10 Game Changing Disneyland Paris Fastpass Tips – Travels with Erica
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The Disneyland Paris fastpass system is very different from the fastpass systems at Disney World and Disneyland California.
You can’t walk into Disneyland Paris thinking the fastpass system is going to work the same way. You’ll be disappointed and not have an optimized Disneyland Paris fastpass strategy that helps you ride a lot of attractions in one day.
This post gives you the insider Disneyland Paris fastpass knowledge, so you can be an expert!
You learn the ins and outs of the Disneyland Paris fastpass system and how to make the system work for you.
Even more importantly, you learn the most common Disneyland Paris fastpass mistakes and how to avoid them.
Make the Disneyland Paris fastpass system work for you, and you’ll be skipping the lines like a pro in no time!
PS- be sure to check out my Disneyland Paris packing list, so don’t miss packing any essential items!
Fundamentally, the fastpass system at Disneyland Paris is the same as every other Disney park in the world.
It allows you to “skip” the lines and get on a ride with little to no wait time.
You get a fastpass for whatever attraction you want to ride, wait until the return time printed on your ticket, go back to the ride, hop in the fastpass line, and get on the ride within a few minutes.
It is a great system that allows people to ride the most popular attractions without having to spend hours waiting in line.
This makes the guest experience more enjoyable, and it gets people out into the park where they’re more likely to spend money.
Both Disney and the guests win!
There are some rules about how to use fastpass, but we’ll get more into that as the post continues.
Overall, the fastpass system helps you see and do as much as possible in a single day. It cuts down on how much time you have to spend standing in line, so you can go and do other things.
This is the biggest difference between fastpass at Disneyland Paris and fastpass at every other Disney park.
You normally have a 1 hour return window where you can show up and use your fastpass anytime as long as it is within the 1 hour return window on your fastpass.
That isn’t the case at Disneyland Paris.
You only have 30 minutes where you can show up at the attraction and redeem your fastpass.
This makes it a bit more difficult to plan your day, but it is still doable.
You just need to make sure you’re not getting in a long line, watching a stage show, or at the other park in the time leading up to your fastpass return window.
You know when your return window is in advance, so it is a pretty easy thing to plan for.
It is certainly much easier at other Disney parks when you have an hour return window. It gives you more freedom to jump on a ride or watch a show because you know you have an hour when you can use your fastpass.
This is another huge difference between Disneyland Paris and nearly every other Disney park in the world.
You can’t book fastpass online at Hong Kong Disneyland, but the park is so quiet that you don’t need it. I’ve never booked a fastpass on any of my visits to Hong Kong Disneyland.
Being able to book your fastpass online is super useful. You just pop onto the app, find whatever attraction you’re looking for, and book a fastpass from wherever you are.
No need to walk to the attraction!
You don’t have that convenience of booking your fastpass from anywhere at Disneyland Paris.
You have to physically walk to whatever attraction you want to get a fastpass for and hope there are fastpasses left and they are at a time that works with your schedule.
This may not sound like that big of a deal, but it can waste a lot of time. Especially if you are in Disneyland Paris and want to get a fastpass for an attraction in Walt Disney Studios.
You literally have to walk from one park to the other to get your fastpass.
This limits you quite a bit. I don’t think many people are walking from one park to the other to get a fastpass then walking back to the first park.
Most people are going to get a Disneyland Paris fastpass for whatever park they are in.
You’re not able to optimize your fastpass usage as much as your are in other parks, and you tend to be limited to getting a fastpass for an attraction in whatever park you’re currently in.
To make matters even more annoying, Disneyland Paris doesn’t even display the fastpass times on the app.
You don’t know what fastpass return window time is being distributed until you get to the attraction.
You may walk all the way there to find out that the fastpass return window is for when you have a dinner reservation booked.
It is super inconvenient, and I wish Disneyland Paris would update their app to track and display that information.
It would make the guest experience so much better!
Disneyland Paris has a great complimentary wifi system that guests can use.
It works in both parks, but, unfortunately, doesn’t work at Disney Village.
The wifi is actually quite reliable, and considering how many guests are using it at any given time, it is pretty fast and reliable.
It is far more reliable than the free wifi at Disneyland California. I’m astonished at how bad the wifi is every time I visit!
But complimentary wifi is dangerous to use and puts your online safety at risk!
Any place there are people using complimentary wifi (especially wifi that doesn’t require a password), there are bad people trying to get into your phone and collect your data.
If they are able to hack into your phone, they can steal your personal information and sell it.
That turns a magical day into a nightmare.
The solution is to protect yourself by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN puts an invisible forcefield around your phone and hides it from prying eyes.
