"Commute" from Paris everyday

Mskia

Earning My Ears
Joined
Oct 30, 2017
I have been thinking about staying in Paris and going to DLP just for the day, for two days. Has anyone ever commuted to DLP from Paris on multiple days in a trip? I am traveling with family who are not interested in DLP but I want to spend two days there.
 
I did a one day trip there several years ago. It's 45 minutes to over an hour, depending on where in Paris you are staying. You'll have to transfer from the regular Metro train to the RER line that goes to DL Paris.
 
If you don't mind spending some time in transit, you'll be fine.

Allow for some buffer as there might be unexpected delays during peak hours. Hopefully you're going “against the crowd” when going to DLP, as most local go work in Paris and back to their home after work.
 


has a Mickey head next to the name.
This!! I was so obsessed looking at the lines and making sure I got the right one until I saw the Mickey head on the signs, then quickly told my family pulling all their luggage, “Ignore everything I just said, just follow Mickey!” Perfect!

It’s easy, just have to plan on the travel time, it’s not as fast as you’d think.
 
This!! I was so obsessed looking at the lines and making sure I got the right one until I saw the Mickey head on the signs, then quickly told my family pulling all their luggage, “Ignore everything I just said, just follow Mickey!” Perfect!

It’s easy, just have to plan on the travel time, it’s not as fast as you’d think.

The Mickey shape is indeed a lifesaver!

One thing worthy, PAs are usually not in English, except in Torcy, where some trains terminate. The pre-recorded voice says loud and clear to wait for the next train on the same platform (which is the thing to do).
 
One note of caution. We used the RER to transfer from our Paris Hotel to our DLP hotel in August 2019. August is the off season, and some work was being done on the RER A line to DLP that took it out of service over the weekend. We were not impacted, as were traveling on a Monday, but we could have been had our schedule worked out differently by only one day.
 
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Also isnt Paris or France as a whole known for having worker walk outs that affect trains and metro systems? Not just the current one, but it being a regular occurrence? That is why we will be staying near the park in September.
 
Also isnt Paris or France as a whole known for having worker walk outs that affect trains and metro systems? Not just the current one, but it being a regular occurrence? That is why we will be staying near the park in September.
Strikes are always announced in advance, they don't happen on the spot.

Also not everyone strikes. most of the time some people still carry out their work, but it makes the service unreliable which trains go and which are cancelled or delayed.
 
Just a word of caution: RER A is the world's busiest line outside of Asia (source Wikipedia). Unexpected disruptions and delays can happen because of that. However RATP knows their stuff, they have a whole team dedicated to optimizing traffic and minimizing delays. Expect to be no more than 20 minutes late 99,99% of the time.

By law strikes have to be announced a few days earlier, and major construction works (such as the one that happen during summer) are announced months, if not years, before they happen.

RER A is probably the most reliable transit system you can find!
 
Just a word of caution: RER A is the world's busiest line outside of Asia (source Wikipedia). Unexpected disruptions and delays can happen because of that. However RATP knows their stuff, they have a whole team dedicated to optimizing traffic and minimizing delays. Expect to be no more than 20 minutes late 99,99% of the time.

By law strikes have to be announced a few days earlier, and major construction works (such as the one that happen during summer) are announced months, if not years, before they happen.

RER A is probably the most reliable transit system you can find!

Sorry if you misunderstood, I was not questioning the reliability of the RER A. I was only pointing out that it is good practice when planing use of any transit system to be aware that scheduled maintenance can sometimes impact/disrupt service.

In our case, our travel dates were locked in, but I never factored in the service disruption that had been announced far in advance. Had we been unable to reach DLP via the RER, we likely would have just paid 100 Euro for an Uber, rather than the 35 Euro train fare (cost is for a family of four).

During another part of our trip, due to service disruptions I should have known about in advance, we not only had trouble getting to L'Arc de Triomphe from Versailles, but we also decided an Uber was the best option from our hotel to our early morning Eiffel Tower reservation.
 
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Strikes are always announced in advance, they don't happen on the spot.

Also not everyone strikes. most of the time some people still carry out their work, but it makes the service unreliable which trains go and which are cancelled or delayed.
They may be announced, but as I understand it they are still fairly common. When you book your hotel months in advance thinking you can commute from the city center and they announce it right before you go, I'd assume it would leave some scrambling to figure things out that you had not planned on. Even with strikes being announced I do think it's a fair consideration for planning.
 
They may be announced, but as I understand it they are still fairly common

Not that common. You might be thinking about “droit de retrait” which is not a strike but an event where workers quit working because they believe their safety is impaired, but it doesn't happen on the Paris-Chessy line (can't think of one occurence in the last few years). It usually happens when some travelers physically assault one of the staff, but (unfortunately for them) that happens mostly on lines handled by SNCF, where people are… well, less civilized.

Disclosure: I am a local, live near DLP and work routinely using the RER A. If I were to organise a trip to DLP for my family that would supposedly stay in Paris, I would totally trust the RER A, and use a taxi in the extremely unlikely event something would go wrong.
 
Does anyone know if the Magical Shuttle buses to/from the airport have been affected by the strikes at all?
 
Not that common. You might be thinking about “droit de retrait” which is not a strike but an event where workers quit working because they believe their safety is impaired, but it doesn't happen on the Paris-Chessy line (can't think of one occurence in the last few years). It usually happens when some travelers physically assault one of the staff, but (unfortunately for them) that happens mostly on lines handled by SNCF, where people are… well, less civilized.

Disclosure: I am a local, live near DLP and work routinely using the RER A. If I were to organise a trip to DLP for my family that would supposedly stay in Paris, I would totally trust the RER A, and use a taxi in the extremely unlikely event something would go wrong.

Good to know. I've never been to France or Paris, but have friends who lived in France for a few years while he played professional basketball and she was mentioning to us about the trains and metro always being on strike/not working as normal.
 
Very unlikely. Only workers employed by the state have been on strike. Buses (except within Paris) and coaches are run by private companies that rarely (if ever) go on strike.
 
Good to know. I've never been to France or Paris, but have friends who lived in France for a few years while he played professional basketball and she was mentioning to us about the trains and metro always being on strike/not working as normal.

That, for sure, I can easily believe! I'm not going to tell you that the public transportation around Paris is working 100% of time with no disruption, because that's clearly not the case. There's so many people using mass transit, and part of the network is so old (earliest lines have been opened in 1900) that almost every day something is going to break out. Fortunately, the network is quite resilient because there's a lot of redundancy (not unusual within Paris to have two or three different routes to go to the same place) and even for remote areas, such as where DLP is, they have “backup” solutions: the coordinators can use a single trail if the second is unavailable, maintenance workers can go fix anything on a 24/7 basis, in the worst case events they have buses everywhere that they are ready to dispatch to help travelers continue their journey.

I would say that regarding Paris<->Chessy, you can expect to be less than 5 mins late 90%, less than 15 mins late 99%, and more than 1 hour late 0.1%. This is not scientific by any account, but the RER is far more reliable than, say, using a car or a coach.
 
Thank you all for the responses. Very good information to take into account. I will think about if I want to take the risk of commuting and then having transportation problems in either direction.
 
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I did it a few years ago. If your hotel is near the RED line (RER A), then it's very easy. We stayed near Nation and it was a 30min ride to Disney.
 

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