Parisian Dream...

It's hard to believe it's been two decades since Euro Disneyland opened...

Disneyland Paris, which is what the park became is celebrating it's Twentieth year celebration throughout the year and has many things planned, but one of the most surprising is the water show that takes place in front of Le Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant at night time.

It's called Disney Dreams and it's very much like if you were to see an elaborate World of Color show on the castle.  It's a lovely show, combined with those interactive mouse ears it makes for a magical display.  If you'd like to learn more about it check out this NewsParcs article on the creation of the show.  It's filled with a lot of information about the preparation and detail that go into the development of a show like this.  This is part of the Mouse's celebrating it's growing presence in Europe.  Don't worry, they'll be some more special magic over the next few years.

There are a lot of interesting things happening in the Parisian parks over the next decade...

Road To Paris...

A better park...




Wee, wee...
While I've always thought that Disneyland Paris is the most beautiful Magic Kingdom style park, its younger sister is the black lamb of Disney Parks...

Over at the Disney and More Blog, which you should check out quite often if don't btw, Alain has another post in his Toy Story Playland series. There are tons of great pics and videos to give you a sense as to what this new land looks and feels like at Walt Disney Studios Paris. If you've ever been to DCA, the new land in France is kind of like what A Bug's Land is here. It is nicely themed, but is lacking in terms of feeling "Disney." That should change with the addition of Midway Mania in the distant future. The time line for that attraction addition is ever changing and will depend on attendance at the park before it gets the green light.

That said, Alain's newest post gives you a sneak peak at something Disney hasn't announced yet: The Ratatouille attraction. Oh, it's not built yet, but the path leading from the Toy Story Playland goes directly toward where it will be in a couple years. Go over and take a look at some of the photos and dream of Remy.

Now, if only Iger would approve a makeover of the front entrance of this park like the one California Adventure is getting. The entrance to a Disney theme park should be a beautiful doorway, not an ugly cave.

Which is what the front of Walt Disney Studios is...

Toy Story Posterland...

I heard that you Hockey Puck!


I'm a married Spud! I'm a married Spud!
News and suprises don't always happen at the D23 Expo, I guess...

Strangely enough, one of the things Jay didn't mention was that Paris is getting it's own Toy Story Playland (like HKDL in Asia). Now, the company has released several posters of the attractions. Alain over at Disney and More has some great pics of them, take a look.

The Disney world slowly changes, one attraction at a time...

Buzz In Toyland...

Alain over at Disney and More has some more info about the new Toy Storyland that is being build at Walt Disney Studios in Paris for a tentative 2010 opening...

Go over and read about it and pray that the economy starts to get better, because even better things are planned than this.

But that's not a Toy Story, that's another story...

A "Solsbury Hill" Moment...

This is a reflective post. You see, a couple days ago was the anniversary of Michael Eisner being voted in as Chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company. I deliberately chose not to report it. I've had a great deal of post that reflected negatively on him and the Suits he brought with him so I felt like it would have been piling on unnecessarily if I had mentioned it.

Now as much as I criticize Mr. Eisner, I have mentioned the good he has done, but probably it bares repeating so that people don't get the idea that I'm trying to bash him for the sake of it. I want to get across the fact that I believe the success that the Mouse has had over the past two decades wouldn't be possible without Michael Eisner and Frank Wells...

My gripe has always been that Eisner overstayed his welcome and basically lost his balance in 1994 when Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash. During his first decade, I feel he got eighty to ninety percent of what needed to be done right. The problem was he spent the next decade doing the exact opposite and doing eighty to ninety percent wrong. If he would have retired by, oh say... 2000 he would have gone down in history with a much kinder record. I believe he'll still be remembered rather well... just not as high on the ladder as he could have been.

Sometimes people have to know their limitations. Sometimes people have to know when it's time to leave the party. Sometimes it's necessary to call the game and head home. That takes humility and perspective... these are two things missing from Eisner once Frank Wells exits the stage in this play.

Now, what does this have to do with the title of this post? Solsbury Hill? Well, it refers to a song. My favorite song by my favorite solo artist. Peter Gabriel.

The song has a very colorful and interesting history. You see, he wrote it after going insane... alright, that's the politically incorrect way of saying it. The PC term would be that he had a mental breakdown. He lost his wife because of an affair he had with someone... presumably, Kate Bush. He realized that he'd made a mistake and the world around him was crumbling because of his own mistakes, his own stupidity and his mind just snapped. He was put in an insane asylum... oops, sorry. A mental institution, I mean. And he spent some time reconstructing his mind, going over the details of his life and trying to piece it back together until one day it was over. Someone famous came to take him home. Now the song was written about his experience being there... supposedly, he used to look out the window and see Solsbury Hill and it became a symbol for him. It became his freedom. Not so much from the place he was at physically, but where he was emotionally. For when he could finally get out and go to it... well that meant that everything was back to normal. Everything was fine.