A VPN essentially makes your connection as safe, secure, and private as your personal home wifi where only you know the password.
Nobody is able to hack into your phone and see what you’re doing or steal your information.
You protect yourself when you travel by buying travel insurance, so you may as well protect your online life when you travel and install a VPN on your phone and other devices.
As you can image, I’ve used a lot of different VPNs over my years of travel.
I cancelled most of them after the first year and was oftentimes so frustrated at how much they slowed my devices down that I wouldn’t use them at all.
That is until I found NordVPN.
I’ve been using NordVPN for a number of years and don’t plan on cancelling my subscription with them anytime soon.
They don’t slow your devices down at all and are the most trusted name on the market.
You can protect up to 6 devices with one NordVPN account, so you can protect all your devices (and maybe all your family’s devices) for one surprisingly low fee.
NordVPN often runs sales where you can save up to 70%, so there is no excuse not to protect your online data.
You probably think it’ll never happen to you, but you’d be shocked to learn how many fellow travellers I’ve met who have had their social media or banking information hacked because they didn’t protect their online data.
Getting a VPN is a tiny price to pay in comparison to the headache of trying to get access to your banking or social media back after it has been hacked.
Not every attraction has the option to get a fastpass for it.
You need to know which ones do and which ones don’t. That will help you plan your day and have a solid Disneyland Paris fastpass strategy in place.
The following attractions at Disneyland Paris offer a fastpass option:
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril
- Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain
- Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast
Most of the main attractions have a fastpass option, so that is very helpful!
The only really popular attractions that don’t have a fastpass option are meeting Mickey Mouse, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Dumbo.
There are far fewer rides that offer fastpass in this park. That is bad news because it means you’ll have to be very strategic and probably spend a lot more time waiting in lines.
Here is the very short list of Walt Disney Studios Park attractions that offer fastpass:
- The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
- Ratatouille: The Adventure
Yup. That’ the entire list!
Just two attractions at Walt Disney Studios park offer a fastpass option.
This makes it quite difficult to get a fastpass for either of the attractions. They tend to “sell out” for the day pretty early in the morning.
If you want to get a fastpass for either of these attractions, you should grab it in the early or mid-morning, or you might not be available.
There are two situations where you can get a new Disneyland Paris fastpass:
- After you use the fastpass you currently have
- Two hours after you get the fastpass you currently have even if you haven’t used it yet
This means you don’t have to fret if you get a fastpass that has a return window 6 or 8 hours in advance. You can get another fastpass for a different attraction two hours after you got your original fastpass.
It is nice to have the extra freedom and not have to choose between getting a fastpss for an attraction you really want to ride with a long time until the return window and not being able to get another fastpass for basically the rest of the day.
Two hours is a decent amount of time to wait until you get another Disneyland Paris fastpass. It helps cut down on people hoarding fastpasses while giving other guests the opportunity to get another fastpass if their original return time is in the distant future.
This normally isn’t an issue at Disneyland Paris, but it is a good provision to have on extremely busy days.
In most instances, your Disneyland Paris fastpass return time will be within 30 to 120 minutes from the time you got the fastpass.
It is a nice fall back to have though!
There is nothing worse than getting a fastpass, waiting 5 or 6 hours to use it, and then not being able to get a fastpass for anything else because they are all “sold out” for the day.
PS- if you’re planning a solo Disney, be sure to check out this post with all my best solo Disney tips and tricks!
Most Disney parks are pretty chill if you show up a bit early or a bit late for your fastpass return time. That isn’t the case at Disneyland Paris.
Disneyland Paris is the most strict park when it comes to using your fastpass at the time shown on your ticket.
They don’t let you in the fastpass line early even if you’re only 5 minutes early. They are more lenient if you are late, but they are still pretty strict.
I witnessed a guest who showed up less than 10 minutes after his return window ended, and he wasn’t allowed into the fastpass line.
Yup. They are that strict!
It, of course, depends on the cast member. If you plead your case, and they feel bad for you, you might be able to get into the fastpass line if you’re a little late.
It isn’t a guarantee though!
The best way to avoid this is showing up durning your fastpass return window.
I suggest you plan to arrive at the attraction right at the start of your return window. That way if anything goes wrong, you still have a solid chance of making it to the attraction in time.
It is unfortunate that Disneyland Paris is so strict about fastpass return window. I think other parks’ policy of having a 10-15 minute buffer on either side of the return window is a much better policy.
Moral of the story for Disneyland Paris: DON’T BE LATE!
This is not the time to channel your inner White Rabbit!
There is hardly anything I like more than a single rider line at Disney!
It is the best way to minimize your wait time and maximize the number of rides you go on in a day.
