Parks & Resort

Even more Main Street, U.S.A. addresses have now been decked out in gold for the 20th Anniversary. At Cable Car Bake Shop and The Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlour (above), the regular semi-circular fans of white and golden fabric have been supplemented with a different, more extravagant style of bunting with great swathes of fabric hung around the balcony and the rooftop of the buildings respectively. Like several other “businesses” along the street, Gibson Girl spent much of 2011 under scaffolding for a complete refurbishment and recolouring of its palette; switching its green-striped window shades to red, for example. The gold additions give a dressy flourish to its spotless refreshed façade.

Meanwhile Main Street Station continues to intrigue with its dramatic 20th Anniversary repaint, which looks to “emboss” the landmark of the Disneyland Park entrance in gold for the occasion. Previous colour tests had stuck precisely to one side of a single column at the front of the railroad station, but now we have the sight of ironwork underneath the platform — including those famous “EDLRR” (Euro Disneyland Railroad) initials — being completely repainted in gold.

This seems to confirm that it won’t just be stonework, nor the front-facing façade of the station, that will see a golden overlay. The solid metallic gold effect takes away some of the intricacy of the previous two-tone colour of the arches, but does manage to catch the glow of the lights along the concourse, making those infamous outdated initials even more of a feature.

With lights (presumably new LED effects) said to play a part in the wider Main Street, U.S.A. Celebrates! overlay, this golden glow could be a preview of what’s to come.

VIA @InsideDLParis (Twitter)

So you just have to get your hands on some of the 20th Anniversary merchandise, but don’t have a trip to Disneyland Paris planned any time soon? First of all: why not?! Second of all: help is at hand! A special “Disney Parks Collection” holding page has been added to both the Disney Store UK and Disney Store France websites, promising that a range of products from the resort’s new merchandise collections will be available to buy online. The page is notably absent from the German Disney Store site.

The page reads: “From April 1, 2012, Disneyland Paris invites its guests to celebrate its 20th anniversary, in sparkling and magical style. Lots of surprises and new features have been imagined, to provide an explosion of magic, lights and colour. For all of us who love shopping in Disney style, there will be great new Park exclusive products: T-shirts, mugs, toys, collectibles, clothing, hats and souvenirs… Stay tuned and sign up for our emails to be the first to know about the brand new 20th anniversary Disneyland Paris product range.”

Previously, your only hope of ordering souvenirs from Disneyland Paris outside of the resort was to personally email their own mail order department. Such a tie-up with Disney Store is an interesting move; while the US store has long stocked a wide range of Disney Parks merchandise, the slightly detached nature of Disneyland Paris from the Disney empire, in corporate terms, has presumably made this a more complicated deal. It could be expected that while Disney Store will benefit from new sales, particularly from lucrative fans and collectors, Disneyland Paris itself will benefit from the increased exposure alongside the store’s hundreds of general Disney products.

You can sign up on the preview page to be notified when the Disney Parks Collection arrives in from Paris, which is expected to be from 1st April onwards.

Now you see them, now you… still see them. But soon you won’t. Besides the 50 or so fountains now installed in the moat of Sleeping Beauty Castle for Disney Dreams!, two enormous other water effects have recently made their mark on this fairytale landscape. In the middle of the moat on either side of the bridge, a towering steel construction rises above the heads of passing guests. Camouflaged, for now, into the grey cliffside and stone walls of the castle from a distance, their size is nevertheless impressive. Their use is no mystery at all: these are the two vital water screens to be used throughout the show.

Water will be pumped at high pressure up the large pipe at the rear of the tower, before hitting the curved, semi-circular head of the tower at enough velocity to erupt upwards in a fine, fan-shaped spray, creating a perfect projection screen. Before this happens, however, the pipe will be elevated even further into the air at the start of each show using compressed air and a pneumatic lift inside its main support beam, lifting it to perhaps almost double the height seen here.

Projectors positioned behind each tower, now being squeezed into the rockwork and stone wall of the castle, will project images to accompany those mapped across the castle, expanding and completing the scene. The show will notably open with Peter Pan projected on one screen and Wendy on the other, as the Second Star to the Right shines from the castle’s top window above.

Since the photos here by ThemeParkZone.es were taken on 16th February, the towers have been fully connected up ready for testing and the moat refilled to around half its depth, so their excellent photo update is a great last chance to see all the Disney Dreams! equipment before it was hidden by water.

