Coaster Kingdom  Disneyland Paris  Our Thoughts

Disneyland Paris is the fourth Magic Kingdom park to open worldwide, following the original Disneyland in Anaheim, the insanely popular Floridian Disneyworld and also Disney Tokyo.

France initially may seem an odd place for the latex vermin to set up camp, but France is easily accessible for the majority of Europe, something that of course the United Kingdom isn’t. Stereotypically, the French are arrogant and the weather wet, something that the visitor numbers to the park strongly contradict.

Euro Disney opened in April 1992 to almost implausible amounts of confetti and fireworks. It was in the year afterwards that the park failed to perform, and it was in this year that the park had to reassess the direction that it was heading.

The park failed to offer rides and attractions for the whole family, just younger members and parents. To open their arms to the white knuckle generation, Indiana Jones was added hastily as a litmus test to see how visitors would react.

Feedback to one of the first true white knuckle rides was good, and as a result, we can perhaps thank Indiana Jones for coasters such as Space Mountain and the new coaster for 2002, Rock N Roller Coaster.

Ten years later, the park is prospering. The unwavering and headlong lead compared to other parks remains, broadened, in fact, and the Disney Studios park next door is being hand crafted for our enjoyment in 2002 and beyond.

In the long run, the faltered start to the Parisian park did it favours. Few events could have got it publicity like the stories of its less-than-flourishing bank accounts, and so, as people discovered that the park was perhaps the best offering in Europe and the park regained some focus, more rides were added, something Disney are hardly renowned for.

Getting to and staying at Disneyland Paris is presented to you in a variety of options. French motorways are a pleasure to use. Although some more navigation is required than Parc Asterix, you should be able to get there with the minimum of fuss.

Once you get there, the resort is surrounded in hotels and is also close (relatively speaking) to the Charles De Gaule Airport. Ibis, Mercure and Novotel are all hotels I recommend, Comfort Inn, however, I don’t, as they can double book your room without a care in the world.

However, should Eurostar be willing to take your money (I am still awaiting my brochure), a direct service is operated from London Waterloo and Ashford International right into Disneyland Paris.

This is where the resort hotels are a bonus. Take your pick from the understated Santa Fe and Hotel Cheyene to the more luxurious Sequoia Lodge, Newport Bay Club and Hotel New York, or for the height in opulence, Disneyland Hotel which spectacularly bridges the entrance to the park.

Each hotel is well furnished, but modestly overpriced. This doesn’t mean a bad time is to be had, though. Character breakfasts form an integral part of many families’ holidays (at an extra cost, of course) and the simplicity of staying on site, being a walk away from the entrance may compensate for your extra expenditure.

The car park is vast, and slicing through the centre is a travelator, taking you towards Festival Disney, the train terminal and more importantly the entrance. Accompanying your accelerated gait to the entrance, suitably bouncy Disney music.

You skirt briefly around the entrance to the outlandishly gaudy Disney Village. Tacky by day, festive by night, Disney Village is the ‘place to be’ should you be either leaving the park on an empty stomach, or be suffering chronic amounts of insomnia.

Instead of a wall of ticket booths ‘welcoming’ you, Disneyland Paris has the beautiful Disneyland Hotel arching across well-manicured gardens. The glorious and rather ornate pink building forms shelter for the ticket kiosks, hidden away lengthways beneath.

It is here where money is parted in exchange for your passport for the day, something which is done with surprising haste. It is then outside via the customary turnstiles into the initial courtyard on which the Disneyland Hotel looks down on, opposite the Disneyland Railroad.

It is this view that initially impresses - the contemporary American architecture, the wrought-iron décor, the clean, crisp colour schemes that flourish in every direction you look in.

Beneath the station, lockers can be used, at a cost, to stow your valuables before you excitedly continue into Main Street USA. It is then at this point where the Disney magic floodgates are thrust open for you to boar the brunt of this tidal wave of synthetic charisma.

I’m not a Disney fan – it is a company formed perhaps with the best of intentions, but in it’s current guise, is designed to take advantage of those most easily duped. At what it does, though, it does it perfectly.