A single rider line is a dedicated line that is used to fill empty seats on an attraction. If a ride has three seats in a row and there is a party of two from the normal line, one person from the single rider line will be used to fill the empty seat.
This helps ensure the line moves as quickly as possible for everybody and the ride is operating at capacity.
You do not get to ride with your group if you join the single rider line. You will be separated and and seated with strangers.
Single rider lines tend to have little to no wait, so you can get on a ride within minutes.
The best single rider line at Disneyland Paris in my experience is Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain. I’ve never had to wait more than 5 minutes. Even when the regular line is over an hour!
There is honestly no better way to save time at Disneyland Paris than using the single rider lines as often as possible.
They should become your best friend!
The problem is that there aren’t very many rides that have a single rider option unfortunately.
The following Disneyland Paris attractions have a single rider line:
- Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain
It is super unfortunate that Disneyland Paris only has one attraction with a single rider line.
But we’ll take what we can get. It is better than nothing!
This is where the single rider lines shine!
There are actually quite a few options at Walt Disney Studios Park. This is fantastic and helps counterbalance the lack of fastpass options.
Here are all the rides at Walt Disney Studios Park that offer a single rider line:
- Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop
- Crush’s Coaster (aka the best ride at Disneyland Paris!)
- Ratatouille: The Adventure
That’s a pretty good selection!
4 of the top 5 most popular attractions have a single rider line.
The only one missing is The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. It would be the perfect ride to offer a single rider option on, but, alas, we can’t have it all.
Crush’s Coaster is the best and most popular attraction across both Disneyland Paris parks.
I don’t think they realized how popular it was going to be because it doesn’t have a fastpass option.
Having a single rider line helps, but it still moves pretty slow. It is 100% worth the wait though! It is an incredible ride.
You may think you can only get fastpasses in Disneyland Paris or Walt Disney Studios in any given day. But that isn’t the case.
You can get fastpasses in both parks on the same day as long as you have a park hopper ticket.
With a park hopper ticket, you can get as many fastpasses as you can in both parks!
This is really helpful for people who are visiting Disneyland Paris on a day trip from Paris and only have one day in the parks.
You can optimize your time by getting fastpasses in both parks.
This drastically cuts down on your wait time and allows you to see more in your limited amount of time.
You can mix and max a Disneyland Paris fastpass with a Walt Disney Studios fastpass and optimize your day like a boss.
It is nice to have the option to get whatever fastpass works for you no matter what park the attraction is in.
You read that right!
Hotel guests staying at a Disney-owned hotel get an additional Disneyland Paris fastpass each day they stay at the hotel.
You can use the fastpass for any ride in either park!
It is a nice extra perk for people staying on Disney property!
You can still get a normal fastpass in the parks just like any other guest, but you have an extra fastpass in your back pocket. You can use it anytime you want during the day.
If you use it correctly, it can be a game changer.
It completely changes your Disneyland Paris fastpass strategy. You can maximize your fastpasses by getting a lot of fastpasses for the moderately popular attractions and use your hotel fastpass for the most popular attractions.
I suggest using it for The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
It is the most popular attraction that offers a fastpass that doesn’t also offer a single rider option. Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain and Ratatouille: The Adventure are the two other most popular fastpass attractions.
They have a single rider line, so using your extra fastpass for The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror will help you maximize your time.
Use single rider for Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain, Ratatouille: The Adventure, and Crush’s Coaster.
Use your hotel fastpass for The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
Focus on getting regular fastpasses for Peter Pan’s Flight, Big Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, Star Tours, and Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast.
You will be able to ride basically every ride in both parks if you use your extra Disneyland Paris strategically.
It is surprisingly difficult to book a Disneyland Paris hotel.
It isn’t as easy as going to the Disneyland Paris website and booking a hotel through there.
I wish it were though!
The problem with booking your hotel directly though the Disneyland Paris website is that they only offer packages.
You can’t just book a hotel room. You have to book a package that includes your hotel, park tickets, and a dining plan.
I personally don’t want an entire package when I visit Disneyland Paris. This is especially true if you have a Disneyland Paris annual pass!
There are two solutions:
You can call Disneyland Paris and see if they will sell you just a room.
I’ve heard differing stories on how successful people have been with this.
Disneyland Paris likes it when you purchase a package because they make more money. They don’t always let you book just a room even when you call.
It seems that you’re more likely to be able to book just a room the closer it is to your arrival date.
Disneyland Paris opens up room-only reservations a few weeks in advance to fill up the rooms they didn’t fill with a package.
This works fine if you’re spontaneous, but if you’re like and like to plan in advance (to save some anxiety), then this isn’t a great option for you.
