Parks & Resort

The DLP Guide Calendar now has the latest Disneyland Paris park opening hours and attraction closures for October 2014, in its usual easy-to-use format. Read More…

It’s open! Today was the day, 10th July 2014, that La Place de Rémy and its key attraction, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy, officially opened to the public following several weeks of previews with a special inauguration ceremony shortly after 10am.

Hosted by the Disneyland Paris Ambassadors, Jonathan and Antonella, the opening ceremony welcomed Fleur Pellerin, Secretary of Commerce, of Tourism Promotion and of the French abroad, to Disneyland Paris.

The resort’s new chief operating officer Daniel Delcourt also took to the stage, while several elements of the earlier Grand Opening ceremonies for the press made a return to Walt Disney Studios Park, including that gingham ribbon, Rémy himself and even a surprise reappearance by the real-life Linguini.

Once opened, lines quickly reached blockbuster levels with guests filling the exterior queue, a roped extension area in front of the Fastpass distribution, and lining the full length of Rue Auguste Gusteau, with the queue beginning somewhere back in Toon Studio. Good thing today was also the first day the park remained open until 9pm, extending its operating day by a whole two hours, a milestone in itself.

A 120 minute wait time was posted on the park’s electronic tips board, which now lists the attraction, simply calling it “Ratatouille”. However, at one point temporary signage advised guests that, from the entrance to La Place de Rémy next to Toy Story Playland, a wait time of 190 minutes was possible.

Wait times for other popular Studios attractions appeared unaffected, particularly Crush’s Coaster which continued to offer up to an 80 minute wait. Of course, as much as Ratatouille could draw guests away from those attractions, it will (hopefully) be bringing more people to the park altogether, unfortunately mitigating any dramatic change.

But here’s the important fact: those lines aren’t due to bad planning, at least with this attraction. Ratatouille actually (just about) has the capacity to cope with its popularity on a normal day. It’s not quite a Pirates of the Caribbean juggernaut, but the packs of Ratmobiles were thankfully specced pretty well in their ability to cycle guests through.

As we concluded on Twitter, Ratatouille is officially a “blockbuster” attraction for Walt Disney Studios Park, and that’s down to quality, not poor capacity.

Seeing guests queueing round the block, clamouring to experience La Place de Rémy for themselves, says a lot about the demand for investments of this scale or, perhaps even more so, the rest of the park which those guests are turning their back on.

Complete video: Ratatouille Opening Day Inauguration Ceremony

Fun facts from today’s opening day press release

• Including the attraction, restaurant and upcoming boutique, the new Ratatouille area has created 200 new and permanent jobs.
• The project required the skills of more than 4000 craftspeople, 80% of which were French. A total of 44 French companies helped to create the attraction, including 34 from Île-de-France and 11 from Seine-et-Marne.
• A special ultrasonic cleaning system was developed for the attraction by Fisa, a company based in Essonne, which allows 22,000 pairs of 3D glasses to be cleaned in five hours.
• With 370 seats, Bistrot Chez Rémy is the largest table-service restaurant at Disneyland Paris. 80% of the produce used is of French origin, and the meat is sourced from within Europe (Scotland or France).
• Disneyland Paris has generated more than 55,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs since its opening. In 2014, the group signed 8000 employment contracts, of which 1000 are permanent. Almost 15,000 people are currently employed at Disneyland Paris.
• Disneyland Paris contributes on average 6.2% of the French tourism industry’s foreign currency revenues and contributes €50 billion in added value for the French economy.
• Disneyland Paris is Europe’s number one tourist destination, with more than 275 million visits since its opening. Within a tourist sector elevated to the ranks of “national priority”, according to François Hollande during the Tourism Forum in June 2014, Disneyland Paris takes pride of place.
• Over the past five years, investments centred on maintaining and developing Disneyland Paris have amounted to €510 million.

