Disneyland Paris on a Budget: Family Friendly Money Saving Tips

We’ve been visiting Disneyland Paris at least once a year since my 12 year old was a baby. For a couple of years we had annual passes and were visiting once a month! So Disneyland Paris budget travel is something of a speciality for us.

We’ve visited the parks on a tight budget, and we’ve stayed in the Disneyland Hotel are really splurged. So I have so many tips on how to save money at Disneyland Paris!

But one thing I’ve noticed in recent years is that the prices of certain things at Disneyland Paris have skyrocketed. Everyone will need a ticket, for example, but the ticket prices are eye watering! Food prices in the park have also been on an upward trajectory over the past couple of years.

This is never going to be a cheap holiday. But the good news is I have a wealth of cheap Disneyland Paris tips that should help you to save some money:

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Save On Tickets At Disneyland Paris

Some of our cheapest Disneyland Paris holidays were when the kids were toddlers or even babies. Why? Because kids under 3 enter the park for free! Not having to buy their tickets was a significant saving, and worth thinking about if you have a young family.

If you have an older family like us, there are other ways to save on tickets. Firstly, don’t buy these from Disney direct (unless your buying a ticket and hotel package, but this is rarely the most cost effective option). Secondly (and this is the tip I like the least, but it is true): The longer you stay at the park, the more expensive your tickets will be.

We visited last summer and spent just one day in the park because the park ticket prices were so high: for our second day we visited the Disney Village, went in the Panoramagique hot air balloon, and swam in our hotel water park. It was a great trip!

We always buy our park tickets from Klook. You can get tickets from one – four days park entry, with one day, one park tickets being the cheapest.

Prices vary depending on the day you visit but for a one day one park ticket current July prices are £69.15 per adult and £64.09 for a child aged between 3-11. Use code THATMUMTRAVEL5KLOOK to get 5% off these prices, meaning the total price for a 1 day park ticket for a family of 4 is £253.15.

They also offer instant confirmation & free cancellations (3 days in advance) exclusively for dated tickets if you change your dates/change your mind and don’t go at all.

Save on Accomodation At Disneyland Paris

The best way to save on accomodation at Disneyland Paris? Stay off site! A lot of people think that the off site hotels are somehow inferior, but I think the opposite is true.

Because they have the Disney name and Disney brand, the more cost-effective Disneyland Paris hotels don’t have to work so hard to offer quality and value. (If you can afford to stay in the Disneyland Hotel or the Marvel hotel, this is a whole different story!)

For example, the Hotel Santa Fe doesn’t have a swimming pool or even an outdoor playground. But contrast, the offsite Explorers Hotel (one of our favourites) is cheaper and has a swimming pool with water slides, a huge outdoor playground, and even a big soft play area indoors. AND it offers free breakfast. You can read my review of the Explorers Hotel here.

Other offsite hotels that are cheaper than the Disney properties and that we recommend (we have tried and tested all of them over the years!) are the Dream Castle and the Grand Magic Hotel. This both offer swimming pools (my boys love to swim after a long day at the park!) and great theming.

The main benefit of staying on site at Disneyland Paris is that you get access to the Extra Magic Hour: an hour of park entry before the official park opening hours that’s only available to hotel guests and annual pass holders. But this really isn’t worth the extra £100s spent AND missing out on the pools and playgrounds to us.

Save on Food And Snacks At Disneyland Paris

We’re a family of foodies, and I think that eating some of the cute Mickey Mouse shaped cookies, ice lollies, and other snacks is part of the Disney Magic.

But one of my favourite tips on how to save money at Disneyland Paris is to cut back on the food and snacks you buy in the park. For example:

• Always bring snack foods from home! Cereal bars, raisins, crisps/mini cheddars. Long life products that are small to pop in your backpack. These are great for nibbling on in long queues, and will save you a fortune if your kids are at the ‘eat a snack every hour of the day’ stage. (When does that stage end?!)
  
• You can save money on food at Disneyland Paris by bringing your own breakfast. Restaurant breakfasts in the park are pricey! But so is grabbing a croissant and juice from the bakery! I pack croissants, waffles, fruit bars, and cartons of juice in my suitcase and we have a ‘hotel picnic’ every morning before we go to the park. The boys LOVE having breakfast on the bed in front of the Disney channel, and this is now a big part of their Disneyland Paris experience. (Unless you stay offsite when your breakfast may be included in your room price).
  
• Another Disneyland Paris budget tip is to pack a water bottle. There are water fountains all over the park, so no need to keep spending 3 euros on bottled water! (This may not seem like a lot of money but when you’re a family of four on a hot day that could mean saving on as many as a dozen bottles of water). If you are visiting in the summer I have some tips for visiting Disneyland Paris in August here.

Why do I love these Disneyland Paris money saving tips? Because they won’t detract from the experience for your kids. They were going to eat croissants, snacks, and drink their water anyway!

I like to make savings on things like this that really don’t make any difference. Where don’t I tighten the belt? The boys love the Mickey Mouse shaped ice lollies so I always budget for one of those each per day. These are priced at 4.50 Euros (£3.79) each: adjust this for whatever your own child’s favourite treat is!

