So you’re on the Disneyland Paris website. You’ve chosen your dates and your hotel, and your ideal hotel and ticket package is sitting happily in your basket. And then you click next, and they start to appear… the Disneyland Paris package add ons.

Disneyland Paris offers a number of ways to plus up your trip, from included meals to airport transfers. And in the process of booking it’s easy to impulse buy one or more of these add-ons, or think they’re an essential for your trip. But are they? They all have value for someone – but do they to you? In this blog we’re breaking down the main package add-ons – what they do, and who could benefit.

Meal Plans

The first add-ons Disney tend to promote are their meal-plans. Essentially these allow you to pre-pay for some, or all, of your meals in advance.

To confuse the matter there are different types of meal plans offered depending on where you are staying. The screen-shot above is what’s offered at Sequoia Lodge. Essentially though you should at least have options for just breakfast (eaten at your hotel), half-board (breakfast and one table service meal, either lunch or dinner), or full-board (3 meals). At the more expensive hotels you may also have options for meal-plans that include snacks, or that include more expensive meals such as character meals (with the basic meal plans you can put the cost of one meal towards the overall cost of a character meal, but they don’t cover the full cost).

At one point we’ll do a full blog breaking down the different meal plans. But are they worth it? Sometimes – yes. If you are planning on eating at least one table-service meal a day, or know your family really like to fill up on breakfast, then the meal plans can certainly be worth it. If you’re real foodies and want to eat in every table service meal you can then the Full Board will probably be the option for you! Another pro of the meal plans is that you know you’ve pre-paid for some of your food in advance, so no need to worry about budgeting while you’re there so much. And sometimes there’s a special offer to add on the meal-plans for free – and of course they’re worth it in those scenarios!

But meal plans aren’t for everyone. If you have a family that doesn’t like to eat a lot of breakfast you won’t get your money’s worth for the breakfast buffets. If your family just aren’t big eaters overall the plans may not be for you – you’ll probably be better off eating at the counter-service meals (you can use meal credits at counter-service restaurants, but doing so then negates any potential cost-savings from them). Also if you don’t want to take the time to eat in a lot of table-service restaurants they may not be ideal, or if you have very limited time – table service meals can take a big chunk out of your day! Also if you have a very tight budget you may find that taking your own food into the parks, or sticking to quick-service, is more cost-effective. So there’s pros and cons of the plans, ultimately it’ll be down to your family’s needs to decide if they’re worth it for you!

Disney Express Luggage Transfer

The Disney Express luggage transfer allows you on your arrival day in Disneyland Paris to leave your luggage at a dedicated desk in the train station, and to pick up your Magicpass – a card which combines your park ticket, room key, and record of dining plans if you have one. You can then head straight to the park, while Disney transfer your luggage to your hotel, where you can pick it up later from the luggage room. Then, on your checkout day you can drop your luggage back at the hotel luggage room, and they’ll then transfer it back to the desk in the train station for you to pick up later.

This service can be great – of all the Disneyland Paris add-ons offered it’s the one we’ve used the most. It allows you on both your arrival and departure day to make the most of your precious park time by saving back tracking to your hotel to either drop luggage off or pick it up. As someone differently-abled I also love that it saves at least a couple of extra bits of lugging luggage around, as the Disney staff do it for me!

Of course the service isn’t for everyone – if you’re not arriving by train using the service might involve going more out your way than just heading to the hotel will. Also if you’re arriving very late on your arrival day and / or leaving very early on your departure day and wouldn’t have the time to spend in the park anyway then it’s probably not worth using the service, as you can use the internal shuttles or just walk to the train station. Another factor is if you know your group on arrival day or departure day just aren’t going to be up to facing the parks, again it might not be worth using the service.

A side note if you have anxiety – I’ve had anxious moments worrying about if the cases go AWOL. Thankfully it’s never happened and I’ve not heard it happening either (although given the thousands of cases moving through the system it’s probably happened at some point). If you’re worrried you can add a tracker like an air-tag to your case, and I’d recommend taking photos of your luggage before you drop it off, so you can show the staff what it looks like if need be.

Magical Shuttle Airport Transfer

For folks that are flying to Disneyland Paris, there’s a question of how you get from the airports to Disneyland Paris itself. Thankfully Disney have you covered, with the Magical Shuttle service – where you can book a spot on a coach that picks you up from the airport and will then drop you either to your hotel, or to the bus stops next to the train station and the parks.

The nice thing about the Magical Shuttle is that you can get everything booked through Disney and not have to arrange transport options yourself – and there’s something to be said for the peace of mind knowing your transportation is booked and paid for before you arrive in France. But of course there’s cons too – the Shuttles do work on a schedule that might not work with your flights (make sure you check the timetable before booking), there might be multiple hotel drop offs once you’re on it, and it’s not exactly cheap – whether it would work out cheaper to get something like a Bolt or Uber will depend on your group.

