Hey everyone, it's Jacqueline at Pixie Dust PhD. My partner and I were fortunate enough
to make it out to Paris and Disneyland Paris in August of 2022. Thanks so much for watching
previous videos on the channel covering that topic--whether that is planning, vlogs,
or reactions. A common question I've received about that trip is about transportation. If you
have questions about getting to or from Disneyland Paris from airports or Paris itself stay tuned!
Welcome or welcome back to the channel. I so appreciate your support. Thank you so much
to everyone who likes the videos, subscribes to the channel, and shares broadly with your
friends and networks--it really means a lot to me and has helped the channel grow a ton.
Let's go ahead and get into our topic: getting to Disneyland Paris. I'm going to be framing all the
examples in this video as getting from one point to Disneyland Paris; but naturally, if you want
to get from Disneyland Paris to another point just reverse everything. By far it seems like
people are most curious about transit between an airport and Disneyland Paris. Generally speaking,
there's four buckets of options for you here. First is a rental car. My partner and I never even
entertained the idea of renting a car to drive around Paris. Of course, you are the only person
that can measure your comfort level with that. Traffic is pretty chaotic in the Paris region, and
I'm not talking about just the city center itself. This definitely permeates out through the suburbs,
including out toward Disneyland Paris. If you feel comfortable renting a car, by all means go for it.
But I suspect at least the viewers from North America are going to pass on this, and I fully
support that decision. There are other means of car transport, such as ride shares, taxis,
or you can hire a private car. Those are all also good options. Then you have a Disney specific bus,
as well as public transit. Full disclosure: the airport we used was Charles de Gaulle,
CDG. I'm going to talk about Orly airport. I did do a lot of research for Orly before we took our
trip because we were entertaining flying in and out of Orly airport, but I don't have first-hand
experience with Orly. According to Google Maps, Disneyland Paris and Orly are about 50 kilometers
apart or so. This will probably take you 45 to 60 minutes in low to normal traffic. But like I said,
traffic can get very bad, so it could be upwards of over an hour. I've definitely read postings on
forums where it took between one and one half and two hours. So just brace yourselves. And from Orly
airport there is no direct public transit option from the airport to Disneyland Paris. We will get
into your non-direct public transit options later, but we're going to start with direct options.
First being Uber or taxi, and of course rates will vary. If you are traveling light luggage
wise and with a small party and you're able to get away with a small car, you don't need that upgrade
in size, then the rates will probably be around 70 euros or so. But again, this can vary a lot,
so take that with a grain of salt. Another direct method would be to use the Disneyland
Magical Shuttle. You can book this through Disney directly if that makes you feel more comfortable.
When I was booking my hotel and ticket package, this bus was an option that you could choose as an
add-on as part of that package. You can also book this directly through the Magical Shuttle Company,
which is run out of the UK. At the time of recording, the rates are 23 euros per adult and
10 euros per child up to 12 years old, and infants are free. The rates are, of course, subject to
change. And from Orly this departs roughly once an hour; do check the official timetables from the
Magical Shuttle Company website. From what I can tell, you don't have to commit to an exact time,
which is really nice because of course flights don't always go perfectly as planned. You do have
to pick a window; for example, “morning arrival”, which covers a bunch of different shuttle times
and I believe your ticket is good for any of those shuttle times. If you want to take public transit,
you really only have one obvious option: that's the OrlyVal to the RER B then to the RER A. The
OrlyVal, appropriately named, services Orly airport. And then the RER lines generally
are commuter trains, so they go out further from city center. If you want to use public transit,
the first leg of your journey is taking OrlyVal to the Antony station on the RER B line. The OrlyVal
departs roughly every five to seven minutes, with more frequent departures during peak times. So
unlike that Magical Shuttle option where you may be waiting 45 minutes just to even board the bus,
with this once you get through all the airport chaos you're going to be getting on the OrlyVal
within a few minutes most likely. I am impatient when it comes to transport, and I like feeling
like I'm making progress. So it's nice to be able to start your journey more or less right away.
