The Themed Failure That Was the Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris

Starting in 2021, Walt Disney Studios Park, the second gate in Disneyland Paris Resort, will undergo an ambitious transformation and expansion, reinventing the whole park. Incorporating a huge lake, new attractions in Toy Story Playland, and new lands based around Marvel Comics, Star Wars, and Frozen. It is bound to be an exciting time at Europe’s number one theme park. But, WDSP didn’t always strive for such heights. In fact, it didn’t have any sign of imagination or magic to all. If you thought the original version of Disney’s California Adventure was drab, lifeless, and very anti-Disney in its conceptualisation, wait to you read what Paris’ second park was like.

Often considered the worst Disney theme park in the company’s history, WDSP was one of the by-products of Michael Eisner’s save-a-penny, cost-cutting schemes, following the surprise failure of Disneyland Paris. It is also the smallest of the parks. In it’s current iteration, the park can be explored fully in about half an hour. The original line-up of attractions was bare minimum. The most exciting was a 25-minute sit-in film, CineMagique, celebrating the magic and history of film. Nowadays, the likes of the Tower of Terror, Crush’s Coaster, and the amazing Ratatouille dark ride are the highlights. On opening day, there was even less than there was at DCA to attract crowds.

Back in the 1970s and early 80s, The Walt Disney Company was turning into a dusty museum. Since the death of Walt in 1966, the company had lost its creative head. That sense of business, charisma, and imagination Uncle Walt had was gone, and despite being run by his family, Disney was lost without its leader. As such, the animated films took longer to make and with smaller budgets. Innovation was not welcome. And the theme parks were practically dead in the water. Enter Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, who injected some much needed life into the dying house that Walt built.

Eisner, formerly the CEO of Paramount Pictures, was well versed with the film industry, and fanatically in love with it. He applied his own spark to Disney, with help from Wells, Roy E. Disney, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, injecting some much needed magic into Disney’s well. This led to the Disney Renaissance, a renewed interest in animation through the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the theme parks were given some new attention. Eisner wanted the parks to become a place where every member of the family, including thrill-seeking teenagers, wanted to visit. He turned to some outside help, to bring in the crowds with the likes of Star Tours and Alien Encounter.

Early on, Eisner believed the very process of the film industry should be celebrated within the Disney parks. He considered Epcot could host a pavilion dedicated to the industry. This pavilion eventually evolved into The Great Movie Ride, the icon and staple ride for Disney-MGM Studios (later Hollywood Studios) in Walt Disney World. The third park of Florida’s resort was dedicated to the film industry, and was, for a time, an actual working film and television studio. Some suspected Eisner opened the park to compete directly with Universal Studios Florida. The park opened in 1989, and served as a film studio, complete with sets, production departments, and a studio tram tour. However, Universal remained the superior “studio park”, having been in the tour business for years.

Eisner wanted people to experience how films were made via the tram tour, and could ride the movies through The Great Movie Ride and subsequent attractions. Still, Hollywood Studios was a success and the formula was suitable for duplication in the planned European resort. But, ten years after Eisner took the post as Disney CEO, things went down hill. While the movies were at their peak with the release of The Lion King in 1994, Eisner received blow after blow. Disneyland Paris was an unexpected commercial failure, Frank Wells died in a helicopter accident, and Jeffrey Katzenberg resigned and founded DreamWorks to rival Disney.

DLP’s failure caused Eisner to take a step back from big creative ideas, and instead relied on pencil pushers, marketers, and accountants to design any future parks and attractions. At the head of this hydra was Paul Pressler, who previously ran the Disney Stores, and came up with the original idea for Disney’s California Adventure – creating an ugly, irreverent, and uninspiring cesspit of a park that seemed to regard the same sense of nostalgia and magic Disneyland had with contempt. It took it many years for DCA to recover and flourish.

Disney had plans to open a second studio-based park even before Disneyland Paris opened: The Disney-MGM Studios Europe. The park would include a loving, romanticized street dedicated to classic Hollywood, actual film sets, a special effects studio, and a gangster shootout dark ride based on the Dick Tracy Crimestoppers ride once planned for Florida. Speaking of which, Florida’s studio park was starting to go downhill, or at least as an actual film studio. The tram tour was starting to look a bit bland and pointless with less productions being actually made in the park. Universal had its past and history to rely on, since it had built the studio first before introducing the tour.