So, the only mystery here now is how these giant steel towers will be hidden. It was expected before work began that they might rise and sink completely into the water, but the towers are clearly permanently installed at this height. Since they haven’t been painted before installation, it will now be a case of cladding or wrapping them in a themed finish to match the environment. RadioDisneyClub.fr has reported that a company fittingly called Neverland Themepark Decorations could be working on the final design; their website states them to be specialists in themed concrete creations…

VIA ThemeParkZone.es

The buzz for Disney Dreams! has finally hit the Disneyland Paris press website, with both a complete press release for the new nighttime show and several publicity photos from recent after-hours tests. Showing simply a multi-coloured test projection on Sleeping Beauty Castle and a burst of pyrotechnics radiating outwards from behind the château, they’re hardly the most revealing sneak peeks, but at least confirm the surprisingly important presence of fireworks in the show. Disneyland Paris has long had problems with the noise and cost of fireworks, limiting them to just two summer months and special events. Since we all really thought the fountains, projections and other effects would be there to make up for a move away from pyrotechnics, avoiding those perceived problems, it’s exciting to see that they will truly be an important element of the new, nightly and year-round spectacular.

A third image was also released alongside these two, and has been published elsewhere online. However, a quick look at the flowery projections on the castle — and more tellingly the photo’s EXIF data — reveals it was taken at 23:05 on 13th July 2011, in other words during The Enchanted Fireworks, so probably doesn’t offer a glimpse at Disney Dreams! at all.

What does come packed with information about this 20th Anniversary spectacular, though, is a new press release dedicated to the show. Detailing the music, the story and all the “elements” it’s a revealing read — but only in French. Lucky then we’ve translated it all into English!

Complete translated press release follows… Read More…

Like gold? Like bunting? Then this 20th Anniversary year Main Street, U.S.A. will be your kinda’ town! Despite the countdown clock still standing at more than a month before festivities begin, the town has already begun to receive its commemorative overlay. From tentative beginnings on the awning of Casey’s Corner, semi-circular gold and white bunting has begun to line the entire town. Coming in a large and small size depending on the location, these shimmering fans of fabric can already be spotted hanging from The Emporium, Walt’s – An American Restaurant, Lilly’s Boutique, Disney & Co., Boardwalk Candy Palace, Cable Car Bake Shop and Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlour.

This follows months of complete restorations to buildings including Walt’s and Gibson Girl, plus numerous ongoing clean-ups and repaints right across the street.

Bunting is the traditional way for the other Main Streets around the world to celebrate the seasons and events of the park, fitting naturally within the turn-of-the-century streetscape. While this particular style of flashy gold might require a small leap of period theme, it’s certainly favourable to the oversized banners of the 15th Anniversary — or pretty much any overlay to have come before it. Along with the culling of the Pumpkin Men from Halloween and unsympathetic decorations from Sleeping Beauty Castle, it continues a reaffirmed desire to respect the park’s original landscapes and stories when decorating for seasonal occasions; refreshing the environments more subtly — and effectively.

These decorations form part of the Main Street, U.S.A. Celebrates! event. Marketed as a “unique celebration of magic, lights and colours with even more twinkles and memorable glowings-on than ever before,” it sounds like this spot of bunting might just be the first of the street’s surprises…

VIA @InsideDLParis (Twitter)

We know that Disney Dreams! means fountains, fire, projections, lasers and much more, but what story will all these elements be telling? This morning’s Euro Disney S.C.A. Annual General Meeting naturally put Disneyland Paris’ 20th Anniversary and its new nighttime show in the spotlight, revealing some key plot points along the way. Fans tweeting live from the event shared details of the five key “acts” making up the show as they were announced, all appearing to relate back to the storyline of Peter Pan and his shadow. While the show will combine many of the best elements of other Disney nighttime spectaculars (and then some), it could be this narrative, threading the entire thing together, that sets it apart.

An opening act titled The Magic of the Second Star will surely be the grand moment when the “second star to the right” of Peter Pan fame ignites at the top of Sleeping Beauty Castle, causing pixie dust to pour out across the castle’s façade and open up the Disney Dreams.

Pixie dust pours out from the yet-to-shine Second Star

We actually got a glimpse of this in the earlier promo video, where projection tests (pictured above) showed pixie dust apparently pouring out from the tallest tower and engulfing the castle. In the final show, that top window will be glowing with the bright light of the “second star” itself: the effect was installed behind its stained glass star just a few weeks ago. What exactly this “effect” consists of is currently unknown — spotlights, ultra-bright LEDs? — but it has become a key theme of all the 20th Anniversary imagery. Showing a desire to make sure the castle is part of the show, rather than just a flat projection surface, the idea is clever: since the castle has always had a star on its uppermost window, why not make that the “second star to the right” for this show? When it does come to life, it’ll be like it has been hiding there all along, for the past 20 years, just waiting to be ignited…

Scene 2, The Shadow at Play, hints at the importance of Peter Pan’s shadow to the plot. Could he be engaged in a George (CinéMagique) or Donald Duck (Philharmagic)-style trail across Disney classics to retrieve his missing darker side? Perhaps pursued by Captain Hook along the way? Scene 3, Free to Dream, and scene 4, Shadow Battle, hint at what could be lighter and darker elements of the show. The “battle” in particular would be a good call for those fire effects. However, films including Ratatouille, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Jungle Book have all been confirmed to be part of the show, showing a wide spread of stories and characters beyond the usual princesses and villains.

