Triez vos problèmes alimentaires à Disneyland Paris! A guide to minimising potential food issues at Disneyland Paris.

I started my Restaurant En Coulisse review by explaining that the food reputation at Disneyland Paris is often described as "meh". This is because of a variety of factors such as lack of good quality, price and the most common one, crowding!  Like seriously, have a gander at Trip Adviser now and you'll see that people are docking marks for crowding and/or the food quality left, right and centre.

So today, I decided to create a short guide on how to reduce the damage and 1-2 suggestions that I believe Disneyland Paris should implement in order to get their act together.

What you can do?

Picture Source: Disneyland Paris

Upon looking at the various reviews/Twitter accounts that highlighted this issue. There were 3 different problems. All problems that, with a little bit of a planning, can be minimised or avoided altogether. 

The first issue is that the counter-service restaurants are super crowded to the point where seating becomes an issue. My advice here is to either have an early lunch (between 11 and 12) or a late lunch (half past 2 and half past 4) and use the peak lunchtime (12-2) to fit in a ride/character meeting. Lines typically become a lot more quieter and you'll be more likely to grab a chair.

If you absolutely MUST have your lunch in peak time, I recommend one of two game plans.

1. Dine in Disney Village: Typically, the village is quieter at lunch than it is at dinner time because everybody is in the parks. 
2. Bring your own scoff. There's a little picnic area by the village which allows you to bring your own food. If you are staying on property, there's a petrol garage next to Santa Fe that sells sandwich items and the relevant accompaniments. Ideal if you can't get to a supermarket.

If you are on any of the meal plans, my advice is to make sure you book your tables as close to the 60 day period as humanly possible. I've even told you how to book online so there's zero excuse. This is super important now because Disney are giving all Brits free dining if they book before a certain period of time, this means that the buffet restaurants, table-service and character dining will all get busier.  Don't risk it when you're there, have your must dos locked in and ready to go, that way you'll be less stressed in Paris.

What Disneyland Paris can do

Picture Source: Disneyland Paris

A wise man once said that prevention was better than cure, getting rid of the problem altogether is even more fantastic. Now, I'm not saying that Disney should resort to culling and genocide, because that's illegal at best and just disgusting at worse. Instead, Disneyland Paris should take note of it's American cousins. 

There's four things the yanks do better than the French at this moment in time when it comes to food. 

1. Bigger variety of counter-service options. Now I am aware that Florida is bigger however there is more variety in let's say Magic Kingdom, than there is at Disneyland Park. Whilst there are a couple of exceptions, counter-service places in Disneyland Paris tend to serve hotdogs, pizzas, burgers, salads or a combination of the list with very few places being blessed with standout dishes to separate them. Walt Disney Studios really suffers from this issue, it only has two counter service eateries and the better one of the two is closed. 
2. Bigger restaurant variety as a whole. In the states you can eat anything from cheesy chips to a AAA 5 diamond restaurant. At Disneyland Paris, you have counter service, buffet and table service, with character dining covering the most expensive of the two options available. When I spoke about what restaurants I wanted to see at Disneyland Paris, I stated that Disneyland Paris would really benefit from having a family style restaurant and that Frozenland could be a really location to house this place.
3. They actually open their eateries. I don't understand how you can be Europe's number one travel destination and not have all of your resturants open. Plain and simple. I mentioned in the first point that one of the counter service eateries at Walt Disney Studios is closed, despite its lack of options. This problem unfortunately rolls over to the Disneyland Park and needless to say, if less places are open, the place that are open become more crowded. More crowds mean that you have larger queues and wait times and ultimately dampens the experience. It also doesn't help that the restaurants that are actually open don't always maximise their efficiency. Seriously Disneyland Paris sort it out because it's taking the mickey now!
4. They make people's life easier! Two words, mobile ordering! In the states, you are now able to order your counter-service meals via the My Disney Experience app and then it's prepped when you arrive at the restaurant in question and you then pick it up from a separate queue. This have been a lifeline for many of the guests that visit the American Disney parks every year and has really helped with the crowd control. So why hasn't Disneyland Paris done this? They already have an app available and it would SERIOUSLY help with crowd control if they still can't be bothered to open everywhere up. 

So in conclusion, the food problems can be solved by a combination of guest preparation and park preparation. Guests can ensure that their restaurants are booked and they attempt to dine off-peak whilst the park needs to take note from it's American relatives and do the very basics. Basics such as actually opening your eateries and queue lines to reduce crowding, which you would think should be common sense, but hey, maybe they haven't played as much Roller Coaster Tycoon as I have. 🐸🍵

Thanks for reading guys. Don't forget to like the official Facebook Page for updates of upcoming entries and follow me on Bloglovin for updates of when my latest post comes out. I am actually going back to Paris as of tomorrow so I will be slower on the blog traffic until Saturday/Sunday. To make up for it however, expect at least 2 brand new restaurant reviews before Christmas. 

Until my return folks, make a wish and lick your lips.

Kelly