Fading away into the distance, Main Street USA, the binding part of any Magic Kingdom park, and forming the epicentre of this carpet of magic, Sleeping Beauties Castle.

As groups of tourists mill about with glazed looks on their faces, horse drawn carriages, old-timer vehicles and buses interrupt the group photo opportunities that line the street.

Both inside and out, the architecture is beautiful. I too am guilty of this, but we are far too quick to compare theming to that of Disney’s. With only a couple of exceptions, the theming here is completely unrivalled, and not even equivalent.

The frilly architecture, the colourful yet subtle fascias, the decorative street furniture like bollards, lamp posts and benches, the detailed masonry, the cobbled streets…

And don’t think that by diving inside one of the many boutiques that you’ll get away from it – each shop inside is as detailed – if not more – than it is outside. The jewellery shop has a mosaiced domed-glass ceiling, the Main Street store has the track high above for moving cash around (just like the good old days).

As you work your way down Main Street, the detail of the Castle becomes apparent. It is the crowning glory of chicken wire and makes every other Sleeping Beauty Castle look like an ammo dump from the Second World War.

The castle is surrounded by manicured lawns, a moat of clear, trickling water cascading over fairytale-shaped rocks and topiary in various forms. The castle is a modest shade of grey and has many turrets reaching high into the sky.

Decorated by stained-glass windows and balconies at various levels, the castle makes good use of forced perspective, a form of architecture whereby the higher the detail, the smaller it is. This means you are tricked into thinking the building in question is larger than it in fact is.

The castle forms the hub of the park with the four further lands spanning out in a wheel formation. This means that you are never too far away from your favourite attraction, as the route there is always the shortest possible.

This brings me onto the weather. A shower or two will probably accompany a trip to Disneyland Paris. Fear not. A Disney-issued poncho may not even be necessary as almost every ride in the park is covered, and those that aren’t have covered queuing areas.

Unbeknown to many visitors are the covered walkways around the park. They’re marked on the map, but it is possible to get to almost every area without being soaked. They also provide a good escape route from the busy streets, the ambling tourists and the abandoned strollers and prams.

Fast Pass has received a mottled reaction. Basically, so that less time is spent in queues (and invariably more time spent spending money in shops), you can get a ticket to return to the rides that operate it at a certain time.

So far, this system operates on Space Mountain, Indiana Jones, Thunder Mountain, Peter Pan and Star Tours. The most valuable Fast Pass in my opinion is for Thunder Mountain. It is a popular ride, and rightfully so. Get a ticket early to avoid disappointment.

One to watch, however, is Space Mountain. If the stand-by queue is said to be 30 minutes, don’t bother with Fast Pass, as it only joins just past the back of the stand-by queue, therefore wasting more time than it is worth.

Food at the park is diverse, but invariably expensive. The best restaurant is probably the Pizza Outpost in Adventureland. Pizza abounds, it is good quality and seems to be quite an atmospheric place to eat.

Visionarium (Discoveryland) is just awful. I thought I went in on a bad day, but deciding to give it the benefit of doubt was a bit mistake. The building is enormous, it is perhaps the largest fast food restaurant I have visited. Service, however, is slow. And half the seating area is an auditorium for kids to watch cartoons – no food is allowed in this area.

By the time you find somewhere to sit, your food is cold. By the time you find someone to complain to, you have even fewer places to sit, and on both occasions, me (and a lot of other unhappy ‘guests’) ended up sitting on the floor as arrogant families saved tables for other unfortunates stuck in the queue for their cuisine.

Another disappointment is Buzz Lightyear’s Pizza Planet (also Discoveryland). It is one of the most unassuming restaurants, but again is large inside. The food here is great, but inside is gloomy and the play area towards the back fails to keep excited kids away from tables as they run around, throw balls as the parents sit back and ignore the little darlings.

