Eating at Disneyland Paris

We are experienced Disney travelers. We’ve created vacation guides for friends and family visiting Walt Disney World and have done the Disney Dining Plan in various forms over the last twenty years.

This trip to Disneyland Paris would be a little different. Having just come off a lengthy river cruise with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks every day, as well as a few days in Paris, we knew we probably wouldn’t be going too heavy.

We also knew there would be so much to see and do that we didn’t want to sit in restaurants all day.

 

Disneyland Paris Meal Plans

While we opted not to do a Disneyland Paris Meal Plan, they do offer them. Here’s a short breakdown of what they offer.

You. Can choose between 1, 2, or 3 meals per day per person, and the Meal Plan Vouchers are calculated based on the number of nights.

• Breakfast Only: An All-you-Can-Eat breakfast served at your Disney Hotel, including drinks.

• Half Board: Breakfast at your hotel and then either lunch or dinner at the restaurant of your choice. 

• Full Board: Includes three meals per day.

 

But Wait! There’s More!

However, you then pick additional options that determine the range of restaurants available to you. And honestly, that’s where it gets a bit more complicated.

The meal plans are based on the Disney Hotel where you are staying.

• Standard: Davey Crockett Ranch and Hotel Santa Fe offer a range of restaurants, including buffets and table-service restaurants, but no Character Dining.

• Plus: Offered at Hotel Chayenne, Sequoia Lodge, Newport Bay Club, Hotel New York – The Art of Marvel. This also offers a range of restaurants, including buffets and table service with no character dining. 

• Premium: Offered at Disneyland Hotel. You can use as many of your lunch and dinner vouchers as you like with characters.

• Extra Plus: This is available at all Disney Hotels except for the Disneyland Hotel and includes a wide range of restaurants, including Character Dining. You can do one Character Dining experience per day. This also includes one snack and one drink per Guest.

 

Confused Yet? 

It seems the upgrades are based on which hotel you are staying in, as your buffet breakfast would typically be at that hotel. The Extra Plus is only available for Full Board Plans, and with the Standard Full Board, one of your lunch or dinner choices has to be at a Quick Serve Restaurant.

It was just too much food for us, and we didn’t really want a big breakfast buffet. Chuck is not a big breakfast eater, and staying at the Disneyland Hotel really increased the price.

 

Our Plan of Attack

On our first day, the incredible breakfast buffet at the hotel in Paris was included. So we figured we’d grab a snack in the park and book a dinner reservation. 

The rest of the time was spent following a plan that worked well. Coffee and tea in our hotel room, usually with a muffin or pastry we purchased the night before.

Then, at midday, just after the lunch crowds, we made buffet reservations for restaurants near where we planned to explore that day.

This also gave us the perfect opportunity to avoid the daytime crowds and heat in the parks and to head back to our room afterward to chill out.

Later that night, we’d share a nibble and grab a sweet treat.

With that said, here is some information on the buffets we tried, reviews of our experience, and some of the treats we tried along the way.

 

Dinner at La Grange

La Grange is an all-you-can-eat buffet located on the second floor of Billy Bob’s Country Western Saloon. It’s located in Disney Village, not far from our hotel.

Arriving at the restaurant, it was difficult to know where to go. The saloon downstairs was open and moderately crowded. It seemed the upstairs was not open yet, and people stacked up near the entrance waiting for the staff to begin seating. Once the doors opened, people swarmed the desk, regardless of when they may have arrived.

Oddly, the saloon downstairs felt like it had a much more western vibe than the restaurant.

The cost for the dinner buffet is €40 and includes a non-alcoholic beverage. It was listed as Tex-Mex fare, and we honestly expected something along the lines of the Trail’s End Restaurant at Walt Disney World’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground. 

What we got was more of a soundstage with minimal decor and tables packed on top of each other. With a majority of the room seated at once, hordes of unattended children hit the buffet hard, making it nearly impossible to reach. Once we got to the buffet, it was picked over and unappetizing.

 

 

You know it wasn’t very memorable when the only standout dish was the coleslaw. However, the dessert selections were very nice. 

 

We thought this would be a nice change and a taste of home, but we’ll say it’s a hard pass.

