At the end of last month, we did something super exciting: we took our first every trip to Disneyland! With it being our last chance at going as a family of three, we decided there was no time like the present. We managed to find a really good deal, and a couple of months later, we hopped on the Eurostar and off we went! I’d read previously that a vegan Disneyland Paris trip can be quite the challenge, so I did lots of research beforehand. While I have to say that I wasn’t blown away by the options, we certainly didn’t starve, either!
A Vegan Disneyland Paris Breakfast
We decided to have breakfast included in our hotel stay. While we knew that there wouldn’t be THAT many options, there was a reasonable amount of choice, the price wasn’t all too bad, and it was super convenient. We stayed at the Hotel Cheyenne, and on both mornings enjoyed short queues at the hotel breakfast buffet.
Juice, tea, coffee were all available on tap. There were also a number of different rolls and bread (including my favourite rye!), as well as an assortment of jams, lots of fruit, and cereals. They do have soy milk, although it isn’t out – you have to go up to one of the counters and ask for it. They also don’t have pitchers for it, so make sure you grab a mug from the coffee station to fill up first! While breakfast wasn’t really that impressive, it was a lot less plastic-heavy than I expected. Yes, there were plenty of pre-portioned items, but jam for instance came out of a huge dispenser, no plastic in sight! I feel like that’s worth highlighting. Overall, a few tiny tweaks could have made this so much better for vegans – offering non-dairy spread and yoghurt, for instance, would have made a noticeable difference.
Vegan Lunch Options at Disneyland Paris
Lunch was one of the trickier vegan Disneyland Paris meals for us. On the first day, we headed to Starbucks in Disney Village. They had a vegan wrap (which was also the only vegetarian options – this place really is meat-heavy), as well as the usual non-dairy drinks. It was crazy expensive for the three of us, but the soy hot chocolate was so welcome after being outside in the freezing cold for a few hours!
On days two and three, we tried to keep the cost down a bit by bringing some of our own food with us. We brought along snack bars, some satsumas, and some packets of crisps, and then topped lunch up with a pretzel from one of the stalls in Hollywood Studios. There was also an all-vegan stall directly opposite the Tower of Terror with a few decent lunch options, which appears to be in place more or less permanently. We had a look at it a few times, but ended up not buying anything as it seemed very overpriced for pretty unexciting food (soup and banana bread).
Snack Attack!
There weren’t all that many vegan snacks available during our visit to Disneyland Paris… but the two that we did have definitely stood out!
As part of the current Frozen Celebration going on in the parks, some of the stalls and huts selling the special menu had vegan raspberry-beetroot bites. These look a bit underwhelming, but I seriously enjoyed them. In fact, I think they may have been the second-best thing I ate during the entire trip. From what I’ve gathered, Disney seem to be including one or two vegan options in all their seasonal events menus, which change throughout the year, so it’s definitely worth having a look even if the Frozen Celebration is over by the time you visit! Psst – not all stalls selling items from the menu sell everything, so you might have to look around for a while before you find specific foods.
My absolute favourite, though, were the Churros. We picked these up from Fuente del Oro in Frontierland, and they were both delicious and very reasonably priced – at least for Disney standards! I seriously regret not picking them up on our first and last days as well, as they were so nice!
Plant-Based Disney Dinners
Dinner is where all my forward-planning failed a little bit. We thought we would go to Vapiano on the first night, and Planet Hollywood on the second. Both are located in Disney Village, have some decent vegan options, and neither completely blow the budget. I hadn’t realised, however, how absolutely shattered we would be by dinnertime each day. On the first day, we went to our hotel and were planning to walk back to the village after a short rest – but obvs that didn’t happen. We barely managed to drag ourselves back out of the door, so we bit the bullet and went for the overpriced hotel buffet dinner.
While the vegan options at the Chuck Wagon Cafe weren’t outstanding, they weren’t terrible either, especially not for families with young children. We had a variety of bean salads (which were surprisingly nice), pasta pomodoro, different breads, and lots of veggies and fruits. If you asked me if it was worth the price, I’d have to say absolutely not. However, it’s definitely workable, and a convenient option for on-site hotel stays. I would also definitely do this again if our package included the free half board that Disney sometimes run.
On our second night, we had learnt our lesson and picked up dinner to have in our hotel room from the Earl of Sandwich on the walk home. We picked up a double veggie sandwich, asking for avocado instead of cheese, which wasn’t a problem at all. We also got some wedges and drinks, all for less than EUR 30.00. It was quite possibly the most reasonably-priced meal of the trip. My only advice here would be to double-check the sauce ingredients and perhaps ask for a different one – I have a suspicion that it contained dairy, but I didn’t think to check at the time. The ordering system is very straightforward and staff were really clued up, so I’m sure they’d be able to help. Another bonus is that our takeaway was almost entirely free from plastic, with the exception of the sauce sachets!
All in all, we had a pretty great time. If I had to distill this post down to two top tips for a vegan Disneyland Paris trip, I would say to a) bring some snacks along and b) focus on buying your main meals outside of the park, in Disney Village. Even though it’s still pretty expensive, the food is generally better value and the options are also a bit wider. Having said that, though, there are more and more vegan options appearing in the parks, so I’m hopeful that plant based options will feature on every Disney menu over the next few years!
