had I known.
• Tristan (almost 5) could have done with a higher chair too to be able to sit at the table comfortably. If you have a booster seat and have space, I’d take it along
• No step in the bathroom to make reaching the sink and sitting on the toilet easier for little kids
• No cooking knives available so even some basic cooking would be difficult
• There is a dishwasher which is great, the kitchen set that you get on arrival only includes 2 dishwasher tabs, so take some additional ones. The set also includes a sponge and some cleaning liquid but no tea towel which is something else you might want to bring along
• I also took a roll of paper towels which came in very handy
• Coffee machine
• Microwave which takes a little while to figure out how to operate
• Rubbish bin in the kitchen has no lid (it is inside a cupboard but still …) and we did not find any additional rubbish bags, so best to take some and if needed, take some nappy bags too J
• Shop – the larger section of the shop is a souvenir shop; it does have a small food section which is not very impressive and probably as overpriced as the souvenir articles. The baguette we found when we arrived in the afternoon was as soft as a sponge so we decided to go to the nearby Carrefour

If you have been to Disneyland Paris already, I would like to invite you to add your tips to this list. Maybe you can recommend another accommodation? If you have not been there yet, I would love to hear if you are finding this information useful and if you do, don’t hesitate to share it with others.

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