Explore all DLP Today’s Ratatouille: The Adventure content and features:

• Complete Grand Opening Day Report – with 80+ photos from the press preview
• Grand Opening LIVE Roundups – 100+ live Twitter photos rounded up day by day
• Video: Ratatouille Full Ridethrough Tour (Onride)
• Video: Ratatouille Walkthrough Tour (No onride)
• Video: Ratatouille Grand Opening Ceremony with Bob Iger
• Video: La Place de Rémy
• Video: Bistrot Chez Rémy
• Minisite: Ratatouille guides and information on DLP Guide
• News: Six years’ worth of news and rumours dating back to 2008

Twenty new 2014 updates are now available on the DLP Guide Disneyland Paris Restaurant Menus pages, the most comprehensive guide to dining at the resort anywhere, and here they are in full. Read More…

Can you believe it? Walt Disney Studios Park has a new restaurant. Not just any dining location, either, but a fully-themed, immersive Table Service restaurant with views through to the unload area of Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy. Read More…

On Saturday 21st June, DLP Today took you live inside Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy for the first time. After the morning opening ceremony (covered in Part 1), we were able to share the first impressions of a live ride through the new attraction, before quickly skipping off to meet two important Imagineers behind the project.

Then, it was back to the ride for more updates, revealing the Ratmobiles and their load and unload areas in more detail for the first time.

Keep your hands, arms, feet and legs inside the Ratmobile! Read More…

Here we go, live from Disneyland Paris! This is your host Anthony reporting along from the Grand Opening weekend of Ratatouille: The Adventure.

To follow all the events as they happen, head straight to the special LIVE page and you’ll see all the latest live photos and information from the brand new attraction at Walt Disney Studios Park in one place. Or, if you’re reading on a phone, you’re best jumping straight to @DLPToday on Twitter and following the action there.

Highlights of DLP Today‘s Grand Opening schedule include the Inaugural Ceremony and Grand Opening of Place de Rémy at 11:00am on Saturday, tomorrow, and The Making of Ratatouille presentation with Walt Disney Imagineers at 11:00am on Sunday, plus lots more surprises in between.

I’ll also be sharing general previews and pictures of the new development throughout both days, along with other live news and views from around Disneyland Paris.

As you might expect, there are bound to be spoilers aplenty as we discover this brand new, world exclusive attraction for the first time and talk to its creators.

Note that as I’ll also be taking notes and collecting photos and videos for reports, some events may be covered more than others and most will be reported more fully in the weeks ahead — so if you can’t follow everything live, come back soon to relive the entire adventure.

I’d love to hear YOUR thoughts too — please reply, comment, tweet as we go!

So join in, and let DLP Today take you there now..!

FOLLOW LIVE NOW

• Discover Ratatouille: The Adventure on the DLP Guide mini-site!

The “sixtieth” attraction at Disneyland Paris, by official count, sees its Grand Opening for the press this weekend in Marne-la-Vallée. And Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy means a lot more to Disney’s European resort than most of those other 59 attractions.

From the size of the investment to the location inside Disney’s least popular theme park, it’d be easy to think of 60 reasons why this is a really big deal.

But, since there are things to prepare and time’s running out, here are just Six Big Reasons Why Ratatouille Matters…

1. It’s new, it’s BIG, it’s for everyone

Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune will forever be the addition Disneyland Paris fans regard as the one. Opening in 1995, it arguably saved the resort from financial meltdown — well, until its next restructuring — and provided a big, new version of a Disney classic which Parisian fans could say was all their own. But as a wild thrill ride with height restrictions it wasn’t for everyone and, since the bigger Discovery Mountain project was scrapped, it didn’t have a restaurant or much else to explore around the circular mountain.

In that sense, and even taking the roughly ten new attractions Walt Disney Studios Park brought in 2002, Disneyland Paris has simply never built such a complete and well-rounded expansion. One that everyone can ride, one that has all the necessary theme park infrastructure — dining, shopping, toilets — built in. This is how it should be done.

2. C’est très French

Since Le Visionarium in Discoveryland saw its all-too-early demise, Disneyland Paris has been lacking a certain French-ness in its parks. That fantastical Circle Vision 360 film was a gem, a real love letter to France; it helped to ground the park and helped the park — and its visitors — relate to its location.

Now, over in Walt Disney Studios Park, visitors can feel like they’re in Paris without ever stepping foot on the RER train to take them into the city.

It might seem mad to build Paris in Paris, but — ah! — this isn’t just any City of Light, it clearly has enough whimsy and “Hidden Rémys” to make it its own place.

