If you want to get ahead of the crowds during your time at Disneyland Paris and need a little help, this guide to using Fastpasses should come in handy.
What is a Fastpass?
Fastpasses are tickets available at Disneyland Paris that allow you to beat the queues on certain attractions. While you might still have to wait a few minutes to get onto the ride, the Fastpass entrance will cut out most of the queue and allow you to join at the very last minute, usually compared to much longer standby lines.
How do Fastpasses work at Disneyland Paris?
Fastpasses are free to all Disneyland Paris guests. I’ll say that again – FASTPASSES ARE FREE TO ALL DISNEYLAND PARIS GUESTS! You don’t have to be staying at a Disneyland resort hotel, you don’t have to have a multi-day ticket, you don’t have to be a special member or annual pass holder. Anyone visiting Disneyland Paris with a valid entry ticket can get their hands on a Fastpass.
All you need to do is take your park ticket to the attraction and look for the Fastpass machines – usually just to the side of the ride entrance. Scan the barcode of your park ticket at the self-service machine and it’ll print off a Fastpass ticket for you with an allotted 30 minute time slot for you to return to the ride. Show the ticket to the cast member at the Fastpass queue entrance during your time slot, they’ll let you through and you’ll join the standby line pretty much at the front of the queue.
You must return to the attraction during the time slot on your ticket. It’s also worth noting that you can only use one Fastpass at a time, so you can’t run straight to every ride and book your time slots for the day! You’ll be given a time on your Fastpass ticket from which you will be able to book your next Fastpass.
Which rides have Fastpass queues at Disneyland Paris?
Not every attraction at Disneyland Paris has a Fastpass queue available. The following rides are currently the only ones that allow Fastpass access:
Disneyland Park
Big Thunder Mountain
Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril
Peter Pan’s Flight
Star Tours: The Adventures Continue
Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain
Walt Disney Studios Park
Ratatouille: The Adventure
Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith
Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
What are Super and Ultimate Fastpasses?
These are paid upgrades which allow extra benefits with a Fastpass. The Super Fastpass is the cheaper option and allows one-time access to either three Family Attractions or three Big Thrill Attractions. The Ultimate Fastpass is more expensive and allows either one-time or unlimited access (depending on your budget!) to all the Fastpass rides.
While these do have their benefits, such as not being restricted by time slots or having to wait before you can get another Fastpass, they’re really pricey for what they are. With a little know-how you can easily navigate the parks and get on all these attractions using free Fastpasses.
How to get the most out of Fastpasses
It depends what rides you want to get on and how important those attractions are to your day, but here are a few of my tips when it comes to making the most of those free Fastpasses.
Family rides
The family attractions available on the Fastpass service – Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, Peter Pan’s Flight and Ratatouille: The Adventure – are popular rides and all worth grabbing passes for if possible.
However, if you have to pick one, go for Peter Pan’s Flight. It regularly has one of the longest queues in the park and, although it’s a fantastic, classic attraction, the ride itself is so brief you’ll likely feel short-changed if you’ve stood in line for an hour.
Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast has a slow-moving queue, but towards the end of the day this will get shorter and you can probably jump in with a 15 minute wait time. As for Ratatouille: The Adventure, you’ll want to head over first thing during extra magic hours or rope drop to avoid long wait times. If you can’t get there early and do have to wait, don’t worry; this queue is fun, interactive and, basically, bearable.
Thrill rides – Disneyland Park
The big thrill rides in the Disneyland Park can all experience long wait times throughout the day, but it’s not too difficult to make time for each of them.
You probably won’t be able to grab a Fastpass for all of these rides, simply because of the time you have to wait in between passes and the limited number of passes available for each ride. But the good news is, you probably won’t need them.
The first attraction I’d recommend getting a Fastpass for is Big Thunder Mountain. It’s one of the biggest rides in the park and the line is always long; on a good day you’re looking at 40 minutes, on a bad day you’re more likely to see wait times of 90 minutes. It’s definitely worth riding, but get a Fastpass early on for this one.
The second attraction probably worth snatching a Fastpass for is Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain. It’s a really popular ride with both kids and adults, especially since its Star Wars overlay, and definitely one you won’t want to miss. You could get lucky with a short wait times cropping up occasionally but I wouldn’t count on it; there’s a good chance you could end up waiting 45 minutes in, frankly, a very boring queue. Get a Fastpass to avoid this.
Star Tours: The Adventures Continue is a tricky one; peak time (i.e. the middle of the day) can see long queues for this ride but, if you rope drop or hang around until the crowds die down, you’ll probably see wait times of 15 – 20 minutes. With this one, I’d actually suggest holding out for a shorter queue and getting in the standby line because the theming is excellent and worth checking out if you can jump in at a good time.
Do not waste a Fastpass on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril! It’s such a short coaster and honestly not that great, so you could end up throwing away a valuable time slot. It’s also not worth waiting in long lines for so, when you see a 45 minute queue time for this ride, don’t fall for it; wait until the end of the day and the line will shrink right down to around 5 – 10 minutes. At this point, it’s well worth jumping on for a fun coaster ride.
Thrill rides – Walt Disney Studios Park
Fastpasses at the Walt Disney Studios Park are really easy to figure out (for now!) because there aren’t many rides in the park with the Fastpass option available.
The two big rides in this park that do offer Fastpasses – Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith (soon to close for refurbishment and reopen as an Iron Man coaster) and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror – are both great attractions for any thrill seeker.
The frustrating thing with these rides is that both lines are actually themed really well and it’s a shame to miss out; however, the best parts of each queue are both still included if you join at the Fastpass entrance.
To be completely honest, there’s not much difference between these rides when it comes to a Fastpass strategy. On busy days wait times can creep up on both, with Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith sometimes hitting the 50 minute mark while The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror can reach wait times of 70 minutes; however, both rides are also known hover around 15 minutes all day sometimes.
If the wait times are short – anything less than 20 minutes – you might as well hop into the standby line because the theming really is worth checking out. However, if wait times are high, grab yourself some passes. Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith is a short ride so might not feel worthy of a long wait, whereas The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror feels like more of a complete ride experience. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror also manages to load quite a lot of guests onto the three elevators so the queue moves along quite nicely. If you can only get a Fastpass for one I’d perhaps suggest Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith, but you can probably manage to grab both – and won’t struggle too much if you can’t get either.
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