Hey everyone, it's Jacqueline for Pixie Dust PhD. If you saw my recent
trip announcement slash venting video you'll know that we booked a trip to Disneyland Paris!
In today's video I will show you booking that hotel and ticket package--stay tuned!
If you are new around here please be sure to subscribe to the channel, and you can
ring that bell icon to receive notifications whenever I upload new videos. Thanks to all of
you lovelies who have already liked this video, and overall I’m just super grateful that you're
here. If you're going to book directly through Disney you are going to need a Disney account,
and once you have your account obviously log in. We chose to book directly through Disney
and I went over this more in that prior video, which I will link down in the description below.
But be sure to compare currencies! So on the U.S. website when we were looking at booking,
the U.S. dollar price was a few hundred dollars more than the converted rate from pounds or euros
to U.S. dollars. For this booking we went with the international Europe website, so that will be in
euros. I just charged it to a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees. And if you're booking
this package directly through Disneyland Paris on their website you cannot really change much about
the package in terms of the tickets. The number of days for tickets is set, you cannot adjust that.
And also they will be park hopper tickets, not base tickets, and you cannot adjust that. Let's
get to the booking. Navigate to the Disneyland Paris website of your choice--again make sure
to compare currencies. Then just like with any hotel booking you are going to enter your dates.
If you want you can adjust the hotels that they'll show you; for example, if you know you want to
stay at a specific resort just choose that one from the drop down menu. I went with all hotels
here though. And you'll also need to specify the number of guests and number of rooms you want to
book; for us, that's two adults in one room. Once your resorts load it will show you the price.
The price on top for me was always a lower amount; this was a required deposit, and then
you could pay in installments if you wanted. The lower price was the full amount of your booking,
so for your hotel nights and tickets included. Because I selected all hotels it is showing me
all of the various Disney resorts. And also in my case every time I looked, it seemed to sort
them by price--so with the most expensive up top. The Disneyland Hotel proper was closed when I was
traveling, so up top we have the Marvel hotel, the newest one. Then you've got Newport Bay,
Sequoia Lodge, Hotel Cheyenne, so on and so forth. Again, it looks like the prices decreased
generally as I continue to scroll. And if you want to look at partner hotels, which are their version
of good neighbor hotels, you're gonna have to find this text at the bottom of your page and
click see all. I was not interested in partner hotels; we definitely wanted to stay on property,
and we had also already decided as staying Hotel New York: The Art of Marvel. If it weren't under
construction I would definitely be staying at the Disneyland Hotel. I know it's incredibly
expensive, but you just gotta do it if you're only gonna go once and you can afford it in my opinion.
And since we're traveling during August we're very nervous about air conditioning and how hot it's
going to be. So we figured the newest hotel would have the best chance of having functioning AC.
So yes, we could have saved a lot of money staying at Newport Bay or somewhere else,
but we decided just to go ahead and go with the most expensive Hotel New York for fun. There is
a prompt here for flexible dates, which you can click and it will show you different options.
Sometimes it's the same cost, sometimes it costs a little bit more, and occasionally it costs a
little bit less. In my case when I was looking, it rarely showed me dates that would cost less,
but they did appear--so it's not like this is rigged where it's only going to show you upsells.
There is the possibility to move your dates to save some money. Finally, on this screen you'll
select your hotel and then you'll be taken to a new page where you can choose your room type.
Again, every time I was looking the first room that popped up was that quoted price room. For us
that's a superior room with a garden terrace. This one had one large double bed and one sofa bed and
slept up to three people. Because it's just myself and my partner we definitely wanted that one large
double bed. There are other room configurations with two normal double beds that sleep up to
four people, but we didn't need that. Also by the time we booked the lowest category room available
was superior room; there are different types of rooms that are a little bit cheaper than this,
but not by a ton. And if you want to spend more money there's always club level. The Spider-Man
suite looks pretty cool, but I don't think I’m a big enough fan for that. So we're just gonna
stick with that superior room with the garden terrace. All the details for your booking will
be over here on the right. I like to double check things like the dates and the number of guests,
just to make sure everything is what it is. And then you can proceed.
Next, you'll be prompted to add a meal plan to your package, but you don't necessarily have to.
For when we were traveling the breakfast meal plan was 28 euros per adult. And then half board,
which is breakfast and lunch or breakfast and dinner, was 59 euros per adult. And if you hover
over this little info icon it will tell you which restaurants are excluded from this meal plan.
Then full board is breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it costs 89 euros per adult. Depending on what
your dining plans are these may be a good deal for you, or you may just enjoy the convenience.
I personally don't really eat breakfast, and when I do it's quite small, so none of these
made a lot of sense for me. If there was a lunch only meal plan or a lunch and dinner meal plan I
probably would have considered it, but we moved on in our booking without adding a meal plan.