Calling Disneyland Paris is great, but it doesn’t always work.
Your second option pretty much always works and is my preferred way of booking a Disneyland Paris hotel.
Raise your hand if you’re part of the phone call anxiety club like me!
This is, in my opinion, the best and most convenient way to book a Disneyland Paris hotel.
You get all the same benefits as someone who books directly through Disneyland Paris, but you don’t have to purchase a package or call to book a room.
You can book just a room at any Disneyland Paris hotel directly through Hotels.com!
The prices are essentially the same as booking just a room directly through Disneyland Paris. There may be a dollar or two different per night, but it isn’t a big enough difference to make any real difference in price.
Booking is easier, quicker, and you earn those sweet, sweet Hotels.com nights towards a free night’s stay.
You’ll get a nice bump in the worth of your free night certificate after staying at a Disneyland Paris hotel.
It is definitely a splurge to stay at a Disneyland Paris hotel, so you may as well get something back in return for spending that money!
That is where the Hotels.com loyalty program comes in. This program is why I love booking through Hotels.com and have booked the majority of my hotels through them since 2015!
You get a free night at a hotel after you’ve stayed 10 nights at a hotel you booked through Hotels.com.
That’s right!
You get a free night’s stay at nearly any hotel listed on Hotels.com for staying at a hotel you would have stayed at in any event.
It doesn’t get any better than that!
The Disneyland Paris app doesn’t show what fastpass times are being distributed, but it is still a helpful tool.
It helps you figure out which attractions are most likely to be running out of fastpasses and which ones you can skip the fastpass all together and just use the regular line.
The longer the wait time, the more likely the fastpass return window is much later in the day. The shorter the wait time, the more likely you can get a fastpass for the near future.
People want to avoid waiting in lines as much as possible, so most people get a Disneyland Paris fastpass for the attraction with the longest wait time and don’t consider any other factors.
You can use the Disneyland Paris app strategically to help inform your fastpass decisions.
Don’t waste your time walking to get a fastpass for an attraction that only have a 15-minute wait.
Find attractions that have a medium to long wait and walk to them to get a fastpass.
It may sound like a simple concept, but you’ll be amazed at home much time it can save you over the course of a day!
This isn’t optional!
You need a fastpass strategy at Disneyland Paris. Especially if you only have one day in the parks or it is your first time visiting.
You should know the following before you arrive at Disneyland Paris:
- What attractions you need to ride and whether they offer fastpass
- If there are any rides that you want to skip
- What attractions are in each park
- Whether you’re going to start your day at Disneyland Paris or Walt Disney Studios
- What times any parades and shows are, so you can avoid getting a fastpass during them
- What you’re willing to miss out on if your plan doesn’t go as smoothly as you’d like
Once you know that information, it is pretty easy to build a Disneyland Paris fastpass strategy.
- Ride Crush’s Coaster first thing in the morning or last thing at night. It is the most popular attraction and doesn’t have a fastpass option. It normally has over a 60-minute wait, so it is best to try to plan your day around riding it if it is important to you.
- If you’re starting your morning at Disneyland Paris, get a fastpass for one popular attraction and then ride another popular attraction in the stand-by line. This is the most effective way to see as many of the big attractions as possible. I suggest skipping Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain because it has a great single rider line. Focus on rides like Big Thunder Mountain, Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, Star Tours, and Peter Pan’s Flight.
- Lines are normally shorter during traditional mealtimes and parades. If you can’t get a fastpass for an attraction you really want to ride, try to hit it up during these times when lots of guests are doing other things like eating or watching parades, fireworks, or stage shows.
- Get there early! Being at the parks is the best way to ensure you get a lot done at Disneyland Paris. That is when the parks are going to be the least busy, and you’ll be able to go on a number of attractions without waiting very long.
There is a lot you need to know about all your Disneyland Paris fastpass options.
Everything on this list is important, and when you use them in conjunction with one another, you’ll be surprised at how much you can see and do in one Disney day!
You, of course, don’t have to rush around doing and seeing everything.
You can take your time, explore the parks, and only go on a few attractions, but you should still have a fastpass strategy in place no matter what.
A Disneyland Paris fastpass plan and strategy help you have the most magical day that is suited to you and your Disney style.
It gives you the power to know that you’re going to have the best day you can and not spend more time waiting in lines than you have to.
Plus who doesn’t love walking through the fastpass line and passing everybody waiting in the normal line.
It is a powerful feeling!
If you liked this post, you may want to check out my post about Disneyland Paris tips and tricks! It’ll help you hack your Disney day even more.
But no matter what you do, be sure to say hi to Mickey for me please!