Boundless Horizons

Day 10 – Travelling home from Disneyland Paris

It’s the last day of the trip! We checked out of the ibis Marne la Vallée Val d’Europe, and were able to leave our luggage in their storage room for free, which is great as this isn’t listed on their website. We’d investigated storage options as we had a late flight and wanted to make the most of our last day at the parks.

Disneyland Paris has luggage storage on the right hand side of the entrance to Disneyland Park. As at July 2024, this costs:

• Small item: €10
• Medium item: €13
• Large item: €15
• Accessories: €4

There are storage lockers upstairs at Marne la Vallée / Chessy station, open 7am-10pm. These are cash only, although there is a change machine. As at July 2024, these cost:

• Small locker: €5.50
• Medium locker: €7.50
• Large locker: €9.50

If you’re staying at an onsite DLP hotel, there is complimentary luggage storage at your hotel. On past visits where we’ve had a late flight, we’ve been staying onsite and used this so we hadn’t had to consider storage options beyond that!

We originally thought about paying for luggage storage for the convenience of not going back to Val d’Europe to collect our bags, plus the additional train journeys would come to €8.40 for a return trip for two people (€2.10 single ticket x4). However, in Geneva Rhys had bought me a Swiss Army Knife for my birthday which we’d packed in our suitcase for travelling home. The DLP storage is beyond the security tents so we’d need to put the suitcase through the x-ray scanner. The train station storage also has security screening, and the sign listing prohibited items included pocket knives. That was particularly annoying, since the whole purpose of using the storage locker was to avoid carrying a knife! That meant storing our bags at our hotel was our only option – although with a large case, a cabin-sized case, and two backpacks, the additional train tickets were still a saving.

This was the only morning where we made it into Disneyland Park while Mickey and Minnie were still greeting guests from the train station! They’re usually there for the first hour of park operations, so we try to see them at least once. The characters head from the station to the doors over beside Ribbons & Bows Hat Shop which is a fun place to wait and see them go by, if we’re there as they’re finishing.

We started this morning in Discoveryland with Star Tours and some shopping, which took a lot more time than planned. French shops don’t automatically give you a receipt, to save on paper. But non-EU guests need their receipt to claim back the sales tax on purchases. The poor cast member serving us seemed a little inexperienced and had already had to call for help with other transactions by the time we got to the front of the queue. He asked if we needed a receipt, I said yes, and he said he was very sorry but had already pressed the button to decline the receipt… so now needed to get someone to help him work out how to reprint it. Once another cast member came over it was a simple process, but we had a bit of a wait before they came to help.

Next up was an early lunch at Colonel Hathi’s Outpost Restaurant, where there is a new Indian-inspired menu. We try to avoid peak meal times, but we caught the start of the rush here! Rhys opted for the butter chicken with basmati rice and naan; I had the Mickey pizza with chicken curry and red onions. We also ordered a portion of onion bhaji. The line to order was quick, but the line to collect food took forever! Eventually the cast member gave us most of our food and said she’d bring over the bhaji when they were ready. She very kindly pixie dusted us with an extra portion to make up for the wait! The food was tasty, though they’d held back on the spice levels for the theme park crowd. It was also very filling – which was a slight problem as Rhys isn’t much of a fan of onion bhaji meaning I now had two portions!

The clouds had made way for blue skies after lunch so we took the opportunity to grab some castle photos, like the one at the top of this blog! We did some last minute shopping on Main Street, USA before stopping at the Disneyland Hotel for one last glass of champagne. We asked in the hotel shop if they had the clock, mostly out of habit at this point. It still wasn’t in stock… though at this point I wasn’t sure we would have room to pack it anyway. As we paused in Fantasia Gardens to plan our next move, we met Sam4G0d! We met Sam last year at the D23 event in DLP so it was fun to catch up with her. She’s one of our favourite YouTubers and her DLP coverage is so helpful.

It was time to collect our luggage from the ibis, which meant a return journey on the RER train to Val d’Europe. The RER runs pretty frequently so we didn’t have long to wait, and collecting the bags was easy, given the hotel is right beside the station. In total, the round trip took 19 minutes from leaving Marne-la-Vallée – Chessy to getting back there. Not bad! In fact, we were so quick that we had time to stop for a Starbucks before getting the TGV to Charles de Gaulle airport.

We’ve got our airport routine pretty set at this point. Our first port of call was the Tax Refund point to scan the barcode from my SkipTax app. I also recommend the bathrooms down here as they’re some of the quietest in the airport. Next is the bag drop, which for Easyjet opens 2.5 hours before the flight – at most airports it’s two hours, but given the size of CDG, they open slightly earlier. We’ve got Easyjet Plus memberships which gives priority bag drop, and also priority security. That priority security is a major perk at peak travel times!

After security, we had a quick look at Duty Free which has a good selection of champagne and rum! Right at the exit to Duty Free is Strada, which does a great pizza & wine combo for €9. This place could do with more seating as it’s often taken up by people lingering while waiting for their gate, but their pizza is excellent. We like to eat before clearing passport control as the selection afterwards is really limited.

Then it was time to head to our gate. Everything ran on time, and we had a smooth journey home. And just like that, the holiday was done. The only left to do was to start the countdown to our next trip – fortunately there isn’t long to wait!