Onsite, or off-site? That is the question.

There are a lot of factors that can influence your decision of where to stay during your Disneyland Paris trip: cost, theming, amenities, and character meets, among many others. All of these are valid, and all of these are going to be given different weight in your decision based on what is important to you. That’s why we aren’t going to talk about any of them! We’re going to talk about one thing only here: should you stay on-site or off-site?

We didn’t know how big of a decision that this was until after we had alreaday made it.

For our family, and for many neurospicy families out there, we tend to burn through our energy quickly and then need to recharge. And Disneyland Paris is a place that requires a lot of our energy! What we discovered we needed for us to have successful days was to take a break of a few hours in the middle of every day we were in the Parks. We also learned that it would be a good idea to take a day completely away from the Parks in the middle of our trip, just to give us that much more rest. For those days where we didn’t take those breaks in the day, we had a much harder time (and got fewer things done while at it!) compared to the days when we did take a break.

And this is where the on-site/off-site question comes in. When you stay on-site (which I’m defining as any of the Disneyland hotels that are attached to the Parks), you are always within walking distance to a place where you can control how loud/hot/smelly/bright it is. And that is a really crucial benefit when the level of sensory experience in the Parks is so high.

What kind of break do you need?

So, one extra question, that you may or may not have known you needed to ask yourself when booking hotels, is whether or not you and your team will need (or benefit from) a break away from the hustle and bustle of the Parks. If you think this break would be helpful, then you need to consider how easy you want/need that break to be. If you need that break and need it to be really easily accessible, then maybe booking a hotel on-site might be the way to go.

This is not to say that you NEED to stay on-site if you are neurodivergent. In fact, we have never stayed on-site. It can be quite expensive after all. While we found out that we did need those breaks, we also found out that we could stay off-site and get to them fairly quickly as well. For our first trip to the Parks we stayed at a hotel in Val D’Europe, which is a town not far outside the Parks themselves. From our hotel we could walk to Disney Village in about 12-15 minutes, even with the Expansion Packs! Others have suggested that this is roughly the same time it would take to walk from the Santa Fe hotel on-site, but I’ve not done that walk, so I can’t confirm it. The really amusing thing about this is that it actually took us longer to walk to the car park from Disney Village, as it is so far away. And then we had to drive back to the hotel as well! So, we not only ended up walking to and from the Parks to our hotel at the start and end of each day, but also for our mid-day breaks.

Buses are doable, but harder.

The second time that we visited the Parks we stayed at a hotel that we needed to take the local bus to be able to get to the Parks (we took the TGV to Disneyland Paris this time, instead of driving like we did the first time). Well, we could have walked, but the 50-60 minutes it would have taken would not have been the right call to make with the Expansion Packs. We found this to be much more difficult to manage, as heading back to the hotel for a break was too stressful with the extra time and steps involved to make the break an actual break for all of us. So, we pivoted. Instead, we knew that we had more limited hours in the Parks each day, and adjusted our schedule to fit that. For the one day we (bravely) stayed until the fireworks spectacular, we didn’t get to the Parks at all until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Because we knew that we wouldn’t make it the whole day if we went in the morning.

Again, this is just how it was for us, and you might not need a break in the day! If you, like us, find that you need a break in the day to lower your sensory input and relax for a bit, then you should consider whether it is worth it for you to stay on-site, or at least close to the Parks so you can more easily come and go as you need. We were surprised at how much taking this break helped us enjoy the times when we were in the Parks, and will be planning those breaks into any visits we have in the future. If you are only visiting for a few days, you might need to consider how much of a break you may need, and how much time you will need to build into your schedule to make this happen. Staying on-site or close by can assist in reducing that time, seeing as it will just take you less time to get to your lower-sensory hotel room!