This works two ways: it gives the park something very French, which foreign visitors will love, and it gives the park something very French, which the French will love.

Unmistakably connected with Disneyland Paris, it will put the resort on the map both for Disney fans and the general public in a way not seen since Space Mountain in the ’90s.

3. It’s fresh, not reheated

The Studios’ first and only E-Ticket expansion to date, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, was a huge deal at the time and helped give to the park a focal point a feeling of much-needed atmosphere. But coming almost four years after the exact same version of the ride was built in California, and that a full ten years after the Florida original, there wasn’t much new or fresh to actually be excited about. Construction was more about waiting for the next thing, not waiting to see what’s next.

With trackless vehicles, huge 3D projections, plus physical scenery and physical effects, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy is a comparatively unknown mélange like nothing seen in any other Disney park, on a scale to be truly excited about, and there are no plans as yet to reproduce it around the world.

4. It tips the balance to three days

It’d be absolutely right to hesitate to say that Walt Disney Studios Park is now a “full-day park”, but with an extra must-do attraction and a table service restaurant, it is almost getting to the point where you would struggle to do everything in a day.

Combined with Disneyland Park, this could begin to tip the balance towards three days in the parks becoming more of a standard at Disneyland Paris, at least for first-time visitors. That’s good for the parks, good for the hotels, good for everything.

After Disney California Adventure, Disney seems to have rediscovered the motto that “investment pays” — let’s please have that apply to Paris, too.

Indeed, more so than any expansion of the park yet, Ratatouille should encourage more visitors to hop to the Studios in the first place — and to hop back again. More visitors in the park could mean more much-needed investment — or at least you’d hope so, because…

5. It doesn’t fix the Studios, but it sets a benchmark

There might be a lot of talk this weekend and further ahead of Walt Disney Studios Park “coming of age” or “being fixed”. Let’s be clear: this relatively tiny pocket of pure, proper Disney theme park magic is still just that.

Unfortunately, stepping out of Place de Rémy, you’ll still be confronted by the soulless walkway behind Art of Disney Animation, the featureless Place de Stars in Production Courtyard.

The original Animation Courtyard still lacks anything to write home about, and Backlot is positively bleak. The park is still just a collection of generally very good but largely disparate attractions, lacking any Disney glue — or even enough money-making restaurants and shops — between them.

What this new Ratatouille mini-land does do, however, with its intricate sets, endless hidden nods and spectacular fountain, is set the benchmark: for a type of immersion in storytelling which should be standard, but has still yet to be seen across the park. Toy Story Playland actually did immersion quite well, but not so much the quality of its attractions.

Even Hollywood Boulevard which surrounds The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, a beautiful area of the park for almost seven years, lacks any kind of real immersion the second you turn to see the flat Hollywood Hills backdrop or the unrestricted views to the rest of the original backlot-inspired park. Could it finally be completed now?

Now there’s Place de Rémy, there’s no excuse. From Animagique to Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic to Armageddon: Les Effets Speciaux, Ratatouille will prove, somewhat painfully, just how under-performing the rest of the park is — both in how it looks, how it works and how it makes money. And that has to mean major changes.

6. We don’t know What’s Next

Star Wars Land? Marvel Studios? Animagique 2?! As one new attraction opens, it seems Disneyland Paris always becomes awash with rumour about what’s next. But right now, we just don’t know, and as we’ve seen in a past, these (often very real) plans have a disappointing habit of never making it to reality.

Even before this year, unless you take Princess Pavilions or Disney Dreams! into account, it’s been a long wait for a genuine expansion since Toy Story Playland.

So as Ratatouille: The Adventure prepares to open its doors, enjoy the moment. You never know how long we’ll be waiting for this feeling of simmering excitement again. Savour it.

• Join DLP Today from 11am this Saturday, 21st June for the Inauguration of Place de Rémy, part of our Ratatouille: The Adventure Grand Opening LIVE weekend schedule.

• Discover Ratatouille: The Adventure on the special DLP Guide mini-site!

The time has come to pull back the curtain on Ratatouille: The Adventure. The brand new dark ride sees its official press preview weekend this Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd June, so come along and join the fun as DLP Guide and DLP Today report LIVE from Disneyland Paris, with access to the ride and lots of surprises! Read More…