In April I booked a trip (without transport) for January 2020 and have since discovered the Eurostar is not running AT ALL on the date we are due to return (sod's law, the one weekend it completely isn't running in the whole flipping year!). We have been twice before and both times used the Eurostar and loved the convenience and excitement of the whole thing. We have looked into self-drive using the Eurotunnel but I'm worried we would lose a lot of day 1 and day 5 of our trip with the extra travelling (and stress)!
So my questions are:
How easy is self-drive?
Anyone who has travelled by both methods have any advice?
How easy/expensive is it to amend a booking to say the previous week?
We paid for Disney Express luggage transfer, is this easy to get a refund if we do drive!?
Thanks for any advice!!
Where are you travelling from? Would it not be easier just to fly?
While there may be no direct Eurostars on the day you return, unless there is some pretty severe engineering going down that day, you will be able to get back to London. You get a TGV from MLV to Lille & then connect with a Eurostar from Lille back to London. It's not as good as a direct train, but not too bad. Done it many times.
You need to buy through tickets for this trip from Eurostar (rather than 2 separate bookings), this way, if the MLV to Lille train is delayed & you can't make the connection, they'll put you on the next train with no penalty or extra cost.
TGV tickets go in sale 3 months in advance I think - take a look here for French rail travel details - https://www.seat61.com/France.htm
so the fact you cannot see train shown for Jan is in all likelihood only because the TGV leg of the journey is not yet on sale!
Taking an early ferry, and a park, givenamount of time in the ate return will mean you'll get roughly the same Eurostar departure Times. We actually had more time. You can also travel and return with as much as you want and processing passport is much smoother. The only main question is roads/ weather conditions in January? And driving permits given the eu situation
Thanks for all the top tips, will investigate further!