Back to the park. Each land is rich in charisma and completely individual from the last. Frontierland is the obligatory Wild West area. Thunder Mesa is a prospering mining town built around Thunder Mountain, a spectacular mine train ride around the towering peaks of the spectacular mountain mine.

The wooden buildings are subtly colourful, and often erupt into a gun fight between two dastardly Disney characters. Under foot, the ground is imprinted with horseshoe prints and ruts from passing stagecoaches.

Take advantage of the two paddle steamers, Mark Twain and Molly Brown. They encircle Thunder Mountain, and give you many fantastic Kodak moments of Thunder Mesa, Phantom Manor and the mountain itself. This can also provide a refreshing evening ride when it is quieter too.

Only a short walk takes you clockwise around the park into Adventureland. Adventureland is by far the largest and most mottled of the lands at Disneyland. Frequented not only by the glorious Pirates of the Caribbean, but also by the Swiss Family Robinson, Indiana Jones and Captain Hook.

The idyllic scenery can be beautiful in places, but it is a hotchpotch throughout, and a sort of dumping ground for themes that don’t fit in elsewhere around the park. It is a family friendly area, too. Skull Rock is a maze of caves to loose your children in, Swiss Family Robinson’s tree house is a family friendly viewing platform, and the various rope bridges around the area are a great break from the rides elsewhere.

Fantasyland is one of the most Disneyesque areas. Bringing fairytales to life, Fantasyland is a colourful and brash storybook of rides like the impressive It’s a Small World, Snow White and the particularly odd Peter Pan which is novel but strangely lacking something.

Set off from here is another area with the Casey Jr. ride, a Vekoma powered mine-train style ride. Sporting a sound track more irritating than most Eurovision entries, it is probably just a high-speed dark ride without a roof. It is perfectly adequate for what it does, but particularly trippy with it.

Discoverland is host to two of the more popular rides in the park. Space Mountain forms the centrepiece with the gold and green conical building surrounded in a beautiful lagoon. The Orbitron writhes around in its metallic glory in front, whilst the façade of Star Tours lowers the tone, somewhat.

Instead of the easily dated futuristic theming that the American parks have got, predominantly the French version is themed after the Jules Verne novels on the era. As such, even by day, the area looks fantastically eclectic.

Of course, there is much more to Disneyland Paris than this fly by wire tour may imply. Encircling the park, the Disneyland Railroad. There are stations in Discoveryland (to the left of Star Tours), Frontierland (by the hands-on farm) and Main Street USA (as you enter the park). Unfortunately, there is very little to look at on this ride other than the backs of rides as it merely skirts around the action within.

Merchandise at the park is very high quality, although overpriced. Beware – if you see a good T Shirt at a shop, don’t wait to buy it at the main boutique down Main Street USA, as it seems to be very ride specific – it probably won’t be on sale there.

If on leaving the park at 7.00 you want to eat, most restaurants will have closed. It is at this time where Disney Village wakes up in all its multi-coloured glory. The Wild Life Café is probably the best place to eat, although you will find yourself queuing up for 30 minutes to book the seat and waiting 45 minutes for the said seat. It is a nice place to eat and a good way to finish off the day.

Disneyland Paris is exquisite. The level of theming is hard to comprehend, moreover the fact that everything in the park is man made. What can trouble me is that the ‘spot a duff bulb and I’ll give you a tenner’ challenge is a bit of a danger here as already the park can look quite worn in places.

Underfoot, many cracks crumble into quite large holes, paint can look very patchy in places and there seems to be a lot of scaffolding up where perhaps there shouldn’t be.

The cleanliness of the park remains unrivalled, however, with staff picking up every rogue molecule on the ground, using tools perhaps Chessington should look at getting to scrape up the gum that people are too stupid to dispose of properly.

We are too easily pleased. Disney shows this in volumes. We visit many British parks and ignore poor theming, ignore poor quality rides, don’t notice overflowing rubbish bins, and take this for granted until we see better.

A few gripes always ruin my day at Disney, but many more ruin days out at other parks, so Disney remains one of the finest parks in the whole of Europe.

Marcus Sheen

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