At the time of recording, a one-way OrlyVal ticket costs roughly 11 euros per adult. You
could instead buy a combo ticket that will cover your OrlyVal fare and your RER B fare, and that's
going to be roughly 15 euros. If, in addition to Disneyland Paris, you're also exploring Paris in
general and you're using their public transit, you're probably familiar with Navigo. It's worth
noting that Navigo is not compatible with OrlyVal. Those are different systems. So you'll have to
pay your OrlyVal fare at the very least. For the rest of this video, I strongly apologize for my
pronunciations. I don't know a lick of French, so this is very hard for me, and I'm sure it will be
painful for you to hear. But anyway, once you've arrived at the Antony station on the RER B line,
you need to make your way over to a transfer point to get onto RER A. The most obvious way to do this
is to transfer the Chatelet Les Halles station, which is in Paris proper. As I said earlier,
the RER lines are effectively commuter lines. As they go through the city, it may be all one line
but then at some point they may branch off to go into slightly different directions. That's
definitely what happens on the blue line, in this case. You'll be riding the RER B, blue line,
for eight stops and changing in city center. So you don't really need to worry about the split;
you're getting off before it splits. So you can board a train that's going either toward
Charles de Gaulle Airport or Mitry Claye. Just don't get on a train going towards Saint-Remy,
that's the completely opposite, wrong direction. Once you've arrived at Les Halles, then it's time
to transfer to the RER A, or red line. Unless you already have a pass from being in Paris or you
bought a pass that will cover this entire trip, you'll probably need to buy another fare. One way
on the RER A train from Paris out to Disneyland Paris is typically going to be a five euro fare.
And I'll show you buying this a little bit later in the video. Once you're at Les Halles and ready
to board the RER A train, it does matter which train you get on. You will be riding past when
it splits. You need to be going to Marne la Vallee – Chessy. This is the Disneyland Paris stop. It is
also conveniently marked with Mickey heads, so it's pretty hard to get wrong. The other split
of the red line is Boissy Saint Leger; don't get on that one. Go to Marne la Vallee. This leg from
Paris all the way out to Disneyland Paris is about 14 stops; it'll probably take 40 to 45 minutes…
for five euros I think that's a pretty good deal. Now, considering only one traveler. public transit
is by far your cheapest option. It will cost you under 20 euros. That being said, it is three legs:
OrlyVal to RER B to RER A. This will probably take you at least 70 or 75 minutes, and if you are
unlucky with your transfer times it may be upwards of 100 minutes or so. Now, that may sound very
slow. But it actually might beat a car; depending on traffic, this could definitely be faster. For
example, when I was there in August of 2022, we went from Paris out to Disneyland Paris. And
our hotel concierge by far said just take the RER train, it's going to be way faster than traffic.
In sum, to move between Paris Orly airport and Disneyland Paris there's really three options
in my mind, let's not count a rental car. You can use that Disneyland Magical Express shuttle
bus service; you can of course do some sort of car--whether that's a ride share or a taxi or
a private car for hire; or you can take public transit. Note that all these are paid. There is
no free option. On to the other main airport, Charles de Gaulle or CDG. Much like Orly,
this is a decent distance away from Disneyland Paris. It's about 45 kilometers or so. And again,
similar to Orly, this will probably take you 40 to 60 minutes or so by car, depends on traffic.
It could be much, much longer than this if you hit really unfortunate traffic. For a direct route
between Disneyland Paris and Charles de Gaulle, you can do a ride share or a taxi. Fares between this
of course will vary, but will probably run you somewhere between 60 and 90 euros. When we were
in Disneyland Paris at the Hotel New York: Art of Marvel, that hotel concierge told us that a taxi
between the two would be about 90 euros. We had been browsing Ubers while we were there, and were
pretty consistently seeing rates between about 75 and 85 euros. We ended up taking a taxi from
Disneyland Paris out to Charles de Gaulle Airport, and it ended up being pretty close to 130 euros.
So like I said, these are estimates and rates may vary. Another direct method would be to take
that Disneyland Magical Shuttle. As of recording, the rates for this service from Charles de Gaulle
airport match those of Orly airport; so either airport, same rates. The timetables are different
though. These depart every 20 to 80 minutes it seems; so definitely refer to the official
timetables to help with your planning. Unlike Paris Orly airport though, there is a direct
public transit option between Disneyland Paris and Charles de Gaulle airport. You can take the
TGV train, which is a high-speed train, between terminal 2 of Charles de Gaulle and Disneyland
Paris. This will drop you off at that very end station on the RER A line—Marne la Vallee Chessy.
