Swing Into Spring will return to Disneyland Paris from 1st March to 31st May 2015, that’s confirmed already. But while we prepare for Halloween and Christmas, Disney is preparing for the second season of this successful new annual festival with a new audition notice already posted for dancers on the official Casting website. Read More…
Buying your Disney park tickets from the new official Disneyland Paris website? Get ready for new names and seasonal prices for 1 Day tickets: applying only to 1 Day tickets purchased online in advance, you can now choose from Mini, Magic or Super Magic ticket types depending on the date you’re visiting. Read More…
You wait for one new Disney princess meet ‘n’ greet and then two come at once. Alongside Anna and Elsa from Frozen, making their first appearance at Disneyland Paris outside of the daily parade, the upcoming Disney’s Enchanted Christmas season will also see the premiere of fiery-haired Merida from Pixar’s Brave, whom many assumed had been passed over by the Parisian resort. Read More…
Mickey’s Halloween Celebration, Maleficent’s Court and the Maleficent Disney Villains Promenade are all on the latest official Disneyland Park Programme, published today for the first ten days of Disney’s Halloween Festival in 2014. Read More…
If you’ve visited Disneyland Paris (and you probably have, right?), then the queue for Crush’s Coaster won’t need any introduction. Not just its perpetual length and duration at any hour of the day and on any day of the year, but it’s slightly soul-crushing lack of Disney magic or ingenuity in dealing with the low capacity of this popular roller coaster. Read More…
The oft-criticised official Disneyland Paris website has seen a complete relaunch of its UK edition today, bringing it in line with the websites for its American cousins in perhaps the biggest update yet both visually and technically. Read More…
New this year, the briar patch of Maleficent’s Court is about to take shape on Castle Courtyard in Fantasyland. The square behind Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant, normally home to the Sword in the Stone, will play host to the gang of Disney Villains for Disney’s Halloween Festival, meeting guests beside an enormous bramble sculpture. Read More…
The Earffel Tower, icon of Walt Disney Studios Park, will soon have a brand new face. As part of a general (and as we seem to always say, much-needed) refurbishment of the water tower in the Front Lot entrance of the park, the opportunity is also being taken to replace the original 2002 “filmstrip” logo with a new-look design.
Based on current progress, the “new” logo appears to have more classic, maroon red-coloured lettering with a simple black outline on a plain background. Without doubt the look has the potential to be much more 1930s in style, boding well for any future changes to the entrance of the park, which lacks any definable time period setting.
In terms of its actual typeface and size, the logo is similar if not identical to before, with only the “Walt Disney” letters flattened out from their wavy design following the filmstrip in the original, which used a modern palette of blue, yellow and red. The typeface, similar to ITC Anna, remains the same as seen around the area, including lettering on Disney Studio 1.
A very rough current approximation of the new logo (typeface not fully accurate)
For Walt Disney Studios Park, it’s a wise and very welcome decision to come up with a logo design unique to the very prominent Earffel Tower.
The 2002 logo was created primarily for the promotion of the park in brochures and park guides, not to provide any kind of thematic detail within the park itself. Until now, adorned with just the standard modern park logo, the famous water tower hasn’t actually felt part of a specific period or place you’re being transported to. After all, you don’t see the garish pink Disneyland Park marketing logo on the entrance to that park.
Over in Florida, the Earful Tower remains somewhat hidden away at the back of the park, so less important thematically, though it too had a recent rebranding with the name change from Disney-MGM Studios to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Elsewhere in the Paris park, a similar maroon colour was used to great effect on the Walt Disney Television Studios building, replacing its cold original turquoise colours.
In Disney’s calendar it’s very nearly the “most wonderful time of the year”, already! If you’ve already a Disneyland Paris trip prepared for the upcoming Disney’s Enchanted Christmas season, or you’re considering a last-minute booking to take advantage of the latest deals, it’s time to start planning the detail. Read More…
Main Street, U.S.A. and Frontierland have begun their transformation by ghosts and pumpkins respectively, ahead of Disney’s Halloween Festival beginning in just ten days.
Decorations arriving in the two Disneyland Park lands look broadly similar to recent years, following the festival’s gradual reinvention from 2010 onwards.
Today’s latest photos by InsideDLParis show the ghosts introduced to Main Street in 2012 returning with modest changes. Unlike the Pumpkinmen, who from 2003 painted the street orange with complete disregard for its storyline, one of the best things about the popular ghosts is that they reference numerous Main Street locations — including the Dr Bitz Dental School on Town Square, below.
Plenty of banners and “funky pumpkins” are already present, too.
Over in Frontierland, the Pumpkinmen actually had a slight reprieve, returning as “Harvest Festival” decorations alongside sunflower bunting and softer autumn colours. Their slightly menacing, jagged grins these days replaced by softer smiles, their context here is much more fitting than Main Street, even if the way some are bolted to the ground on large visible plates still seems a little “un-Disney”.
A minor revision in Frontierland sees the banners changed from orange and yellow to orange and black, as in Main Street.
One bigger change for 2014 is the scene on Royal Castle Stage. Previously briefly home to Mickey’s Halloween Treat in the Street show, now superseded by Mickey’s Halloween Celebration parade, the unused Le Théâtre du Château has lost its giant Mickey Mouse-shaped pumpkin, replaced by a smaller sunflower centrepiece.
The green vines entwining its towers have also yet to return, so it looks likely, without any show to present, that the stage overlay will now remain more low-key.
The introduction of a more “Harvest” style of spookiness is perhaps in line with rumours that Disneyland Paris will look to extend the Halloween season in coming years, perhaps having it begin earlier in September. Helping to spread the popularity of the season into an otherwise empty month, this would also support plans to invest more in new and better annual seasons, such as Swing into Spring, in favour of tiresome year-long “non-festivals” such as 2011’s Disney Magical Moments Festival.
