Disneyland Paris Easy Access Card: if you have a long-term condition

The Disneyland Paris Easy Access Card is for people with a recognised long-term condition (ALD). It makes rides easier to access, but at a set time rather than straight away. In practice, you don’t wait in the regular queue: a Cast Member gives you a return time, you wait somewhere else, then you come back.

Don’t confuse it with the Priority Card, which is for people with a recognised disability (a CMI mobility card or a disability card) and also covers shows, character meets, restaurants and shops. The Easy Access Card only covers rides.

If you’d like an overview of all the park’s accessibility schemes, have a look at the complete accessibility guide. Here, I focus on the Easy Access Card alone: who’s entitled to it, how it works and which documents to prepare.

The Easy Access Card works with a booklet of return times. At the entrance to a ride, you show your card and booklet to a Cast Member. They work out a return time based on the current queue time and write it down for you. You’re then free to wait somewhere else, take a break or enjoy another part of the park.

At the time given, you come back and enter the ride through a dedicated entrance, usually the ride exit.

Two things are key. First, it isn’t a fast track: access is delayed, not instant. The slot roughly matches the time you’d have spent in the queue, but without standing in it. Second, you can only hold one return time at a time: until your current slot has passed, you can’t get a second one.

The Easy Access Card applies to rides only. It gives no benefit at character meets, shows or parades, nor at restaurant and shop tills. Those benefits are specific to the Priority Card.

As for companions, the holder of the Easy Access Card can be accompanied by up to 4 people on rides. Under-3s count as companions. And if the cardholder doesn’t go on a ride, their companions use the main queue.

The Easy Access Card is for people with one of the 30 long-term conditions (the ALD 30 list of the French Ministry of Health). That’s what makes you eligible, not recognition of a disability in the usual sense. If you have a CMI (France’s official disability card) or a disability card, the Priority Card is the one to go for.

Good to know: your certificate doesn’t have to say which ALD you have. It only has to confirm that you have a long-term condition from the list of 30 recognised in France, so your medical details stay private. It’s up to you to check beforehand that your condition is on the list. Here it is, with the official numbers, also available on the French national health insurance website (ameli.fr):

Neither fibromyalgia nor endometriosis is on the list of 30 ALDs, the only one Disneyland Paris recognises for the Easy Access Card. These two conditions, although sometimes very disabling, don’t appear under any number. In some cases, the French national health insurance can cover them as ALD 31 (known as "off-list"), assessed case by case.

But the park relies on the list of 30 ALDs: recognition as ALD 31 (off-list) isn’t on it, so eligibility isn’t guaranteed and must be checked at the desk.

The RQTH (official French recognition as a disabled worker) on its own entitles you neither to the Easy Access Card (which is for ALDs), nor to the Priority Card (which requires a document confirming a permanent disability, such as a CMI).

To get the Easy Access Card, only one medical document counts, and it has to meet precise requirements.

As for how long it’s valid, the official guide doesn’t give a precise figure. In practice, the card is valid for the length of your stay (or the validity dates of your ticket). For annual pass holders, it can be matched to the validity dates of the Pass, as long as you request it at the annual pass desk.

I’d rather be careful here: check the exact validity at the desk when you apply.

The two cards are often mixed up, yet they’re not for the same people and don’t give the same rights. Here’s a quick comparison. For the full details of the Priority Card (proof, stickers, how it works), see my guide to the Priority Card.