Time for some window sightseeing

First, please all welcome Isabel Girão and John Rozum, Town Square Photography's new followers. Thanks Isabel and John: hope to keep up to your expectations!
Let then move to this post's subject: the wonderful windows of Main Stree U.S.A.! One of the most underrated yet most delightful features of Main Street U.S.A., the windows of Main Street feature wondeful designs and shapes and incredibly detailed decorations. The rushing-to-nowhere kind of guests will probably not even realise there's actually something to enjoy not at eye-level, so let's just have pity of them and move on :-) Instead, take-your-time kind of guests, like we are, will grab some rice crispies treats at the candy store then raise their eyes and not only enjoy the incredibly detailed designs but also learn something new about the people who made this park a reality.

Like Michael Eisner and Frank Wells who joined the company in 1984 (just the perfect time to translate with ease in turn-of-the-century Main Street)...


...or Robert Fitzpatrick, chairman of the Euro Disney Resort until 1993, well known for his famous reply to French intellectuals speaking out against american colonisation of the French culture ("We didn’t come in and say O.K., we’re going to put a beret and a baguette on Mickey Mouse. We are who we are) wich backfired in almost no time in titles on the newspaper saying Americans see French as the lousiest stereotype".



One apologie: sometimes my English is fine, sometimes it just sucks. This time sucked. Please have mercy of it today. Mamma mia!

Two months to go!

Just wanted to let you know that in two month now I'll be probably strolling somewhere along Main Street U.S.A. or exploring the hidden tracks around the Temple of Doom or waiting to get my ride to Endor or diggin' some gold under the shadow of Big Thunder Mountain. In the meantime, let's take a stroll down memory lane with this detail of Space Mountain when it used to take guests to the Moon, not to some 70's disco club.

Disney relief for the weekend

Just survived from an hectic week in Milan, and in so much need of some disney magic! Here are some soothing images for you (am me!) to savour fpr the weekend.

Some Beautiful rock formations on the side of the castle. Would pay to climb them!


Castle balconies. A little bit rotten and in need of some maintenance, but you know what? Most real castle are like that so I quite like the final look (just won't say it too loud so suits won't find a cheap excuse to cut on maintenance...)


And the grand finale: the cozy outdoor area of L'Auberge de Cendrillon restaurant. Just so sad it's almost never used because of the rainy parisian weather!

Good Ol' Main Street

Having a look at these pictures of mine taken on my 2002 holiday is so weird... They do look older and a little less carefully planned as the ones I took in the following years. You all know Main Street USA is my favorite land and I have tons and tons of pictures of its wonderful buildings. Nevertheless each time I take a picture of just one of them I always discover new things: take this pictures for instance: look at the details, and at the face painted on te brickwall. Wonderful.

Ten years after the crowds turned to nonexistant to quite obnoxious while the sky is still tuned to parisian grey!

Walt Disney Studios

During the last months, I had some time to scan an upload tons of older pictures from my previous trips to Disneyland Paris, like these ones I took back in 2002 when Walt Disney Studios had just opened. The park itself was the scary joke we all know, but the entrance to the park, especially at night had its own charme. Take a look and judge for yourself.

Can't get enought of that stuff!

No, I'm not talking about Duff Beer, of course! It's Disneyland Paris' wondrous Chateau I'm talking about: here are two twilight pictures, just perfect, just wonderful. When I look at these pictures, that's when I excuse Michael Eisner for giving the green light to have Europe's Disneyland build in the rainest spot in all France ;-)

Main Street Anaheim

So I finally made it: after so many years visiting "the prettiest copy of them all", always wondering what the original was like, I finally happened to look at th 50 years old castle, wander through the narrow streets of New Orleans Square and take a stroll on Main Street. My rate? This park is a gem, a true work of art, full of warmth, kindness, delicaties. Nothing is overstated, nothing screamed, everything, every building rather than stating its presence first say hello, then kindly introduce itself. Take for example, Main Street U.S.A.

Compared to the Disneyland Paris version, the building here are less decorated, less higher (at least they seem to), less flamboyant in colors. Some would say the only difference is a tighter budget, I would say it's much more. Disneyland's Main Street is still a town street, less urban, much more close to an ideal, to a dreamed place, slightly smaller than reality, weirdly easier to grab. Don't know if it was all made on purpose or if it was the a genius ingenuity that had it made this way... still Disneyland Main Street U.S.A. has a heart no other Main Street has.