Finally, the finale: Dreams Can Take Us Anywhere. And yet, even with these titles and everything we know so far, we still don’t know quite where they’ll take us. Let the anticipation continue…

VIA @DisneyGazetteFr (Twitter)

“Everything neat and pretty?” Well, not quite. Although some of the wraps came down from Fantasy Festival Stage last week, revealing the former show venue’s new colour palette, it is emerging that its new purpose as a permanent Mickey Mouse meet ‘n’ greet won’t begin right at the launch of the 20th Anniversary as expected. Instead, according to @InsideDLParis, Mickey will don his magician’s cape ready for an opening on 17th May 2012. This is unconfirmed, publicly, by Disneyland Paris.

However, murmurs that the new “attraction” might be delayed were compounded by the curious, vague “Opening Spring 2012” notation added to the recent 20th Anniversary promo video. A mid-May opening places it, conveniently, right in the middle of that timeframe (and puts the pressure on Disney Dreams!, more than ever, to impress on April 1st). And what for the Mouse in the meantime? A “provisional” version of the meet ‘n’ greet could take place at Woody’s Roundup Village, reports admin Mouetto of Disney Central Plaza. This would be similar — but surely better — than the cheap temporary tent which was the Princess Pavilion, in all but name, for six months of the Magical Moments Festival.

The exterior transformation of the stage hasn’t been too dramatic thus far, with just the old “Fantasy Festival Stage” signage removed and new colours on the awnings notable in this photo by Max Fan (see how it used to look here). A bold “Mickey Mouse” red has replaced the green around the sides, while an interesting pastel shade has been used on the old show control booth in the middle.

VIA Max Fan (DCP), @InsideDLParis (Twitter), Mouetto (DCP)

Disneyland Paris saw overall revenue growth of just 1% in the first quarter of its 2012 financial year, from 1st October to 31st December 2011. The results, published this morning by operating group Euro Disney S.C.A., make for unremarkable if somewhat reassuring reading given the economic climate. Resort revenues, for Theme Parks, Disney Village and Hotels, actually rose a good 4% in the quarter, brought down for the total figure only by lower real estate revenue compared to 2011. Park attendance itself grew a surprising 5%, due to higher numbers visiting from France itself, perhaps taking advantage of the mild late Autumn for last minute trips, with total Theme Park revenues up 7%.

Philippe Gas, CEO, comments that “improved attendance and guest spending are encouraging, especially in light of the challenging economic environment.”

However, average spending per guest in the parks was up by only 1% and average spending per room at Disney Hotels up only 2%. Total Disney Village and Hotel revenues grew by just 1% and room occupancy at Disney Hotels actually fell by 1.1 percentage points. It seems that, despite continued success in getting guests through the park gates, the resort still struggles at turning these numbers into anything more than negligible increases in revenue, probably driven more by price increases than additional purchases. It has to be said that, for a visitor, the resort’s casual dining fare remains largely out of date and uninspiring, while the merchandise range simply fails to engage for many demographics. At a time when a guest will consider and reconsider every additional purchase on top of their ticket, the resort certainly isn’t doing badly, but it is failing to make many consequential gains.

Nor is the dip in hotel room occupancy disastrous, especially after a sharp (and perhaps, unsustainable) jump of 5.6 percentage points in FY2011. Yet perhaps it reflects a growing feeling amongst visitors that the Disney Hotels do not offer the best value for their money. High standard room rates have combined with aggressive discounting over several years to suggest that “the price on the label” may not necessarily be the price they’re worth. A quick visit to any online trip planning forum will immediately bring up potential visitors merely biding their time for the next “big offer” or “flash sale” — hey, like this one! — which, while useful for propping up numbers, must surely be harming the brand value associated with Disneyland Paris. Will anyone ever want to pay full price again?

Signing off, Philippe Gas mentions only the 20th Anniversary: “In April we look forward to launching our twentieth anniversary celebrations with brand new experiences for our guests, including the Disney Dreams®! night-time show, an innovative light and color spectacular. It will also be
an opportunity to celebrate a two-decade journey with our cast members, our guests as well as our key public and private partners who have helped Disneyland Paris become Europe’s number one tourist destination.” Meanwhile the footnotes include only the same passing mention to the launch of a “multi-year expansion of the Walt Disney Studios® Park, which includes a new attraction.” So, despite construction having begun, no Ratatouille dark ride announcement yet; and all eyes on the 20th…

VIA Euro Disney S.C.A. Fiscal year 2012 – First Quarter Announcement (PDF)