Skies

This time I will focus my post not on the buildings, the theming, the details of Disneyland Paris, but on one of the rarest and most beautiful sights over there: the blue sky. Can you believe that in 10 years of trips to Disneyland Paris this is the FIRST time I happened to enjoy a blue sky (sometimes with sparse clouds wich made it even more enchanting) for the whole stay, that's three days in a row! Enjoy.

Details details details

Disneyland Paris nevese ceases to surprise me. Look at the intricated work I found right after the entrance, to the left of Town Square, just right in front of the restrooms. Simly amazing.

Candy galore

There no Sunday morning stroll on Main Street U.S.A. without a visit to the Candy Palace to grab some candies to survive the walk to Sleeping Beauty's Castles. Those of you who follow this blog since its launch will probably remember my fond love for this store on Disneyland Paris' Main Street and my concerns when I first heard it was going to be refurbished slighly more than a year ago. My friend at "Sparkling Castle" blog visited the new shop a few months after its reopening and said quite good things about it, yet I was scared. Well, now I saw with my own very eyes and can fully agree with him! The color scheme is ligher and fluffier without being corny and cheesy. The ceiling now features a wallaper looking like a pink and white striped tent wich looks really fresh and elegant at the same time. And now, for you to enjoy, some of my pictures of this place. Too bad you can't smell the vanilla fudge perfume pervading this place...

Back from Disneyland, ready to post

Less than a week ago, I was enjoying my time at the Disneyland Resort Paris, where I spent four full magical days. That basically means one hugely good thing for this blog: I have tons of new pictures to share with you! Everything was magic as usual there but the biggest surprise was the weather wich, for the first time in my experience of Disneyland Paris, was incredibly mild and pleasant, with clear blue skies dotted by innocent clouds, a sparkling breeze and that cuddling warmth it just makes you feel happy to be alive. So... Ready, set, go!

You should all now bu now I really love Main Street U.S.A. and always start my visit with a nice and quiet stroll, taking my time to listen to the music, watch the beautiful buildings and wonder at those beautiful little details. Like this sign on the Main Street Transport Deposit...



...or these intricated wood swirls gracing the waiting area in front of the restrooms...


And what about the American flag framed by the colums of the Emporium?


or the entrance to the Liberty Arcade?


Oh by the way, I live here...


and that's where I usually have my cup of coffee in the morning (sigh!)

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!

Fantasyland Theatre

There's an insisting rumor that the Fantasyland Theatre in Fantasyland at Disneyland Paris will be bulldozed in the following years to make way to the European version of Disney's Calfornia Adventure's "The Little Mermaid" ride wich is rumored to be of the best ride WDI ever designed. The Fantasyland Theatre is a lovely building made of bricks, glass and steel and even though it was definitely not used as much as planned, if rumors prove true and the building will be demolished, I will surely miss it. That said, I building and attractions won rewards based on the numers of pictures taken of it, Famtasyland Theatre would be cursed: here are the only two pictures I found in more that ten trip to Disneyland Resort Paris.


This last one, taken on a foggy winter day, is from the right side, close to Alice's Curious Labyrinth and you can see the Fantasyland station on top of the theatre building. I'm surely going to take some more pictures of it next May.

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!

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 ;-)

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!