The advertised total train time is about nine minutes. And if you haven't looked at a map yet,
that train station really is in Disneyland Paris… it is steps away from the parks. And if you're
headed from the train station to a hotel, you can hop on a Disneyland Paris operated shuttle to
get you there. TGV timetables are also incredibly variable. Sometimes they're coming every 15 or 20
minutes; other times it's more than hour between trains. Definitely check the website for an exact
timetable on the day you are looking to travel. Cost is also really variable, anywhere from 19
euros per person upwards of 50 per person or more. This is one of those things where it seems like if
you book it in advance, you save a lot of money. For example, on our last Disneyland Paris day we
had actually checked out of our hotel and then we were going to head to the airport to stay in an
airport hotel that night to leave the next day. So we didn't have a hard time that we needed to
leave because it's not like we were going to catch our flight, we were just going to the airport to
go to an airport hotel to sleep. So mentally we kept using the TGV train as an option to get us
from Disneyland Paris to the airport. But the day of fare ended up being extremely expensive. So we
opted for a taxi instead… though that ended up being really expensive too. Then finally you've
got a non-direct public transit option; this is the RER B, blue line, over to RER A, the red
line. This is very similar to what we just talked about with Orly, so I'm not going to go over all
the details. But essentially you're going to go from Charles de Gaulle Airport into Paris itself,
where again the most logical transfer point is that Les Halles station. Then you transfer
over to the red line, take that all the way out to Disneyland Paris. This will probably take you
under an hour and a half, and the combined fare will be roughly under 20 euros per adult. This
rate is very similar to that of the public transit option for Orly to Disneyland Paris. In sum,
for transit between Charles de Gaulle airport and Disneyland Paris you've got a bunch of options,
including one more than Orly airport. There's the Disneyland Magical Express; you can do some
sort of car, whether that's a ride share, a taxi, or a private car for hire; and then you have that
RER B and A line situation. Plus then you have the high-speed TGV train. For my trip specifically we
flew in and out of Charles de Gaulle airport. We did start off our trip though with five nights in
Paris proper, so we were already in the city. Our Paris hotel was pretty close to the Saint
Augustin stop, which is not the most convenient for getting out to Disneyland Paris. But we had an
awesome time, and if you want to see the room we stayed in I will leave a link in the description
below. Out of sheer laziness, we decided to hire a taxi to take us from our hotel to the Auber
station. We definitely could have taken metro from Saint Augustin to get us to Auber, but we had our
luggage and like I said we were just feeling lazy, so we decided to pay for it to have them drop us
off at Auber. And from Auber we just had to make our way out to Disneyland Paris, just like I've
been walking you through for getting from Orly or Charles de Gaulle to Disneyland Paris using an RER
train. We had already purchased a weekly metro pass, because we had been in Paris for the week,
so that did cover our fare out to Disneyland Paris. But if we hadn't have done so, here
is what buying the past would look like. You'll have to find a fare machine in the station, but
they are everywhere. This part will not be hard. At least at Auber, the machines had these silver
roller bars--that's what you'll use to navigate through the screen. It is not a touch screen.
Thankfully the machines we encountered always had English as an option, so going through things
wasn't too hard. You need to choose what kind of ticket you'll buy. At least at the Auber station,
this was very easy. There was an option clearly labeled to get you to Disney. It says tickets
for MLV – Marne la Vallee – Chessy Disney. While we were traveling, the full are was five euros per adult.
Like I said, this was covered with our weekly pass. We just used our pass, got on the train and
yeah, it took about 40 minutes. We did get off one stop early at Val d’Europe. That's because we were
staying at an off-site hotel that night. If you want to check out that hotel room--I would highly
suggest it, definitely for arrival or departure night--I'll leave a link to that room tour in the
description below. I believe we only took the RER A train that one time between Paris and Disneyland
Paris, but a couple things worth noting. These are commuter trains, so there's a lot of people
getting on and off at each stop. Most of those people are just going about their daily lives,
and don't necessarily have a bunch of luggage with them. So they're much more nimble than you may be
with a backpack in a suitcase. It might be hard for you to snag a seat, so do be prepared to stand
with your stuff for a while. Beyond the RER train, let's also briefly discuss a few public transit
tips in general. Now, I made a whole video on this topic that very much acts as a companion video
to this one for those that may have some travel anxiety about public transit. That's over on my
other channel; I will leave a link to that video in the description below if you want a lot more
specific details about public transit in Paris. Very quickly, for the purposes of this video,
if you are going to be relying on public transit I do think Google Maps worked pretty well. That
being said, the Bonjour RATP app is the official app for public transit in Paris that you will want
to download, and I highly suggest you use it. It's very user friendly, and tells you important things
like accurate train arrival times. And most importantly which trains do or do not have air
conditioning. And like I mentioned previously, if you are combining Disneyland Paris with a
Paris adventure, you may think about just buying a weekly metro pass. That being said, there are
two key considerations here. First is that Paris transit works in zones. So there are five total
zones. What you think of as Paris is mostly contained in zone 1; things like the Louvre,
the Orsay museum, the Eiffel Tower, etc. But both airports and Disneyland Paris are out in zone 5.