Now, I'm sure you're saying... "nice story, but again, how does this have anything to do with Disney? Well, as I said at the beginning of this post... this is a reflective post. I'm just in that sort of mood so bare with me a bit.

See, I tend to use a lot of analogies(and if you don't know that you've not been reading the blog very long)... what this has to do with the Mouse is in how it mirrors the time of Eisner's reign. See Eisner was riding high at the company, its stock was high and the success was making him feel like he could do no wrong. Like he could do what he wanted and nothing bad would come of it. Like Peter Gabriel when he cheated... he wasn't thinking clearly. Anyway, the disaster for Gabriel was the infidelity and destruction of his marriage. The disaster for Disney and Eisner was EuroDisney.

Eisner's first mistake was in locating the park in Paris instead of where it should have gone, which was Barcelona. This was the location that the park was originally going to go. The area was good and the weather was much closer to the American parks so that the company wouldn't have had to deal with the harsh winters that made them design certain things for the Paris theme park. Well, France dangled all these goodies... all these financial incentives in front of Disney and Eisner gave into temptation and took it. Just like Gabriel... he then started building far more hotels than the resort could fill effectively. Eisner indulged in his excesses the way Gabriel continued his affair not thinking of the repercussions and not believing he would get caught.

When it all started coming together... when the park was a hit, but the hotels weren't being fill, the realization of overspending took place. And everything... EVERYTHING Eisner had planned to come after it would suffer from the bitter sting of EuroDisney. Port Disney with it's DisneySea park... gone. WestCOT with it's immersive worlds... canceled. The "Disney Decade" that Eisner announce earlier... dramatically cutback. Several other projects fell by the wayside. Everything afterwards was overly cautious... dealing from the sting of his excesses... Eisner now did the exact opposite and the results of that fruit are DCA, WDSP and HKDL...

This was Eisner's mental breakdown. And the company's as well... and of course I'm being metaphoric in using these things. You see, for Disney and it's fans... well, to see the return to glory we've been wanting? That would be us looking out on Solsbury Hill, wanting to be free again. The symbolic nature of the Mouse being alright again comes with Eisner realizing it was time to go and moving on. Essentially the process of knowing what has to be done. The rebuilding that has to happen so that we can go back to a better time when everything was well. That's where we were last year and today. We're in a state where we know what is right, we know what went wrong and as Iger himself has said about knowing what went wrong so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Now some of you will take this analogy as a stretch... that's understandable. But I like it... it's good for me and that's all that really counts right now. I hope you got an understanding of what I was trying to convey though...

It's good to finally have the Mouse be in a position where it knows what was done right, what was done wrong and what needs to be done over the next decade or so to bring about some form of sanity. For the Mouse, the Shareholders and the Fans.

Now does that sound crazy?

Blue Sky Alert-Europe (Paris)...

Bonjour.

Welcome to the first Blue Sky Alert dealing with Disneyland's beautiful, younger, European sister...

Disneyland Paris Resort.

Having just opened two of it's three new attractions at the starting point of it's fifteenth anniversary, the Resort has seen a sizeable increase in attendance over the past year. In fact, the Disneyland Paris Resort could be on in for the best year of attendance it has ever had. For the first time in a half a decade things are looking up for this troubled Disney resort.

Despite having the financial woes that it does, EuroDisneyland, err... Disneyland Paris is still the number one vacation destination in Europe. Much to the consternation of the French that once branded it a "cultural Chernobyl". Many of the French have embraced it as their own and although there are still squabbles from time to time... it appears the future ahead could be quite bright indeed.

There have been rumors about an F1 racing competition being held at Disneyland or directly across from the Resort. My contacts haven't received any concrete word about this proposal and I'm suspect to believe that it's a ploy by Bernie Ecclestone to use as a bargaining chip for another venue. It would make an interesting event, but there is no solid information I can come up with at the moment to cooberate it.

As far as Disney Village is concerned there is a proposal to expand it beyond it's current boundaries, including a theater show venue and new shops and restaurants. These are said to corrispond and enhance future "additions" to the Resort. The plans are for expanding the Resort as a vacation destination that doesn't just rely on the parks.

There are no current plans for hotels, although there are designs for hotels that were intended to be build as a Phase Two of the original EuroDisney which could be pulled out of mothballs should the parks attendance keep rising. Presuming the "heads in beds" continue to rise, that is.