You could also consider bringing in a picnic for lunch (there are benches for picnics just outside the park entrance) if you don’t want to spend any money on food at all. But if you want lunch in the park i’ve included some money saving budget tips below:

Save Money On Lunch At Disneyland Paris

I think the food prices are expensive in Disneyland Paris (but I think this is true of all popular theme parks). Unless you bring a picnic you can’t really get around that. But we do have a couple of Disneyland Paris money saving tips and hints for food:

• Visit Colonel Hathi’s Outpost or the Pizzeria Bella Notte if your kids love pizza. The food portions are enormous here! For example menu 1 costs 12.99 euros (£10.94) and comes with a Mickey Mouse shaped pizza, green salad or garlic bread, dessert and a drink. The portions are big enough that we get two meals between the four of us (then buy two extra drinks from the ala carte menu), feeding all four of us for under £30.
  
• If you don’t mind leaving the park, there is a McDonalds in the Disney Village. This is the cheapest restaurant on Disney property, and my kids (I think most kids?) think being allowed to eat McDonalds is a real treat!
  
• Splurge on a buffet lunch. This may sound counter productive, but we love the Plaza Gardens buffet lunch – this is a choose your own buffet restaurant, and it offers so many fun disney themed dishes such as Mickey Mouse shaped chicken nuggets, or desserts. This costs 45 euros for adults and 25 euros for children aged 3-11. Children under 3 eat for free. I will be the first to admit that spending £110 on lunch for the four of us is A LOT. BUT! Everyone has such fully tummies that they won’t want/ask for snacks for the rest of the day! In fact, my boys don’t even want dinner – they’re happy with fruit and a few snacks at dinner time. So in the long run, this saves you money. (You can read about the Plaza Gardens character breakfast here)

What’s In Our Disneyland Paris Day Bag

I’ve mentioned above that we carry water bottles and snacks with us in the parks, both to save money and to occupy the kids during long queues or wait times. But I thought it might be helpful to share what else we carry in our backpack when we visit Disneyland Paris for the day to make our lives easier. And because being prepared is one of the very best ways to visit anywhere new on a budget:

• A good powerbank. You’ll be using your phone for your tickets, to access the Disneyland Paris app, and to take millions of photos. Mine usually runs out of battery by lunchtime as a result! So I carry this fast charging powerbank to keep it charged throughout the day.
• A refillable water bottle. We always carry waterbottles to use at the water fountains in the park. We choose these metal bottles over plastic ones, because they stay cooler for longer.
• Hand sanitizer. With so many high-touch areas, please make sure your kids keep their hands clean before they eat anything! Is it OTT that I found a Disney hand sanitizer? Yes! Did I do it anyway? Also yes! Check it out here.
• Plasters, blister bandages and medicines. Paracetamol for us and calpol for the kids are the one thing we would never do a day trip without!
• Sunscreen, sunglasses, and sun hat. You’re outside all day, so even in the cooler months you’ll find you need sun protection. Make your sun hat a Disney one: I’m obsessed with this Mickey hat for my boys!
• Wet wipes. It doesn’t matter how old your kids are: if you know, you know!
• Rain coats. We carry folding rain coats on every trip we take to Disneyland Paris, because the weather in Paris is just as notoriously unreliable as the weather at home!

Save Money on Souvenirs At Disneyland Paris

Exit via the gift shop isn’t just a mantra in Disneyland Paris, it’s a way of life! Your kids will have toys, plushies, and shiny light wands thrust into their faces at every turn: this could bankrupt you if you let it!

But there are ways to save money on Souvenirs in Disneyland Paris.

• Buy before you travel! Things like Disney ears and Disney baseball caps, Princess or Peter Pan costumes are all SO MUCH CHEAPER at home. Look in your local supermarket, buy second hand from Vinted, or even look on Amazon. Your kids won’t ask you for something they’re already wearing, and you’ll have all the gear you need to get those perfect castle photos.
  
• Pack a travel goodie pack. When the boys were much younger, I would make them a travel pack of cute Disney products to give them before we hit the road. I never spent more than a pound or two on any item (Poundland and online shops like PoundToys are great for this). Little play figures, colouring books, fidget pop toys, and bubbles for the queues are all great choices. I HAVE MADE AN INSTANT DOWNLOAD COLOURING AND ACTIVITY BOOK ALL ABOUT VISITING FRANCE THAT YOU CAN SEE HERE AND THAT WOULD BE GREAT FOR THIS. Small kids like new things, so pre-empt this and give them something new before they see the shops.
  
• Set a budget. Now my boys are older we set a budget, but the can’t spend their money until they’re leaving the park at the end of the trip. This can be as much or as little as you want (We usually give our boys 20 euros each). They can look in ALL the shops and spend days deciding what they’re going to buy, but no money changes hands until the last day of the trip. (Photo below shows my youngest clutching the teddy he chose on our last trip!) This stops the ‘wants’ and means they’re really thought about the souvenir they want to take home.

How do you save money when you visit Disneyland Paris? Do you have any extra hints and tips to add?

Visiting Disneyland Paris on a budget is possible if you plan ahead! So I’d love to hear your stories or ideas!

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