Tokyo Disney vs Disneyland Paris for September/October 2019

runjanerun

Earning My Ears
Joined
Mar 5, 2015
Hi Everyone!

At the last minute, DH gave me the go ahead to start planning our fall break. It will be the last fall break for us as a family, as my oldest will be moving to a traditional school calendar next year when she goes to high school. So we decided, that we would go big for our Fall Break.

About us: Southern California family of 5, with a 13 year old girl, 11 year old girl, and 6 year old boy. We LOVE Disney.

Our family has been to both Disneyland and WDW many times. My husband has been to both DLP and to TDR. Loved TDR.

Fall Break for us is September 21 - October 13. We're thinking about an 11 day trip, probably 4 days in the parks, rest of the time travelling around the area. We are flexible about when we can leave or return during that 3 week period.

So should we go to Disneyland Paris or Tokyo Disney?

If it was just a choice between the 2 parks themselves, we would want to go to Tokyo because of how amazing my husband said it was.

But I am concerned about the weather and the crowds in Japan at that time. Plus it sounds like a lot of construction/renovation will be going on around that time.

I haven't had a chance to start looking at Europe. My husband's big concern was finding reasonably-priced accommodations for 5 people. We would probably just do a London-Paris trip.

So far some of the notes I've collected:
Weather - Middle of Typhoon Season
Crowd Calendar - Weekdays for the most part is in the "yellow" category-Normal Crowds. (32-38k people) http://www15.plala.or.jp/gcap/disney/
Sept 10 - Halloween Event Begins
Sept 23 - Japanese Holiday
Closed - Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jungle Cruise, Oct 1 Cinderella's Fairy Tale Hall, Jasmine's Flying Carpets
Views of DisneySea’s volcano, Mount Prometheus, may be affected by construction work from March 31, 2019, until late October 2020

What do you think? Japan or Europe? Any thoughts or suggestions?
 
Can't go wrong with either. I think Tokyo Disney has the better parks and normally I would recommend Tokyo Disney over Disneyland Paris but one of the biggest draws of Tokyo Disney is the view of Mount Prometheus which will have scaffoldings until late 2020 and the volcano ride itself will be closed so that's a big bummer.

They also have the Beauty and the Beast ride coming up in Spring 2020 so people may want to wait

London-Paris will be less of a culture shock, less language barrier, more familiar food and both cities have great sights and 11 days with Disneyland Paris is perfect
 
Like you said, if you were just going for the parks, then Tokyo would be the clear winner. I have three kids also and we did DLP when they were around 10, 9 and 6. We did Iceland, England then France in that order. It was easy and we saw so much in that time! We did three nights in Iceland, then drove around England for three days before going to London for two and then taking the Eurostar to Paris for five nights, then moved out to DLP for two nights. I think your kids may enjoy this more.

We just took ours to Japan this summer at 15, 14 and 11 and they loved it, but it's a lot. It's a lot of travel and the huge time change alone were a little tough. If they have never really traveled before, I say go to Europe for their first big trip.

Also, as a family of five, we either get two hotel rooms or rent through Airbnb. We had the best apartment in Le Marais in Paris!

I have links to my blogs below if you'd like to read my trip reports. Japan is still coming, but it's about half way done :)
 
Even excluding the huge difference in quality between Tokyo Disney and Disney Paris, Tokyo is such an amazing place, I'd highly recommend that. Nothing wrong with Paris, I enjoy it. But Tokyo is really something different and special.
 


I definitely prefer Tokyo to Paris. I've never been to Tokyo Disneyland, but I found Disneyland Paris to be disappointing. If you've been to Disneyland in California you won't find anything all that interesting about Disneyland Paris in my opinion. I've been to Paris 3 times, and found people to be generally rude there. So for me 100% Tokyo. They are such different places though, it's hard to compare.
 
I definitely prefer Tokyo to Paris. I've never been to Tokyo Disneyland, but I found Disneyland Paris to be disappointing. If you've been to Disneyland in California you won't find anything all that interesting about Disneyland Paris in my opinion. I've been to Paris 3 times, and found people to be generally rude there. So for me 100% Tokyo. They are such different places though, it's hard to compare.

I personally think DL Paris is the worst of all the Disney parks. I still have a good time there (it's Disney!) but I prefer the others.
 
I personally think DL Paris is the worst of all the Disney parks. I still have a good time there (it's Disney!) but I prefer the others.

We agree that DL Paris is the worst of all the Disney Parks.
still not a terrible experience...we will still visit DL Paris...but would put the other parks higher on our return visit list
 


No doubt you should go to Tokyo. Also, not sure of your source, but fall is not typhoon season in Japan. The rainy season is June.
 

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