Solotravel tips

Socialize

Pick a bar/restaurant/café and visit it daily. The staff and other regular visitors will start to recognize you and you can make temporary friends. This will also help you in getting insider local advises and tips.

Pack less and travel light

Only pack the essentials, buy the less-needed stuff on the go. Sometimes you end up not using the less-needed stuff even once.. and there will be no one to help you with that extra weight, so it’s a better idea to buy it as you go when you need it.

Travel apps

Download these travel apps to travel solo with ease.

Understand the Different Ticket Options

There are a number of different ticket options at Disneyland Paris. It is important to understand the different ticket types, so you can choose the ticket that best suits your needs. If you’re only at Disneyland Paris for one day, it is easy to decide what ticket option is best for you. You just have to choose between a single park ticket and a park hopper ticket. A park hopper ticket allows you to visit both theme parks in a single day, and I always recommend buying the park hopper ticket if you only have one day at Disneyland Paris. There are attractions you won’t want to miss in each park, and you can easily walk between the parks in a matter of minutes. It becomes more difficult to pick a ticket when you’re visiting for more than one day. You essentially have to choose between a muti-day ticket and an annual pass. In some instances it is more affordable to purchase the Discovery annual pass than it is to purchase a two-day park hopper ticket. The Discovery annual pass is only valid certain days of the year, so the first step is to visit the Disneyland Paris website and figure out if the Discovery annual pass is valid when you plan on visiting the parks. If the Discovery annual pass is valid when you’re visiting the parks, it is the best bang for your buck. You don’t get any special food or merchandise discounts, but you save on ticket prices. There is one small catch with the Discovery annual pass though. There is an automatic blackout date for the two days following the purchase of it. If you purchase the annual pass on a Monday, the Tuesday and Wednesday are blacked out, so you won’t be able to visit the parks those days. This is a bit troublesome for people wanting to visiting Disneyland Paris multiple days in a row. Luckily there is a workaround for this problem though! You can purchase your Discovery annual pass in advance of your trip and have it mailed to your house. You’ll have to do the math on whether the shipping fee negates the ticket price savings, but it is often still a better deal to have your annual pass shipped to your house. This is especially true if you’re ordering annual passes for a group because you only pay the shipping once. Disneyland Paris is one of those parks where you need to be strategic about what tickets you buy, or you could waste a lot of money. It is easy to overpay for tickets if you don’t understand the ticketing system.

Make Dining Reservations in Advance

This is one of the most important Disneyland Paris tips on the list! There aren’t too many table service restaurants in the parks, and reservations are limited. You’ll want to make a dining reservation well in advance of your trip if you want to eat at a particular restaurant. You can making dining reservations up to 6 months in advance of your trip, and for popular dining spots like Bistro Chez Remy, you’ll want to make them as far in advance as possible. If you book your Disneyland Paris trip less than six months in advance, book your dining as soon as you have a date. If you’re a planner and book your trip more than six months in advance, figure out the earliest day you can make reservations, put it in your calendar, and make the reservation the first day you can. You have to call Disneyland Paris to make a dining reservation. The phone number to book dining is +33 1 60 30 40 5. International rates do, unfortunately, apply if you’re calling from outside of France. You’ll be able to speak with an English-speaking person when you call the dining reservation number, and I’ve never been on hold for more than a few minutes. It is definitely worth taking the effort and booking dining reservations in advance.

You Don’t Need to Speak French

Language isn’t a barrier at all at Disneyland Paris! You don’t need to worry about not speaking French. All of the cast members speak English and there are English menus, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to communicate. There are English parks maps, and all the signs are in English as well as French. A lot of the rides with narration even have portions of it in English! It is a great way to allow everybody to get the full experience of the attraction. The safety instructions are also in English, so you don’t have to worry about not knowing the safety procedures of each ride. It, of course, takes a little time to get used to English not being the main and only language, but it won’t impede or restrict your Disneyland Paris trip in any way!

If you’re not sure if you should bring it, don’t

The lighter your backpack, the better. If in doubt, leave it behind. Trust me, you can buy pretty much anything you could possibly need in most places around the world. You’ll soon learn that all you need when you travel is a change of clothes, some money, and a passport. Everything else is adding to your comfort.

Let your bank know you’ll be travelling

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that my bank blocked my card something like 30 times in the first three years of my trip. Practically every time I arrived in a new country, I had to call them up to get it unblocked. And then I discovered that I could fill in my travel plans in my online banking. They’ve rarely blocked my card since.

Have a routine when checking out of a place

Checking out is when you’re most likely to lose something. Whenever I check out of a place, I check the bathroom, I check under the beds, I check the desks, and then I make sure I have my passport, laptop, camera, money, phone, and external hard drive. I’ll be fine if I leave anything else behind. Having a routine that you go through every single time will help you keep track of everything. I learned my lesson with this one when I left my passport behind in a guesthouse in Bagan, then left it in an apartment in London two months later.

Visit the touristy stuff in a city

The main tourist attractions are popular for a reason. While getting off the beaten track can be fun, the things you’ll see are rarely as impressive as the popular sights. Don’t be a travel snob — hit up the famous stops as well as the lesser-visited stuff. Going to random places normally just shows you that they aren’t well known for a reason. I’m thinking about my 10-day road trip around the Mekong Delta as I write this — we went to some obscure places where locals looked at me as though they hadn’t seen a white person before, and while that was pretty cool, there was also a reason why tourists hadn’t ventured to this tiny village before: there was nothing to do there.