Disneyland Paris March 2023
This was a long-anticipated trip for me and Kirst. We had previously tried planning Disneyland trips but never managed to get them out the group chat.
We were so excited. We used Attraction tickets to book our hotel, food and park tickets as they had the best deal. So, for 2 nights 3 days 2 park hopper tickets and half board food at Sequoia Lodge it was £857.99 for 2 people. We decided to travel from Luton with Easy Jet as they had the cheapest flights at £98 per person. I used Holiday Extras again for parking costing £42. I parked a little bus journey away from the airport which was a free bus. Check in was easy as we only had cabin bags.
Luton airport is so small in comparison to others. With limited food choice. We ended up with a Burger King for breakfast. I mean we weren’t complaining.
The flight was quick and easy. We landed at Terminal 2E Charles de Gaulle. We originally were going to get the TGV as this is only a 9-minute journey, but train strikes stopped this. We met 2 other Disney enthusiast who offered to share an uber with us costing 15 € per person and it dropped us to the back of the village. This took about 45 minutes. We went straight to the bus stop to go to the hotel and check in.
Check in was quick and simple and we were off to the park in no time. We used the baggage hold at the resort to store our cases before our room was ready.
As this was our child free trip we wanted to concentrate on rides. First stop, food. We had Chicken Chunks and Chips from the Last Chance Café – we literally crave these so bad now. Haunted Mansion was the next stop. We now have a tradition to ride this first whenever we decide to come back. We went back to the hotel about half 3 to check in to our room and refresh before our first meal. The rooms at Sequoia are so cute! They are Bambi themed and are so cosy, especially in the colder months, the room has 2 double beds and a nice bathroom and great vanity area.
We ate at Hunters Grill for breakfast. Again, you have the choice of hot buffet or continental. But who’s not going to have the breakfast potatoes? We had our evening meals at La Cantina and Chuck wagons. La Cantina was beautiful as always. Chuck Wagons was eventful. We arrived at our booked time, scanned our magic pass to take off the food plan and they advised we didn’t have any credit left. This was not the case as we had only eaten at 1 other food place the night before. The Manager allowed us to take a seat while they discussed our issue. They decided to let us eat ‘for free’ as a good will gesture. We had paid for the meal so technically not free. The food was amazing, I know most people wouldn’t get excited over vegetables but, they had Broccoli!
We did most of the rides, some were down for refurb again. We went on the new Avengers coaster, and it gave Kirst a migraine so decided to take it easy after that.
On our last day, we booked the Magical express for our journey home. This is a coach service that collects you directly from your hotel. Prior to this we decided to go and do all our shopping and pick up gifts. This included a mad dash to Santa Fe to get pins and a Grape Soda key ring. We collected our suitcase and ‘attempted’ to squeeze all Kirst’s purchases into two cabin cases. We just about managed it. I think one of us had to sit on the case while the other did it up.
We got to CDG and walked about 4 miles to get to the gate(I’m once again being dramatic). It took ages. We got to security and realised we needed to take all the liquids out of our cabin bags. The absolute horror on the securities face when the cases popped open, and all the purchases fell out – all of them big feet plushies. Kirst was mortified as it took me, her and the agent to close her case. We laugh about it now, but at the time it was not funny.
We didn’t realise it was better to get food prior to going into the departure lounge as there isn’t much food choice there. We did manage to find a lovely little pizza place to eat at.
The bus back to the carpark wasn’t too bad to find, if you know where you’re going. Unfortunately, we did not and missed the first bus! The driver definitely saw us and drove off anyway. So, we waited and waited, and it eventually picked us up. It took about 2 hours to drive home. We made the unanimous decision that we would only fly from Birmingham after this.