Currently there are no plans to add a third gate to the Resort. The current economic climate just isn't suitable for it. If the park maintains substantial growth over the next few years and the European economy doesn't take another downturn, I'm sure there will be proposals within WDI that will peak Bob Iger's interest, but all signs now look toward improving existing venues and not building a new park that would require massive amounts of capital. Again, as I've said before... this is a good thing because it means the Resort will be getting more immersive and better attractions. And that's saying alot for a Resort that includes the "most" beautiful Disneyland park. WDI's new leadership has mounted an aggressive overview of all new projects. These projects include the plans that Imagineers have been toying with for implementation at DLRP over the next decade. Good times could lie ahead...

Like I was saying, the "most" beautiful park has been "plussed" for the fifteenth anniversary and looks marvelous. Disneyland Paris hasn't really had a major addition in quite a while. While the proposals for DLP aren't as bold or expensive as the ones for Walt Disney Studios they are still exciting plans. Unlike WDSP though, there isn't as much needed to be done to the original European Disney park. There have been proposals for the addition of a new land but so far they haven't made it very far in the blue sky phase. The most probable proposal are the addition of a new "E" ticket attraction in one of the current lands. Adventureland and Tomorrowland both have proposals that involve major attractions, although it is likely only one will be approved. The current Pirate craze has also had it's effect on some of the proposals and could affect Adventureland should some of the enhancements be approved.

There are plans for adding between two and three "C" or "D" attractions throughout the park over the next decade which could make the final cut. It won't be for at least a year, possibly more before plans are approved and 2009 before any really see the light of day.

There are plans to "plus" several areas throughout the park, but being as DLP is already richly layered, it won't be as extensive as WDLP or DCA. Plans include additional restaurants and a new proposal for a night show has been mentioned but final plans are nowhere near complete. Time will tell what makes the final cut.

It's not known yet if Walt Disney Studios Paris will get a name change like whatever they rename it's bigger, Orlando sister. It's possible if the current line-up of proposals goes forward a new name could happen by it's tenth anniversary but that's a decision that won't happen for a while.

No decision will be made on WDSP expansion and one won't be made until the anniversary is over... that being said, if the clicks going into the park keep moving up we can expect the Studio to appear dramatically different on it's tenth anniversary. The expansion of WDSP into a full day park, from the current half-day park it is will most likely not be complete by 2012, but the atmosphere would be quite different. The expansion would likely continue into 2013, like the way the fifth's will continue into next year with Tower of Terror's opening.

Anyone that's seen pictures of the new additions will note the quality of the theming. The new Toon Studio area is a much needed "plussing" of a park that was built short on rides and theming. With the opening of TOT and it's surrounding area the WDSP will get a much needed boost in appearance when it comes to representing what Disney fans expect when they go past the turnstiles. The entrance areas are getting a modest improvement in terms of theming as well. So far, the move appears to be working. The Suits are pleasantly surprised at the attendance so far...

There are several proposals that are on the table right now. WDI's leadership is evaluating each and everyone, not as a way to find what to cut but what can be added or enhanced. The final plans for this expansion wouldn't happen for years to be truthful. One has only to look at DCA to see how plans change.

The most logical proposal to move forward is for the Studio Tram Tour to be moved back for the construction of a new "E" ticket attraction. It's likely to not come about till early 2010 or 2011. It's not known if it will be an update of the Great Movie Ride or one of several other projects. A couple of proposals involve a major Disney character and one proposal is an import from another Disney theme park. The evolving plans right now involve the addition of two "E" tickets and at least four to six "D" or "C" tickets by the time WDSP ends it's tenth anniversary sometime in 2013. Cross yer fingers that the good times keep rolling and the European economy doesn't tank.

One of the proposals for the "E" ticket is based on a major movie franchise and fits in with Lasseter and the new regime's philosophy in branding the future of the Studio with a more family friendly theme. The possible addition of a new land has also been proposed in the blue sky phase. The Studio will have a more enhanced theme if most of the proposals go forward. The evoking of a more "stylized" Hollywood will be implemented and layered "plussing" of the front entrance is also under consideration with a couple blue sky ideas involving the "Golden Era" of Tinsel Town.

All in all, Disney's park outside the City of Lights is in for a good future... so long as Disney's European fans continue to rush through the turnstiles. So buy your tickets now, and keep buying and buying and buying them... Disney executives are watching. WDI is planning some pretty amazing stuff that could see the light of day if the clicks keep going up.

That's it for this update. Stay tuned for future Blue Sky Alerts in July, so long as my paranoid contacts(read: Bothans) don't get fired...