Take a stroll, judge by yourself... and don't forget to grab an ice cream with you!

A Castle Backyard

As I already said before, guests rushing from ride to ride, blindly believing in the fastpass-is-better mantra, sadly lose those details that really makes Disneylands all over the globe so much different from any other theme park. This time, we'll talk about the wondrous "backyard" of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Paris.

Guests with a faspass attitude will probably rush through the castle to get first in line at Snow White's or Pinocchio's ride and, after riding it, with their heads plunged on the park map, rush to the end of Fantasyland to catch the line for Peter Pan's ride.

Stop. Take a breath, and turn.


Your eyes are just looking at a gem, kindly reserved to the ones who still think a vacation is not just a checklist of fun (!?) things to do. The "unuseful" details put into this side of the castle never fail to amaze me. For instance, look at that wooden stairs, those stone set in the tower. Breathless...


Let's enjoy a closer look. Look at the brown tower and the golden spike over it. Wonderful!


These pictures feature a grey sky and this time time I must say the castle looks beautiful with it, just as good as the silver parisian roofs. Good job, Imagineering!

A room in New York

Some of you asked for some pictures of the interior of the hotel. Well, unfortunatley I don't have pictures of the restaurants and the New York City Bar (too busy enjoying them all!) but I managed to take some pictures of my room, wich has a very nice backside story. We had booked a lake view room but when we entered our room we found the housekeeping still working in it. Almost instantly a manager came, apologised and gave us an upgrade to a room with a an even better view! That's service! Here our room:


Here's the stunning view from our spot in the sky. Disney's Newport Bay Club is in the background on the left. At the bottom, the ice rink.

A closer view of the Lake Disney and the huge structure of the Newport.
Here's the view from our first room: we could see the Disney Village with the old imposing steel pillars, wich I miss so much, and...

a very ynique view of the Disneyland Hotel, the peak of Big Thunder Mountain and the top Indiana Jone and the Temple of Peril!

Time to rest: let's go to New York!

Disney's Hotel New York hasn't always been my favorite disney hotel at Disneyland Resort Paris: I used to like Disney's Hotel Cheyenne and Disney's Newport Bay Club much better, maybe because of their easier to understand and very well designed theming. The New York just featured a very distinctive post-modern look at it lacked that disney touch: no disney New York, no instantly recognisable icons, just a quite cold interpretation if the skyscapers theme. I just feeled and feared it would have aged very soon and become a sad reminder of the time Euro Disney Resort was built.

Well, I was wrong. I stayed once at it because the Disneyland Hotel was too expensive and my boyfriend and I wanted something better than the Newport, wich we chose the time before and found crowded beyond imagination. I was skeptical at first, but I must say I found it just perfect. It's true, it lack disney characters and a cartoonish look but I discovered that was not a minus! It made us enjoy an adult environment while still staying at disney.

Let's take a look.
Here's the left side of the building, much shorter than the central structure. Ok, I find the benches quite old (it reminds me all the flashy stars-and-stripes shirts and denims we all wore in the 80's... and I'm living in Italy!), but I like the court, the grass and the tall trees (they're not dead, it just wintertime in Paris...).

Here's the main building. What can I say? It's post-modern definetely, but got better with time, as lot of post-modern architecture unfortunately didn't. Just in front of the main building, there's an ice rink, hidden in the picture by the bushes at the center of the picture.

Here's a closer look of the bush! Well, I wanted to show the right wing of the hotel, featuring the restaurants where we have our breakfast.

A detail...


And a grand total (no, the picture's different from the second I posted). I especially like the red plants at the base of the (dead) trees, definetely consistent with the squared and triangled look of the building. I like it, it still surprises me. Your thoughts?

What an Adventureland!

Let's conclude (by now, of course) our exploration of Adventureland Bazaar, by taking a look at some of it stunning details. This time, I'll show how in a circle of about 10 meters, Imagineeris managed to put (at least) three different lamps, in order to smooth the blending between North and Central African architecture. Here we are in Northern Africa...
...there we are in Central Africa (i.e. Mauritania), facing a South American ruined temple (of course!)Turning back before leaving the Bazaar, what a lovely sight! a Mauritanian building, golden domes and the turreting spikes of Le Chateau De La Belle Au Bois Dormant.

