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.

to Disneyland Paris... and beyond!

Dear readers all,
it's been quite a long time since my last post. You all can easily guess what happened: real life took over and finding a little bit of time to post became harder and harder. I kept checking the stats about Town Square Photography though and found, to my greatest surprise, that the site is still visited every single day by people from all over the world still looking for pictures and thoughts about Disneyland Paris (basically). I even got two regular readers (hello Pricess Fee! Hello Dew!).
Well, here's the good news: after a long hiatus (life took its toll, as I said before), I'll be visiting Disneyland Paris in May, arriving on the 10th and leaving the 14th! I'm really looking forward to being strolling along Main Street and wander through Adventureland. In the following days I'll keep you updated as the vacation schedule more and more precise! So, stay tuned!
Massimo

Some more fuzzy shots

Casual Pictures

Sometimes you plan a shot, measure distances, balance negative spaces, keep your breath and shoot the picture... and end with a bland, anonimous, boring image. Other times you just push the button and something magic happens. Here are a few pictures: they're not focused, they're zoomed in with no logic at all... but they managed to capture the essence of those moments, the magic of those nights at the park.

New graphics!

Hi all! I am very proud to announce that I finally managed to give this blog a brand new, boldly daring, joyfully retro, warmly welcoming, cover picture! I'm so proud of it!
In my opinion, it's just a perfect balance between a 50's look and a Main Street look. My appreciation goes to the artists at Late Rabbits (close friends of mine) who managed to get through my confusional briefs!

Euro Disney Resort

We all know the troubled first years of Disneyland Resort Paris, and how they changed the name of the resort from Euro Disney Resort to Disneyland Paris in an effort to get rid of all the bad press associated to the Euro Disney brand. A few years ago, while enjoying a walk along the shores of Lake Disney, I discovered a lamp pole with the long gone "Euro Disney Resort" log on it and thought that after all that name was not bad at all. Your thoughts?

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 ;-)

Simple but true

After the sad realisation that Disneyland's Tomorrowland is in such a bad shape, I turned my interest on the Walt Disney Studios at Disneyland Resort Paris again, wich, after my visit to Disney's California Adventure, I think does not deserve the Disney's-all-time-worst rate it got when it first opened. Just to see if what I was thinking was supported by actual evidences, I watched my pics of Crush's Coaster and thought that, true, it's not Disneyland Paris we're talking here, but it's still nice, and true to its heart, with no presumption of being the best, as Disney's California Adventure. Take a look at the pictures and judge for yourself.

Someone save the Future!

Disneyland in California has such unique places and feelings to offer it can really stand beside Disneyland Paris (and sometimes even beat it, but don't say to loud...) Of course, there's always an exception and in this case it's the sad sad land which is know as the land of tomorrow: Tomorrowland.

Forget the charming streets of New Orleans Square, long gone are the good feelings of Main Street: of all the lands of Disneyland, Tomorrowland is the worst of them all, such an all-time-worst even Walt Disney Studios in Paris can claim it offers better theming (I never thought I would say it!). We always thought Walt Disney Studios stood as the quintessential evil in Disney entertainment, well think again: Disneyland's Tomorrowland is your new enemy.

Ok, I'm used to Discoveryland, with its strong and cohesive identity, and ok, we all know the hard time Imagineers (and not just them) had and still have in representing realistic tomorrows (have a look a Paleo-future to get what I mean), but Tomorrowland has no excuses: it's just an area of the park that has been left abandoned for years (at least that's what it seems). I tried to get a picture of it, I looked for a nice point of view, for a "contemporary" look to take a picture of... nothing.

There's an exception to the exception of course: Space Mountain, wich beats Disneyland Paris' completely: it's less bumpy, more colorful, much better themed, with sights and sounds blending just perfectly into each other, and most of all it can be be ridden even by people who would never ride our Space "Washing Machine" Mountain, wich is what Disneyland is all about: having fun all together.

I liked the (recently redone) interior of Space Mountain. It goes full speed in the direction of representing a good ol', naive, future. Much much better than the sad, inconsistent, disjointed representation going on elsewhere on this area.

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!

Unusual point of view!

This pictures is probably the best I took during my three day stay at Disneyland. Hope you think the same!

Castle Galore!

Here's some more pictures of the Sleeping Beauty's Holiday Castle at Disneyland (her main residence is of course in back in France at the Disneyland Resort Paris ;-)

Back from Disneyland!

Here's some pictures I took just a few days ago, during my holiday in Los Angeles!




Here's some pictures I took just a few days ago, during my holiday in Los Angeles!

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.