Having never flown into Disneyland Paris we’ve not used this service – let us know if you have and your thoughts! You can if you want get the shuttle to drop you next to the train station and then use the Magical Express service to store and move your luggage if you prefer. Of course then you’re paying for two add-ons instead of one!

Character meals

When booking your package you’ll be offered the chance then and there to book and add on character meals. There’ll be options for breakfast at either Plaza Gardens or Auberge de Cendrillon in DIsneyland Park, or lunch or dinner at these two restaurants, plus Royal Banquet in the Disneyland Hotel.

Character meals, for those that don’t know, are meals where multiple Disney characters come up to your table for hugs, autographs and photos while you dine. Who you get depends on where you are – Auberge de Cendrillon offers Princesses; Royal Banquet is Mickey, Minnie and Co in suitably regal attire; and Plaza Gardens is a bit of a hodge podge of who’s around really! For more information on them and whether they’re right for your group, check out our guide to table-service dining blog.

There’s a lot to be said for pre-booking these as part of your package. For starters it can get you a set table booking up to a year in advance – and booking the character meals otherwise can be a serious challenge! It also means you’ve pre-paid for the meal, and if you’re using a meal-plan then that can be applied as appropriate. If you’ve got character mad folks in your group, then a character meal can be a great thing to include in a trip.

As with all things, there are downsides. A big one is cost – character meals aren’t cheap! (That applies if you book them with a package or without really). Also you may not know how your family might feel on the day about sitting through a longer meal, and if you have little ones who haven’t met the characters before there’s a chance of them being scared. And before booking I’d recommend checking the menus to see if folks will eat the food! Auberge de Cendrillon in particular seems to have a lot of folks saying they love the princesses but people in their group didn’t like the food being offered (think fancy French fare, even on the kids menu!).

Premier Access Ultimate

Premier Access is essentially Disneyland Paris’ skip the line offering. With Premier Access, for select rides you can enter a special ride line and have a shorter wait (often much shorter) for your attraction.

There are two Premier Pass versions – an individual ride selection, where you can pay on your park day to access the shorter wait for a chosen attraction at a set time. Or there’s the Ultimate Pass which is what gets offered with package bookings. With this you automatically get access to all the Premier Access lines on all eligible rides, so when you want to ride you just walk up, show your Premier Access Ultimate pass, and boom – shorter wait. Sounds ideal, right?

Premier Access can certainly be a time saver, and with the Ultimate Pass you are saved the bother of paying for each ride individually, or booking a set time slot to return in. It’s certainly convenient, and if you’ve only got a day or two in the parks and really want to get as many rides as possible done, it could be a great help!

But of course there’s a downside, and that’s the cost! Premier Access Ultimate can be expensive, and the price varies with demand – so on days that are expected to be busier, expect the pass to cost more.

If you’re tempted with the Premier Access Ultimate then our advice is to research it well first. It’s worth noting it doesn’t cover all rides, and some of the rides not included can pick up some hefty waits (looking at you, Dumbo). A lot of the rides on the pass are some of the more thrilling, so if you’ve got folks in the group who can’t or don’t want to ride the rollercoasters and simulator attractions, it’s value might be less. As well as seeing if the rides you want are covered, also check the predicted crowd levels for your trip – if it’s a lower crowd season you might be able to maximise your time without the pass by using the Magic Hour for resort guests if you’re eligible (an extra hour in the parks in the morning) and visiting rides later in the day, and then just paying for ad hoc Premier passes as and when you need them for individual rides. This is particularly the case for longer stays when you’ll have more time to tackle the rides and spread out the longer waits. A final note is that if you are eligible for the Priority or Easy-Access pass because you’re differently-abled or have a medical condition, then you might not need the Premier Access Ultimate as you’ll be able to access shorter lines.

Priority Access to Shows and Parades

As well as paying for quicker access for rides, you can also pre-book priority access for shows and parades.

What booking gets you varies by what it is. For the spots for Tales of Magic (the nighttime show) and the parade, it gets you access to a special area with a good view that will be less busy than some of the other areas of the park (which can feel less Disney and more rugby scrum at busier times). For the large theatre shows (typically options from Mickey and the Magician, Together: A Pixar musical Adventure and Frozen: A Musical Invitation in the Studios Park and Rhythm of the Pridelands in the Disneyland Park) what you’ll get is access to the theatre before the guests generally queuing up do so you get prime seats, and you can turn up a (bit!) less early for the shows and get in.

Honestly the value for these is a bit hit and miss in our opinion. The one I see the most positive comments about is the Tales of Magic viewing spot – you do get a spectacular view and a much less cramped area to watch the show in. The Parade spot can also be helpful for this. For the theatre shows, it depends on if you really want to get that best seat or not, or if you really want to cut down on your waiting time. Note that I say cut-down, not eliminate – you still need to be at the theatre at least 30 minutes before the show starts to guarantee your spot. For many of the shows, except on the busiest days, you can get the theatre around 45 minutes before and typically get in, so it’s not too much of a time-saver. (The exception to this is the Frozen show – the theatre is small so it’s not unusual for it to hit capacity over an hour before the show starts!).

I will also add again that if you’re eligible for the Priority Pass for the differently-abled you do get access to viewing areas for the parade and Tales of Magic, and the first entry into the shows (even before the paid access lot!), so the paid entry might be less worth it for you.

Ultimately if these will be any benefit to you is down to your group. But I would advise that if you want to book the special viewing area for Tales of Magic do it as soon as you can – it regularly sells out!

Paris Excursions

An often overlooked package add on, did you know you can book excursions from the Disneyland Paris hotels into Paris with your trip?

What’s offered may vary depending on availability and the time of year – but looking at the moment I can see an ‘Essentials’ tour (essentially transport to Eiffel Tower, a Seine Boat trip and time to explore the city). There’s also a Hop on / Hop off tour, where you get transportation to the Eiffel tower and then access to hop on and hop off buses around the city for the day. For those who like the more bougie things you may want instead to book an excursion that includes a trip to the Palace of Versailles, and you can even book an excursion that includes lunch in the Eiffel Tower itself!

With these tours you do get coach transportation in and out the city, a guide on your bus to help you plan, plus of course the extras it includes such as the Eiffel Tower Lunch, Seine Cruise, or Versailles visit. There’s also a long period built into the days for just general sightseeing. Having it booked all through Disney does give the peace of mind that your day trip is all sorted in advance.

The drawback? Yup the cost! These tours certainly aren’t cheap. When you consider you can get a return ticket for the RER into central Paris for 5 euros, or a day travelcard for 12 euros, then there’s certainly the option to get things for cheaper. Of course you’re then left to book your own excursions which might be confusing, or that may get booked up in advance, so it depends if you’re happy to take that on. If you’re just wanting to see a few of the sights in Paris from the outside without tickets, you could do it yourself pretty cheaply. But even with paying for the other elements of the excursions yourself, it might work out cheaper than the Disney package. Of course there’s something to be said for a nice coach over the RER system, and a bilingual guide on hand to help, but it depends how important those things are to you.

PhotoPass +

If you meet a character at Disneyland Paris, chances are good there’ll be a Disney photographer there to take a photo of you with them. There are also numerous rides that offer on-ride photos in the parks. Of course you can pay for prints of these individually, but what happens if you want them all? Then PhotoPass+ comes into play!

With the PhotoPass+ card, you can add any of the photos taken by Disney’s own photographers of you around the parks to the card, and can then download them as many times as you would like. It’s a good way of capturing photo memories from your trip, and getting photos with everyone in them! (And that comedic photo of people screaming on Space Mountain because of course you want that…)

If PhotoPass+ is going to be worth it for you I would say depends on if you’re planning on meeting a lot of characters and will be wanting the photos, and / or if you planning on going on a lot of rides with ride photos and you think you’ll want to capture all those memories. Unlike the US Disney Parks, there aren’t many photographers in Disneyland Paris poised to take photos of you around the park, generally you’ll almost exclusively find them with the characters – and not all the characters at that.

As folks who don’t go on all the the thrill rides with the ride photos and don’t spend a massive amount of time in character meet and greets, PhotoPass+ hasn’t really been worth it for us in the past. If there were more photographers around to take photos with some of the park scenery and icons we’d probably be saying differently! But there’s a lot of people out there who love PhotoPass+ – so it’ll be down to you to consider if it’s worth it for your group.

And finally… anyone for cake?

I mean, who doesn’t want cake, right? Disneyland Paris offer an option for you to add a celebration cake on to a table-service meal!

Adding a cake could really cap off a celebratory meal for someone – whether it’s birthday, anniversary or something else! It is up to you to sort the table-service table booking though, so probably best to make sure your reservation is locked in before trying to order a cake!

Of course you may instead prefer to treat a normal meal dessert as your birthday treat instead of ordering a cake, or get one of the many other snacks around the parks. Also when ordering a cake, make sure you share any dietary restrictions to check if Disney can accomodate you.

So that’s it, a whistle-stop guide to the Disneyland Paris package add-ons. Which do you want to add to your next trip?