Adventure Thru Inner Adventureland

Let's continue our tour of Disneyland Paris' Adventureland Bazaar!
The area was designed as a visual welcome to guests entering the land and as a strong visual statement to set the right mood as soon as possible. Boy, did the imagineers deliver it!
The delicate and charming visual broidery of Main Steet U.S.A. suddenly jump-cut to a forest of turrets, minarets, onion-shaped domes while colors pattern turn from mild pastels to brave reds, turquoises and oranges.

By the way, I'm not one of those who with a consistency-or-bust attitude. I mean, consistency if fundamental when designing a land or an attraction but I love to have those tiny inconsistent details peeking behind a wall, like a shimmering gold gothic turret among minarets and turrets (see below): it's like a teaser on a grander scale, a huge reminder that even though I'm stunned and lost in the land I'm in at the moment, there's a whole world out there, even more stunning just waiting for me. That's magic!

Well Hidden Tresures

As allo of you disney theme park lovers know, Disneylands are full of hidden secrets we're proud to point out when touring the park with our friends. Some areas of the park, while right there in the middle of the flow, just seem forgotten by the large crowds, as if they were kindly reserved to the brave who dares to step out of the flashing mobs of people and enjoying a secluded spot, a nice little place to look at all the others rushing to have some fun before others have...
Disneyland Paris has many of these spots but the most enchanting of all, maybe because I discovered it in 2005, 13 years after my first visit, is a small garden right next to the (former) Adventureland Bazaar.
Here's the secret place in all its glory: a nice bridge, a narrow stream of water, large though friendly rocks, turrets in the background and, above all, nobody to share this place with!


And when does the slow strem of water come from? But from this nice little gem fountain, well hidden right on the opposite side of the garden, at the entrance of the bazaar. Ah, nice little touches...

I have to stop writing now... I'm starting to feel a little homesick (sigh)

It's a Small World galore, part III

And now, let's go have a look at North America! Here we are in the middle of the Wild Frontier: cactuses, weird-looking rocks, snowy mountains in the background and a frontier town with a chuckwagon that's just parked. Even the sun changed its appearance (see my previous post).
Wait, North America is not just about the Wild West: there are the sleepy towns and the city that never sleeps, and let's don't forget about Canada! (By the way, I think among the skyscraprers of New York City, World Trade Center is still there. They were wise enough to keep it there).

And what's right next to the Statue of Liberty? C'mon Newyorkers, theGolden Gate, of course!

Then, the magic spell on my camera ended and picture started to look blurry again. But I was lucky enough to take one final picture of the Grand Finale, where all children of the world dance in a blu, silver and pink extravaganza! I often wonder if they did the right thing by letting the roof of the building so visible: wouldn't it be better if it were black? Then I come to my senses and realise that a dark black background would have given the ride a much darker look (even though more truthful to Mary Blair's original artwork), while here the core message was friendship and most of all, that the more color and differences the more beauty!

Its' a Small World galore, part II

We just left Italy, attracted by some mysterious kites floating above our heads. Of course, we are heading to Middle East and Asia. See the cloud shapes? we're definetely in India, don't you think? There's even the Taj Mahal at the end of our ride!

On the left a tempting souk teases us with its colorful merchandising (I'm starting to write like a '50's travel brochure...)


Ok, let's cross the ocean and tour beautiful South America: am I the only one to find perfect beauty in the shades of green of the hills in the backgrounds? And the sun takes a South American accent. Next time: North America, the Grand Finale and some thoughts on the colored roof.

It's a Small World galore!

And now it's time for the "It's a Small World" Extravaganza! As you know it's a small world is one of my favorite attractions, a perfect and mysteriously achieved balance between cuteness and plain simple beauty. Everytime I ride the attraction the mixture between colors always leave me breathless. And how many times have I tried to take pictures of that magic blend only to get blurry pictures? Once, in 2005 something magic happened to my camera as I took quite sharp pictures while riding, so I can finally share the interior with all of you who have never rode this masterchief.

Lets begin with a few shots of the European area. Appreciate the neat hill covered with a Scottish texture and right to the left a joyful Lochness Monster (partly hidden). In the foreground, giant flowers. Do I have to say something about the wonderfully balanced colors?...

Let's go back home, to Italy, now! Florence (the bridge), Pisa (the leaning tower), Venice (the gondola)... just perfect! take a look at how well Imagineers managed to blend three Italian icons coming from very different cities in one consistent environment: that's craftmanship!


Right next to Italy lies Switzerland...


and just across the riverbend there's something in the air (didn't know I live so close to China ;-)