Disneyland Paris Park Plan

I had the great pleasure to visit Disneyland Paris for a day last spring, my first visit to a Disney Park outside of Orlando. I don’t know how familiar you all are with this resort, so I’ll share some general thoughts. First, since we only had a single day, we only visited Disneyland Park. I really wish I could have seen the state of the Studios Park just so I could understand how it didn’t work, but I didn’t want to use valuable time to park hop. I was expecting a well-designed park after seeing the incredible concept art and photos in the Disneyland Paris: Sketch to Reality book and it lived up to my high expectations.

This park is a prime example of the concept of making the park itself the best attraction. I’ve somewhat adopted this idea from SW Wilson at Ideal Buildout, who says the park should be an E Ticket. This park absolutely is the best execution of this idea that I’ve seen. It’s a beautiful park, filled with detail and out of the way spots that bring it to life. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Magic Kingdom and this park was like a bizarre but fantastic alternate version of what I know. Each land is a beautifully developed full world with more attention to detail than you can possibly comprehend at once. It’s hard to say how much I loved the design and style of this park without just saying the same things over and over so I’m going to move on.

As for the attractions in the park, I would say that overall it is a small step down from the Magic Kingdom as a total experience, but has vastly superior versions of many individual attractions. Paris’ Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates, and Space Mountain are all the best versions I have experienced. I had no complaints with any ride in the park. It just needs a few more of them, especially attractions that deepen the rich detail of the park.

I also want to quickly acknowledge a particular attraction. La Tanière du Dragon, a simple single room walkthrough, safely became a Top 10 Disney attraction for me. It’s simple, just an animatronic dragon figure that periodically comes to life. But it was one of the most immersive and magical experiences I’ve ever had in a theme park. I think we stopped in there 4 times in a single day just to watch for a while. It’s a true highlight of the park because it’s a little touch that adds life to a rich environment. Fantastic.

My long term expansion plan ended up being focused on the creation of 4 sublands to the existing lands, which was not intentional. I realized that this speaks to the thematic strength of the existing lands, that they really don’t need much fixing, just expansion. The exception is in Discoveryland, where my changes restore the original theme that has been diluted over the years.

Frontierland is an incredible land, among the best designed in Disney Parks because of its rich backstory. The main section of Thunder Mesa between Phantom Manor and the path connecting to Adventureland is beautiful and active, while the outskirts of the land towards the empty Chaparral Theater and Train Station were almost completely empty during my visit. There is just nothing there to draw guests back, especially with the theater currently empty.

This area is redeveloped as a Critter Country type area with an American National Park design. However, the Park is operated by a colorful collection of forest animals and owned by the Country Bears. They have opened up a park to all their animal friends from around the world as a vacation retreat, so this land can thematically include the large catalog of animal based Disney properties. The setting and style is decisively North American with architecture based on the Yellowstone Lodge style.

The main addition is a traditional dark ride led by the Country Bears and featuring a large cast of original animal characters in a musical tour of the Park. Across the path is a rethemed version of Junkyard Jamboree where guests are whipped around behind the Park’s fleet of jeeps. The Chaparral Theater is enclosed to host exclusively animal based shows. This park has had problems in the past with placing shows that do not fit in Frontierland in this theater, so that should be avoided. Possibilities include a live Country Bear Revue show with appearances by characters from Disney films such as Bambi and Pocohantas. Cowboy Cookout Barbecue is absorbed and rethemed as a Redwoods forest dining lodge.

In Adventureland, the western section is redeveloped. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, a basic themed coaster, is removed in favor of a South American jungle with the Indiana Jones Adventure and a new indoor Jungle Cruise. The existing Adventureland represents Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, so this area should have a distinctly different style. The EMV Indiana Jones attraction is the same ride system and track as the existing versions but with an original storyline in a Mayan temple. I considered a new attraction, but the EMV Indiana Jones ride is still a solid attraction that would be unique to the continent.

The bigger addition is the Jungle Cruise, which I consider the quintessential Adventureland experience. It was not included originally because of weather and snow concerns as far as I know, so that’s why this must be indoors. Near a cliffside temple, a series of temporary canvas and wood structures have been erected, home to a scientific exploration. Like Small World across the park, it loads outside and can follow a covered path into the show building. However it also has an alternate uncovered route when weather isn’t an issue. The guided boats take a quick trip through the jungle, passing through a cave, and then into the temple. The covered path stays below a series of rigged canvas tarps, leading into the temple. Inside the large show building is an artificial jungle with similar show scenes to the classic Jungle Cruise. However, the controlled environment allows for more sophisticated figures and special effects, creating exciting new scenes like a whirlpool that causes the boat to temporarily travel backwards. Because of the train tracks, the building is in two segments and boats travel under the train tracks.

