More planning info:
Our initial plan was 1 day at Disneyland and 1 day at the Studios (2 separate 1 day tickets, we're going on $74 days), 1 hotel night in between and back to Paris after the day at the Studios. Now we're leaving from the parks to the south, so we decided to get 2 day hoppers for about $166 each, bought at a slight discount from Viator, which I've used before for other non-Disney tours. There was a UK reseller that was a little cheaper and offered free PhotoPass, but I wasn't sure if the offer was for UK residents so we went with the reseller I knew. I was able to load them in Disney's app, so it ended up being pretty easy to not book anything through Disney. We also booked our train tickets and found a nonstop from the station at the park, so we won't have to go into Paris or transfer, that was nice. The only thing left travel wise is our airport transfer, which I'm planning to book the Magical Shuttle, but it doesn't seem like you pick a time or that they ask for your flight info, so I'm willing to wait on that and either book it right before the flight departs or risk having to use Uber.
I've been checking the app various times throughout the day for wait times. Of course this could change in 2 weeks, but so far it all looks manageable without paying for premier access. There have been lines over an hour, but long waits don't bother us, we still remember life before fastpass. I'm willing to pay for a couple of rides per day if we have to, but another plus to getting the hoppers is we have a second shot if we miss something. And we'll be there before Avenger's Campus opens, so there really isn't a while lot at the Studios, plus we have several rides we're planning to skip, like Tower of Terror and Star Tours.
The main thing that I'm looking at now is food. I made a reservation at Downtown, the buffet at New York hotel for our arrival night (our flight lands around 3:30, so I figure between the bus and checking into the hotel we'd get there around 7pm), but neither of us really wants to go to a buffet. Even though the menu is sparse we'll probably take our chances at the Skyline bar. The only place in the Village that we're interested in is King Ludwig's, but I haven't been able to find hours, and after going over the park menus we could find I think we'll probably end up eating there on a park day. The park food seems to be heavy on American fast food style concessions and Italian food. Since our original plan would have been probably 3 park meals and now we'll be there for 2+ days, probably 7 meals, I'm starting to not feel great about paying Disney prices for stuff I just don't want. I'm finding the app hard to navigate, a lot of places don't have menus online, (the ones that do are only in the app, not on Disney's website,) and several of them serve one item. Toad Hall has fish and chips and a vegetarian fried fish and chips. Good thing I like fish and chips because I'm wouldn't skip a meal at Toad Hall. One plus about having park hoppers now is that we get 2 chances to get walk-up for Bistrot Chez Remy. But other than that, I'm hoping that a lot of the snack and grab and go places have some unique stuff we'll want. I'm not going to be thrilled if I flew all the way to France to pay Disney $20 for a veggie burger or sad looking personal pizza.
So that's where I am with my self-planned trip:
Flight - ✅
Offsite hotel - ✅
3rd party tickets - ✅
Airport transfer - ❓
Food - ❌
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