Toon Towns and Toon Studios

In a few days there will finally be a decent reason to visit Walt Disney Studios at Disneyland Resort Paris again since my first visit way back in 2002, when the park first opened: on June 9th a Toon Studio will finally open and bring to that dreary concrete esplanade formerly known as Animation Courtyard a little bit of color and fun and along with them that much needed sense of out-of-this-worldness that makes a disney park so much fun.

Even though Toon Studios is a shadow of what the concept would have allowed (if you have ever visited Toon Town, you know what I am saying here...), still there's at least one area of the park that's full of colors, vegetation and even some very well crafted rocks!...

But wait! There already are some Toon Studios, and not in Paris but in Japan!


Well, to be honest they belong to Mr. Maroon of Maroon Studios, the world renowned animation studios that brought us such classic characters as Roger Rabbit, Baby Herman and fabulous Jessica Rabbit and are not open to the public.

Jump-cut to Walt Disney Studios' Toon Studio... wouldn't have been great to have the huge buildings hiding Crush's Coaster been themed with a more cartoonish look as Mr. Maroon did?

By the way, it seems Maroon Studios recently rented his facilities to an international blockbuster production starring the British star Winnie the Pooh tentatively titled Pooh's Hunny Hunt (spelling is not final) but maybe that's just some wrong internet buzz...

It's a Small World, again and again and again!

As you probably already know, I am a huge fan of It's a Small World and Mary Blair's outstanding art. I posted a few days ago some pictures of the Tokyo Disneyland version and said that in my opinion its color scheme is the most faithful to Mary Blair's original drawings, featuring for instance her incredible brigh colors on dark backgrounds. Though I said it happened to be my least favorite version of this beloved attraction. Jump cut to Paris, judge by yourself and leave a comment.

This pictures were taken by Sparkyfra (thanks again) during one his many trip to Disneyland Paris. It was October and the light had a wonderful orange hue wich really added to the beauty of the facade of It's a Small World.




Looking at these pictures I realized imagineers definitely took inspiration from Mary Blair's artwork yet at the same time used a much more consistent palette of brown pinks, reds and yellows, with some bright accents of gold and light blue. The final result is not faithful maybe to the original, but I think it's more balanced and tuned to the place and the peculiar light of it.

American Waterfront's Hidden Lovers' Hideout

During my time at Tokyo DisneySEA, unfortunately I spent very little time in this area of the park, maybe because it doesn't features so many attractions but I strongly suggest to spent some time there. American Waterfront features two distinctive areas with avery different flavour one side depicts the 1930's New York with huge billboards in very bright colors, the other side portrays a small town by the sea in north-east United States. It's a very calm area and a very nice escape from the crowds of of Lost River Delta, Mysterious Island and Arabian Coast. It seems an area of the park especially loved by young couples which I often saw hiding behind this lighthouse.

The importance of being queueing

I already talked before about how important is, in order to fully enjoy a ride in a disney theme park, to understand that a ride is much more than the ride itself and that riding the queue really helps building the right mood to enjoy the actual ride. I already talked about how the whole concept of fastpassing an attraction, while useful if you really are in a hurry, spoils guests at the end teaching them that waiting is just a loss of time and at the same time authorizing imagineers to putt less creativity into themeing a queuing area.

The queueing area of the Indiana Jones attraction at Tokyo Disney Sea really proves what I just said. It was so amazing I couldn't stop staring at the decorations and taking pictures, even though just two of them looked right enought to be wort posting.