Next is a bunch of additional options, and we'll go over brief details in a moment, but essentially
on this page they are trying to upsell you. There's premier access ultimate, they advertise
character dining, you can pre-purchase seatings to a couple of the shows in the theme parks,
then we've got specifically breakfast character dining, there's the magical shuttle to and from
the airport, and luggage services. Finally we've got birthday treat or PhotoPass, and I am actually
going to buy PhotoPass. The additional details will show you the rides that have PhotoPass. Most
of them are located in Disneyland Park: there's Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, Big Thunder
Mountain, and more. And then at Studios Park it's only Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. For two guests
for the amount of time we were staying we were quoted at 75 euros, valid for everyone on the
reservation. I’m honestly not sure what the price is if you buy it outside of your package, but I
knew I wanted it. Price seemed fair enough, so I went ahead and bought it. Let's get into a few
more details about other add-ons. You can purchase premiere access ultimate and this gives you access
to I believe it's 12 of the most in demand rides, more or less instantly. It's not actually instant,
but you're going through the FastPass lane, so you're skipping the standby queue. And because
these are the more popular attractions, the idea is that you're going to save a lot of time. It is,
however, incredibly expensive. For the days we were there it would be 140 euros per person. And
also worth noting the new Avengers Campus rides are not included. My understanding is that you
don't have to buy this in advance. If you want, you can buy it day of. So my plan is we'll go
for our first full theme park day, and if crowds are really bad and we really get nothing done then
we can buy it for the next day. And I won't be happy necessarily about spending that much money
to skip some lines, but it might be worth it. But personally, I don't see a reason to pre-purchase
it. Next, you can buy seatings to shows. For when we were there it would be 15 euros per person. And
basically again, instead of having to queue up 45 plus minutes in advance to make sure you get into
the show time, you show up 15 or so in advance and you go to your assigned seats… I believe
it's an assigned section, not actually a seat. And honestly, I don't know the full details of this,
but again like premiere access ultimate you don't have to purchase this in advance. I’m pretty sure
you can do a day of. So I want to see how bad crowds are before I commit to paying to go to a
show, when feasibly I could go for free. The magic shuttle is your transportation between Disneyland
Paris and the airport--either Orly or Charles de Gaulle. We're actually spending a considerable
amount of time in Paris, so we won't be heading to Disneyland Paris straight from an airport,
so we went ahead and skipped on this one too. For our dates it was 46 euros and I believe that was
two people… but since I didn't follow through I’m not entirely sure. Then there's a luggage
service. Arriving to Disneyland Paris on the train is actually fairly simple and straightforward from
Paris itself; there's a train station pretty much right at the theme parks. If desired you can pay
for this luggage service in order to drop your things off with luggage services basically at the
train station, instead of taking it to your hotel and then coming back. Essentially this can save
you some time and get you into the theme parks faster. For our trip specifically we're planning
to arrive to the Disneyland Paris area the night before we end up starting our theme park journey.
So because we won't be training in on a day that we have tickets, this does not really make sense
for us and we skipped it. But if you want to utilize the luggage service my understanding is
that it's open from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day, and it's 15 euros per person. Worth noting though,
there's a bunch of items that they cannot hold. This includes laptops, jewelries, and cameras. So
depending on what you're packing this may or may not even be applicable to you. Then there's also
a bunch of Paris add-ons and trips to Versailles, but since we're spending time in the city anyway
we don't need to worry about this. So yay, now we move on to checking out. You're going to add
your guest information here--things like name, phone number, address, etc. And even though I’m
putting in my address as one in the United States and I’m on the international Europe website,
there wasn't any error preventing me from checking out. Additionally, if you watched the prior video
this is where I ran into the problem of having the title be required. And then the maximum
character limits for your title and first and last name being 26 characters, which my name is
just longer than that. So you'll add your info as a primary contact, and anyone else traveling
with you as well. Next is the order summary, and here's where you can put in any special requests.
Normally I like to request both a high floor and a quiet room, but since we've got a garden
terrace room it necessarily has to be on the first floor I’m pretty sure… so I’m just gonna select a
quiet room here. But also if you need a bathtub or a baby crib or something for a small child,
this is a great place to note that. Further down on this page you will need to accept the terms
and conditions, and then you can move forward to actually purchasing. As I mentioned earlier,
you can pay a deposit now and then pay the rest in installments, or you can pay in full.
We chose to pay in full because the day we booked the conversion rate between the euro and the
U.S. dollar was particularly good, so we wanted that charge to hit our credit card right away.
After your payment goes through your booking is confirmed and it will show up in your profile.
Overall, I will say that booking the package on the Disneyland Paris website is a pretty
smooth process. As long as you don't want to make changes to your tickets it is pretty easy peasy.
I will say I don't love the meal plan options, but hey, you don't have to buy a meal plan.
We're just going to pay for our food as we go. And it does seem like they try to make coming
to Disneyland Paris easy for travelers with that magical shuttle, as well as the luggage service
at the train station. This was definitely less stressful than booking a Disney Vacation Club
resort at seven months in advance, so I do appreciate that. If you have any questions
leave those in the comments down below and I’ll do my best to get you a useful answer. But please
do note that I’m not a Disneyland Paris expert. I’m looking forward to sharing some of my trip
with you! May the rest of your day be magical, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD!