Flying from Schengen zone country to Schengen zone country

Flying from one Schengen country to another is like flying from Texas to Florida.

How far ahead you can check in is dictated by airline policy. When I flew Rome to Athens on Alitalia is was a matter of 'what time is it', not 'where are you from'

I have checked in ahead of time with European airlines yes. E.g. when flying from Amsterdam to Vilnius on airBaltic, after having just flown in from the US, I was able to do that. I didn't have to go to any check-in counter at Schiphol. Because I did not have bags to check, I was able to stay in the airport: go through immigration, then security, then right to my gate for airBaltic.

..... we just proceed straight to the gate?..... Only if you have checked in and have a boarding pass. When and how you check in is solely determined by the airline. Look on their web site and see what they say. Some discount airlines do not have check in desks at the airport but be very sure how your check in is done.

Flying from one Schengen country to another is like flying from Texas to Florida.

Assuming you are flying on a single ticket code, and that you have already got your boarding pass, then, yes, go straight to the boarding gate.

Are these two flights on the same ticket or did you buy them separately? Your answers will determine our answers.

As long as you can check in somewhere besides the check in counter and have your boarding pass, you can go directly to your next gate which may or may not require security. It doesn't matter if it is one ticket or two.

But if it’s all on one ticket, check in is not necessary for the flight to Slovenia.

Thank you all for the advice so far. These are two completely separate tickets (Orlando --> Paris on Norwegian; Paris --> Ljubljana on Adria).

Yes, Adria has online check-in and management of bookings. https://www.adria.si/en/
We had a flight with them in 2017 as part of our retrun, all booked on United, they were our fist leg.IIRC there was something a bit clunky abut the site in that it went you to an additional site that you had to establish log-on, but that was manageable.

Wonderful! Thank you all for the excellent advice. I think I'm ready to go! :)

I greatly appreciate it.

You do realize that you have some risk with two tickets and you are not protected if the original flight is delayed or cancelled.

Yes, thank you. We have a longer layover in CDG and are not in a particular rush so even if we get delayed a day we can roll with it. Also, the CDG-LJU flight was incredibly low cost so we won't be out much should that happen.

As long as you understand the risk. We have played that game for years and finally got burned a couple of years ago -- maybe singed is the better word. We always thought we covered ourselves with a five, six hour window for the connecting flight. But our original flight for Den to London was cancelled so we lost the connecting ticket. And the re-booked flight was two days later. Fortunately we talked Lufthansa to flying us to our ultimate destination via a different layover. It served their purpose. The cancelled flight was a fully loaded 747 to London and, of course, that is where everyone want to go but we were just as happy fly somewhere else. Good luck.

Thank you. We're actually staying over at CDG (so a 15 hour layover). Our flight leaves early which is why I was wondering if I had to deal with the check-in lines at the counters (which can be a total zoo as I know many of you know) or if I could simply avoid them and just head straight to security (and sleep in another hour or so). This will be our first time travelling truly carry-on (as in, Rick Steves style) so I've always had to deal with the check in/bag check lines in my prior EU trips. I'm over that. ;)