In Fantasyland, there are two small additions as well as a subland. In the open expansion plot in the east courtyard building, a meet and greet center is added, like those recently added to other parks. It’s not the ideal solution, but logistically makes sense because this is a fairly small open space and there is increasing demand for these meet and greets. Also, on the east side of the land, a theater is added. Fantasyland needs a theater and I’ve heard rumors that one is coming soon. This seemed like a suitable space for it. Stylistically, it follows the language of Small World across the path. A large entrance plaza and tower on the north side welcomes guests into the theater that could hold Broadway caliber revue shows, like the Golden Mickey’s.

The big addition in the north expansion plot of the land is Arendelle. Meet Mickey Mouse is removed and the train station is redesigned as the entrance hall to the Kingdom of Arendelle. Across the tracks is the gate and main courtyard of the land with a small village area to the right on the path to Storybook Land. Inside the palace of Arendelle is a table service restaurant, a large sleigh ride trip to Elsa’s ice castle, and the opportunity to ice skate in the grand hall of the palace, just like Anna and Elsa do in the film. The village area is entirely retail space for the highly popular Frozen product line.

Discoveryland sees the most change to restore it to its original concept. First, Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast is removed because of a new Toy Story based shooting attraction in the studios park. It is replaced with The Time Machine, the same attraction proposed in my Magic Kingdom plan. The Videopolis Theater is also removed because it has been unoccupied for years. It is replaced by a suspended dark ride loosely based on Around the World in 80 Days, which is already the basis of the counter service in the building. The interior space is reshaped to create a dining room for the Café Hyperion with the balloon loading and track traveling above before entering the main show scene space of the building. Across the land, the current Les Mysteres du Nautilus walk through, which was fantastic but seemed unpopular, becomes the queue to a new attraction. This honestly was an attempt to bring more prominence to the wonderfully designed Nautilus interior sets. The attraction is a Circumotion Theater attraction by Falcon’s Treehouse. Guests load into one of the two Nemo designed observation submarines for an exciting trip to the bottom of the sea.

The last and most significant addition to the park is the Star Wars Spaceport. Because this is totally different thematically from the rest of Discoveryland, it has to be a distinct subland. It begins along the train tracks in front of Star Tours. With an exterior that fits into the rest of Discoveryland, the covered spaceport interior acts as the entryway to the area. The indoor concourse advertises different galactic locations guests can travel to, tying in to the existing Star Tours storyline. To the right of the spaceport, a path leads to Coruscant, the main area of the land. The Captain EO Theater is demolished for this expansion. The city includes the Millennium Falcon in dock, a shopping market, a large counter service cantina, and the Jedi Training Academy. Nearby is a X Wing Fighter, marking the entrance to an extreme spinner ride. The main attraction is a kuka based X Wing flight, including the iconic trench run. There is also a table service restaurant looking over the city of Coruscant. To the left of Star Tours is a large expansion plot for a future Star Wars world.

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This week’s question:

What are your thoughts about the strategy of creating unique versions of classic rides vs reusing the same designs over and over?

As I mentioned, Disneyland Paris has fantastically unique versions of multiple classic Magic Kingdom attractions. Big Thunder Mountain is on an island, Pirates features a unique open layout and an uphill waterfall, Space Mountain is as extreme as Rockin Roller Coaster, and Phantom Manor is as original as a take on a classic as you can get. Unfortunately, Disneyland Paris is the nearly the only example of this. Disneyland and Disneyworld are generally the same, Tokyo wanted exact copies of the American versions, and Hong Kong used copies for economic reasons, though this has been reversed in the last few years. Shanghai however, seems to be going almost all original, which is great.

If the design goal was to give Disneyland Paris a unique identity, then I believe it succeeded and I wish that each resort around the world did the same thing. The attractions in their unique versions are successful and able to stand alone, but can be appreciated even deeper when you are able to compare versions across the world.

Additionally, an important reason that unique versions of attractions are successful is because they allow world building. Image a Disneyland Frontierland that was forced to use the same Haunted Mansion. It just wouldn’t be the same because it would destroy the detailed story and design aesthetic of the land. The ability of the park to use original takes on classics is one of the reasons the park is so strong. I’m absolutely sure the attractions in Tokyo Disneyland are fantastic and I would enjoy them, but I would know it’s basically the same attraction in a different place. This I believe is one of Disneyland Paris’ triumphs. It was a whole new bizarre fantastic experience.

So my thoughts on unique attractions: I wish it was done more. Copying the same attraction around the world may be easy and may make sense, but unique designs make the best park.