 

Agrabah Cafe Restaurant 

Located in Adventureland, Agrabah Cafe Restaurant offers a buffet of Middle Eastern cuisine in a truly immersive setting. It very much reminded us of the Tangierine Café Quick Service in EPCOT’s Morocco Pavilion, only much larger. We really enjoyed the atmosphere, you felt like you were eating in a cafe in a local market.

 

The cost of the all-you-can-eat buffet was €45 for adults, including a non-alcoholic beverage. There was a wonderful spread of salads, dips, breads, and condiments. Mark loved the carved lamb, and we both enjoyed the sausages, samosas, and vegetarian meatballs. The chefs attending the buffet were friendly and helpful.

The only downside was that the servers seemed to be able to do only one thing at a time. While walking to refill people’s beverages, they were unable to clear the dishes from the tables. So the drink service was a little slow. While there was a nice selection of desserts, many were very dry.

Overall, we found the food quality to be very good, with a nice selection and a good value for what we had. We would absolutely go back.

 

Royal Banquet

For our third day, we selected the Royal Banquet, located right inside our hotel. At the time of making our reservations, there seemed to be some confusion as to whether lunch was a Character Dining Experience. Most sources said that dinner was, but lunch was not, so we rolled the dice and took our chances. Character Dining would be more expensive, but we’d get to hang with the characters.

As it turned out, it was a Character Dining Experience at €100 each. We were seated quickly, and the restaurant is beautiful with pictures of royal families from Disney animated features.

 

The buffet offered a nice variety of seafood, carved meats, salads, and dips. However, listed as a “gourmet buffet’ it missed the mark a bit. We found that the cold seafood dishes lacked necessary items like cocktail forks and lobster crackers, many food items sat empty repeatedly, and our server was very slow and indifferent.

For €100 each, we would have hoped that a buffet server could have done a better job of preventing plates from piling up.

Overall, the seafood and desserts were excellent.

Clearly, the standouts were the visits from Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Daisy in their royal attire. It was fun for us, and we liked seeing the children near us experience them as well.

 

 

Another standout moment was leaving the restaurant, we saw a Cast Member who was seating guests kneel to have a conversation with a young girl using a wheelchair. Engaging with her while looking her straight in the eye was pure Disney Magic.

For us, it was a nice splurge, but probably a one-and-done experience.

 

Pym Kitchen

For our last full day at Disneyland Paris, we had lunch at PYM Kitchen, located in Disney Adventure World, Avengers Campus. It is set in a food science lab created by Dr. Hank Pym and follows the Ant-Man and the Wasp theme. The decor has some fun touches, and the food is either GIANT or tiny, so there were some cute items.

Seating here could be good; however, managers allow guests to bring their oversized wagons, stacked with everything they own, and park them in the middle of the restaurant.

 

 

Service here was HORRIFIC! Mind you, this is a self-service buffet; all the staff have to do is get drinks and clear plates. They have staff specifically assigned to clean and reset tables after guests leave, so they can’t be that busy!

We were seated for quite a while before anyone took our drink order. Mark went to the buffet, returned with his first plate, and Chuck followed close behind. Mark was finished before anyone took a drink order.

Chuck spoke to a manager who shrugged his shoulders, returned with giant soft pretzels for several tables, and brought us a carafe of water – with no glasses. Staff wandered past tables without ever picking up a plate.

 

 

As for the salads, when stocked, they were fresh. Mark tried the Rabbit and Hazelnut Pate and cheese selections, which were amazing, and the standouts were the mini corn dogs and the miniature burgers. We found that the giant burger, which they were out of for some time, was very dry, and for the longest time, no one was there to serve.

While the concept was cute, at €45 with a soft drink, it was just not worth the long waits for food to be restocked or the poor service. This should be a Hard Pass!

 

Snack Time

During our four days, we ate just the one main meal at midday, usually a buffet, and then snacked in the morning or around dinnertime.

Here are a few of the highs and lows.

 

Casa de Coco – Restaurante de Familia

Located in Frontierland, Casa de Coco is a quick-service restaurant themed after the Disney · Pixar animated movie “Coco.” It’s one of our favorites, so much so that we named our adopted street cat Coco.