So you're not going to get away with the cheapest fares that only cover one zone. If you want to use
your weekly pass to travel between them, you'll need one that covers zones 1 through 5. The
other thing about the weekly Navigo pass is that while we were there it was only good from Monday
through Sunday no matter when you bought it. It wasn't good for seven days starting the day you
bought it--it was Monday through Sunday. So if you arrive on a Friday or Saturday, the weekly pass is
probably not the best deal. Very serendipitously, we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport,
in zone 5, on a Tuesday morning, and then bought our weekly pass and used that to get into the
city. We then did all kinds of fun stuff in Paris itself. And we were planning on leaving Paris to
go out to Disneyland Paris on a Sunday, again from zone 1 all the way to zone 5. So we had that whole
Tuesday through Sunday time frame to make a lot of great use out of our weekly pass. But depending
on when you're flying, the Monday to Sunday restriction may not work well for you. So just
think about that when you are planning. Let's also quickly talk about rideshares. Uber will work in
Paris, they do have Uber. They do not have Lyft. That being said, the Parisian culture, generally
speaking, leans more on taxis. There's actually been attempts in the past to outright ban Ubers.
So yes, Paris is a huge bustling city and there's a ton of cars. So you may assume that there would
just be a ton of Ubers around like there is in New York or San Francisco, etc. That definitely was
not the case for us. We only took Ubers a few times, but we were often waiting seven to ten
minutes or longer. And in the case of Disneyland Paris, the reason we ended up taking a taxi to the
airport is because we had ordered an Uber, ordered an Uber, but they kept getting canceled. And they
were getting canceled because they couldn't find any drivers. I hope you have better luck, but
just so you know if you are planning on relying on Ubers pretty heavily in Paris or Disneyland Paris
your mileage may vary. There definitely doesn't seem to be the density of drivers that you might
expect, at least from an American perspective. But if you aren't relying on Ubers you may be
taking more taxis than you're used to. In Paris, taxi companies can become officially licensed. And
then they will have a sign on the top of their car that is lit up and says Taxi Parisien. Any
other car that's claiming to be a taxi that doesn't have this is not officially licensed,
so I would warn you to stay away from them. At airports and the big train stations, the
official taxis are incredibly obvious. If you're trying to go from your hotel to somewhere though,
you may just ask the concierge to call an official taxi for you. Also not all taxis take credit
cards, which I found surprising. This means you either need to have cash on you to pay the fare,
or before you get in just confirm with the taxi driver that they are able to accept a credit
card. And between either airport—Paris [Orly] or Charles de Gaulle--and then the Left Bank or the
Right Bank of Paris, there are flat taxi rates. So it's not metered. Most of your other trips should
be metered, but for that airport leg--at least to Paris, not to Disneyland Paris--there should
be a flat rate. Those rates should be posted very obviously in the airport, but also are likely to
change a lot over time. Therefore, I don't want to give you an exact rate in this video that will be
outdated in a few months. So, you know, just do some Googling, visit some TripAdvisor boards or
etc. for the most recent rates. That's the general overview for transit between Disneyland Paris and
those two main airports, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, as well as Paris itself. Like I mentioned,
we did Paris to Disneyland Paris, and then Disneyland Paris to Charles de Gaulle Airport.
One was using public transit, and one was using a taxi. There is no free option; they all cost some
amount of money. For one single person paying for themselves, public transit is pretty much always
going to be the cheapest option. And depending on traffic, public transit definitely can be the
fastest option too. But depending on the size of your travel party and everyone's mobility, public
transit may not be the cheapest or smartest option for you. I hope this has been helpful. If you have
any questions about my experience with this topic, leave those in the comments down below and I'll do
my best to get back to you with a helpful answer. And like I mentioned previously, if you have other
questions about the Paris metro system, go ahead and check out that video that covers that broad
topic on my other channel. I'm definitely not an expert here, but I hope this information has
been helpful with your planning. Thanks again for supporting the channel, it really means so
much to me. May the rest of your day be magical, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD!