Disneyland Paris offers a surprisingly strong value compared to Disneyland Resort in California — especially when factoring in lower ticket prices, built-in park hopping, and unique experiences like the Ratatouille ride and Chez Remy restaurant. While Paris lacks blockbuster additions like Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, it’s still a worthwhile visit for Disney fans, particularly once the park’s 2026 “Disney Adventure World” rebrand and World of Frozen land debut. For first-timers or travelers already heading to Europe, it delivers classic Disney magic at a fraction of the U.S. cost.
If you’re considering a trip to Europe & you love theme parks, should you book a visit to Disneyland Paris? Is that experience comparable to Disneyland Resort in California? Comparing Disneyland Paris to Walt Disney World would be incredibly unfair given the size of that park and the number of parks. With that out of the way, the pricing and value for time & money of Disneyland Paris might surprise you?
How do Disneyland Paris and Disneyland Resort compare?
Both Disneyland Paris and Disneyland Resort are two core parks. These screenshots taken from the respective websites are pretty amusing in how different they are:
Let’s start with the core parks that are named the same, Disneyland Park
Disneyland Parks
Comparing both parks is pretty challenging because Disney’s sites don’t organize the list of rides or filters the same between both parks. For example, Disneyland Paris in some places won’t let you filter on “Big Thrills” while .
The Lands
Both parks share these lands:
- Adventureland
- Fantasyland
- Frontierland
- Main Street, U.S.A.
- Tomorrowland / Discoveryland (Paris)
Notice anything immediately missing? Paris has no Star War Galaxy’s Edge! No Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run or Rise of the Resistance and the incredible theming & restaurants that go with it.
Disneyland Resort also lists Bayou Country, Mickey’s Toontown, and New Orleans Square as lands, but that sure feels like fudging to me.
The core rides
Here are the core rides they have in common. There are rides I’m not listing here because they are either for small kids or experiences I think barely qualify as rides.
- Autotopia
- Big Thunder Mountain
- Paris: Temporarily closed until Summer 2025
- Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters / Laser Blast
- Haunted Mansion / Phantom Manor
- It’s a small world
- California: Closed for refurbishment
- Peter Pan’s Flight
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Space Mountain
- Star Tours
Both parks have Indiana Jones rides:
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril (Paris)
- Indiana Jones Adventure (California)
However, these are not the same ride & the better one is in California.
Are there any rides that are exclusive to either park?
There are loads & they are all in California.
- Astro Orbitor
- Jungle Cruise
- Matterhorn
- Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
Those are all nice, but I wouldn’t call them deal breakers…except maybe the Matterhorn. I’m sure the Parisian’s would say: “Why don’t you just take the train to Zurich & then the Glacier Express down to the real Matterhorn?”
Walt Disney Park vs. California Adventure
Here’s where things get really interesting. Both parks only legitimately share two rides:
- Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! / The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
- Not the same and yet Guardians of the Galaxy is a re-themed Twilight Zone, so they are.
- WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure / Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure
Everything else is unique to each park, but there are approximately rides from all categories represented in both parks.
The most unique ride in Walt Disney Park is Ratatouille : L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy. Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center has an equivalent ride named Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, but only Disneyland Paris has the Chez Remy restaurant, one of the toughest tables to book in Paris! We had the best theme park food we’ve ever had anywhere there. The ride was an amazing dark ride that shares trackless ride vehicle technology with Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. This ride & restaurant combination makes so much sense because the story takes place in Paris. The equivalent in California Adventure has to be Radiator Springs Racers.
Walt Disney Park will be renamed to Disney Adventure World in 2026 to coincide with the opening of a new land World of Frozen! The Kingdom of Arendelle will be unique to Disneyland Paris!
When to go? Right after the school year!
We follow a few rules for theme parks because we’d never tell clients to go during these times:
- Avoid busy season…if you can
- Parents we know it’s tough!
- Exclude weekends to avoid crowds
- Balancing days off is tough so we understand if anyone disagrees
- Golden Rule: No holidays
That means these dates are off limits:
- May 24 – 26, 2025 – Memorial Day (preceding weekend and last Monday in May)
- July 4 – Independence Day
- July 14 – Bastille Day
- August
Finally, since the school year ends from late May to mid June throughout the US, we only picked dates for price comparison when everyone is out of school. If you can leave earlier than mid-June for Europe and a theme park visit, pricing will only be cheaper!
Pricing Monday June 23 & Tuesday June 24
Given how different the parks are in both locations, it should come as little surprise that pricing is also wildly different. Beside the date, here’s what we are going to price:
- 4 adults
- 2 days, 1 for each park
Immediately, we have comparison challenges.
What is an adult?
- Disneyland Paris: Adults are 12+
- Disneyland Resort: Adults are 10+
How about park hopping?
- Disneyland Paris: Included
- Disneyland Resort: Optional extra!
I’m going to start Disneyland Resort tickets with park hopping to compare apples to apples.
Tech Note: The pricing you see below is what I got today in macOS Safari's Private Browsing Mode so Disney sites could not fingerprint my browser using cookies and increase prices for every refresh. This is not a complete defense against fingerprinting, but multiple pricing runs did not yield ever increasing pricing.
Disneyland Paris
On November 19, 2024 Disneyland Paris introduced dynamic pricing. Some call this demand based pricing. Prices generally increased across the board and are more highly variable. Generally this means the price of the ticket can vary within a fixed range depending on how many people show up to the parks that day. Your defense (to some degree) is book those tickets well in advance.
$859 for 4 Adults with non-optional 2 day park hopping
I’d advise against Disneyland Paris Express shuttle with Magic Ways if you are staying in downtown Paris. There is an express train that takes < 60 minutes and it was very easy to take right to the entrance of Disneyland Paris.
Disneyland Resort
$1,660.00 for 4 Adults with non-optional 2 day park hopping! 😮💨 $801 more than Disneyland Paris.
Of course, I had to see how much removing park hopping would save.
$1,320 without park hopper. $461 more than Disneyland Paris.
If you’ve ever been to Disneyland Resort, you either book a hotel close enough to walk to the resort, or you are paying for parking. Let’s add in parking:
$1,390 without park hopper but with parking. $531 more than Disneyland Paris.
No one knows what pricing will look like in the future as Disney continually adjusts pricing and models with much more frequency than at any time in the past.
Is Disneyland Paris a Better Value than Disneyland Resort?
When we visited Disneyland Paris during the Summer 2024 Olympic Games, we rode rides, ate at restaurants, and saw attractions, e.g. Avengers Campus, we hadn’t seen the last time we visited Disneyland Resort or aren’t available anywhere else in the world.
Was it worth it? I’d say yes. However, if you’ve recently visited Disneyland Resort or Walt Disney World, then I’d recommend waiting until 2026 on Disneyland Paris.
Even though it’s significantly cheaper, Disneyland Park Paris hasn’t had a new ride built in 20 years. Walt Disney Park is undergoing such an extensive renovation I would call the result about a 60% new park from where it was just 3-4 years ago.
When Walt Disney Park rebrands to Disney Adventure World in early 2026 with the World of Frozen, Disneyland Paris will have 1 exclusive land and the Chez Remy themed area that’s unmatched anywhere else in the world.
You didn’t think we could talk about pricing without getting to Lighting Lane / Premier Access Ultimate
Lighting Lane / Premier Access Ultimate
Disneyland Paris calls their speedy ride access pass Disney Premier Access Ultimate. What that does to the pricing? 🚀
That adds $1,574.08 for a grand total of $2,433.08. That’s nearly double the base ticket.
What does Lighting Lane at Disneyland Resort add to the 2 day park hopper ticket with parking?
Only $85 more per ticket per day to bring the total to $1,986. That makes Disneyland Resort $447.08 cheaper than Disneyland Paris.
Do you need Disneyland Paris’ Premier Access Ultimate (there is no lower level, lol)? I don’t think you do. We were able to complete both Disneyland Paris parks in 1 day without Disney Premier Access Ultimate. How did we accomplish this feat? Significant power walking (and some running), a wheelchair for one member of the family having knee problems, & judicious use of the Disneyland Paris app to monitor wait times and move to the lowest time rides. Most attendees would not attempt such a cannonball run approach & we don’t recommend that unless you are very fit and everyone agrees to that approach.
That said, with two days and assuming the Olympics crowd was normal or even larger than normal, I don’t see how you’d need the Premier Access Ultimate pass unless you wanted a very leisurely walking pace. You could always hope for rain too? We had a brief 30 minute drizzle and judging by the languages heard while walking, nearly all the Europeans left the Brits and Americans to wander the park themselves. 😆
Travel by Marisa 