It was fun to see Mexican heritage on display in Frontierland. The restaurant offers Tex-Mex food with vegetarian and vegan options.

 

 

No, the irony of two guys from Merida, Mexico, eating Tex-Mex in Paris is not lost on us!

We stopped for a quick bite midday. We each ordered the Burrito au Boeuf (€12), a Beef Burrito. They were filled with “spicy beef chili, rice, grated cheddar, guacamole, lettuce, tomato, red onion and cilantro.” While the chili was hardly ‘spicy’, the burrito wasn’t bad.

We also shared an order of Jalapeños au Cheddar (€5,5) and Jalapeño Poppers. They were crisp, had a little bite, and were a pretty good value.

 

 

Burritos were available in beef, chicken, and Vegan. Other food items offered were a vegetarian salad, beef empanadas, onion rings, fries, chicken bites, and Doritos with cheddar cheese sauce.

Overall, there was a decent amount of seating, the staff kept tables clean, and the food was tasty but a tad pricey for what it was.

 

Colonel Hathi’s Outpost Restaurant

Located in Adventureland, Colonel Hathi’s Outpost is a quick-service restaurant featuring Indian food, themed after an outpost in the story The Jungle Book.

 

 

The dining room is huge, with plenty of seating, broken into some smaller spaces, and it was very quiet when we were there. Luckily, we sat in an enclosed terrace area with a very attentive Cast Member who cleared tables and cleaned up. 

The menu, however, is very interesting. Touted as Indian fare offering vegan and vegetarian options, it’s actually quite a mix. Pizza, pasta, and salads are offered along with Lentil Dahl, Butter Chicken, Vegetable Pakora, and Onion Bahji.

Snacking, we opted to share an order of the Onion Bahji (€6,5) for six pieces and the Vegetable Pakora (€6,5) for eight pieces. We found the Onion Bahji to be a little doughy, but both dishes were flavorful and served hot. However, for the life of us, we can’t remember being offered any dipping sauce.

 

A nice afternoon snack for sharing.

 

Cable Car Cafe

One morning, we popped into the Cable Car Cafe on Main Street USA for Mark’s second cup of coffee and a sweet treat.

 

Beignet Mickey (€4,5). This beignet was more of a donut than a light, fluffy beignet. It was ‘filled’ with chocolate-hazelnut filling. It was tasty but really needed more filling; when you bit into the ears, you got just dough.

 

 

Mickey Bars

Located throughout both parks, we actually ate a few of these. This Disney standard was rich and creamy with crisp dark chocolate. At €4,5, they were a nice, sweet treat, and after eating them all the time at Walt Disney World, it was nice not having them melt so fast.

 

 

Häagen-Dazs

Located in Disney Village is the Gaumont Cinemas, which offers fifteen screens, including an IMAX theater. However, we weren’t there for a movie; we stopped in one night for Häagen-Dazs ice cream in the concession stand.

The lobby was empty, and the staff was very helpful. Chuck went very chocolaty with the Brownie Explosion, and Mark went in the opposite direction with Macadamia Crunch.

 

 

They were cool and refreshing. The concession opens at 1:30 PM daily and closes at about 10:30, and is just a short walk from our hotel.

 

Overall Review

All in all, none of the food we had was bad. Everything we had was flavorful and served at the appropriate temperatures.

There were very few standout foods, but that’s pretty much as expected. Similarly, the prices were what we expected for a Disney park.

The one thing that truly disappointed us was the service. While we encountered some very friendly Cast Members, overall service and Disney Culture were lacking. 

Part of this could be that European dining culture is just different from the US; we encounter this a lot in Mexico, too. The staff is there, and if you need something, you have to flag them down; no hovering, and servers are not looking to turn a table. You can sit for as long as you’d like.

Unfortunately, this seemed to go deeper. We always found at Disney World and Disneyland that the vast majority of Cast Members grew up with Disney Culture. Many were kids ( and sometimes grandkids) of OG Cast Members. It was fun for them to work at Disney, regardless of their role.

This just seemed to be lacking not only in the restaurants but throughout the parks. 

But more on the parks in our next blog.