With the failure of Disneyland Paris, the studios plans were cut and put on the drawing board. Paris did recover, and plans were made to add a second park to the resort. I remember adverts for the new studio park on British TV, with the various Disney characters gawping over the walls of the newcomer, with Snow White happily declaring the arrival of “the movie people”. Even though these characters are movie people, and were created by movie people. A little weird. I don’t remember much about visiting the park during my second visit to the resort back in 2005, but that sense of a small scale, and there being little too do linger.

 Turns out my feelings were unanimously shared. Walt Disney Studios Park was incredibly tiny, has huge open space filled with nothing, and the original line-up of attractions were boring, and only one felt like a legitimate tribute to show business. The entrance way was quite beautiful, resembling a classic film studio entrance, taking inspiration from Disney’s own studio in Burbank, California, complete with the Mickey Mouse-inspired Earffel Tower. A water fountain in the middle of the plaza features Mickey from Fantasia, enchanting the troublesome broomsticks. Beyond that was the large Studio One, housing a soundstage resembling a Hollywood street. But, like DCA, it is quite flat and cheap-looking.

Stepping out into the park, guests could pretty much see everything the park has to over with the turn of the neck. Yeah, the park is that small. Sure, there is the Partners statue of Walt and Mickey right in front, but beyond that was a park of disappointment. There isn’t any sense of proper theming, apart from the park being set in a fantasy film studio. It is slightly exaggerated with the studio buildings being brightly coloured and the like. Nothing special.

 

Animation Courtyard was meant to honour Disney’s proud history of animated films, but isn’t very enchanting or cartoony. There was The Art of Disney Animation, an interactive experience, the popular Animagique musical, and a unique if somewhat hollow take on Magic Carpets of Aladdin. Instead of flying across an Arabian landscape, you’re on a movie set with the Genie in the director’s chair. I guess the idea is that the Genie is replicating the feeling of the iconic scenes of Aladdin, or is revealing the truth that the 1992 movie was in fact just that. A movie.

Opposite that side of the park, there is the Production Courtyard. The most popular and beloved of the park’s attractions was CineMagique. A sit-in theatre show, CineMagique starts off as a tribute montage to classic films of the silent era. Then, a member of the audience’s phone starts ringing, and the rude American man disrupts the show. But, then the characters on the screen begin to notice and react to the loud phone. A wizard then magically transports the man into the movies, revealing him to be played by Martin Short. Short then travels through various iconic films and genres, finding love, magic, and a little adventure along the way.

The Studio Tram Tour was meant to be the headliner of the park, but was nothing special. Considering the park never once served as a proper film studio, the tram tour’s existence feels a little pointless. Despite being co-hosted by Jeremy Irons, and having the Catastrophe Canyon set piece, the tram tour offers nothing interesting to look at. Who even remembers Dinotopia or Reign of Fire today?

 

The final area is the Backlot, soon to transform into a new Marvel themed land. While the rest of the park had at least minor hints of theming, the Backlot literally runs with the idea of it being a backlot, incorporating large metal warehouses. The attractions here were Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster, an Armageddon themed SFX simulator, and a generic stunt show which later gained a minor Cars overlay with the out-of-place appearances of Lightning McQueen and Mater.

And, that’s it. Sixty-two acres of minimal effort. Heck, the individual lands in the main park have more attractions than the whole of WDSP put together. This park was the complete opposite of what was going on in Tokyo Disneyland. While Walt Disney Studios Park was restrained in size, presumably budget, and imagination, Tokyo DisneySea was a mindboggling piece of art and Imagineering ingenuity. Perhaps the most beautifully designed theme park of them all. Imagineers were given free reign to do what they wanted with DisneySea, and virtually none in making Paris’ second gate.

The park’s failure was just as fast as DCA’s, and only added to the failure of the resort. Changes had to be done. In 2007, the park saw the arrival of Crush’s Coaster, a small Cars ride, and the iconic Tower of Terror. Several years on, the first but miniscule incarnation of Toy Story Playland opened within the centre of the park.

 

And, then, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy arrived. An amazing trackless dark ride using the same technology found within Universal’s Spider-Man ride. That and Toy Story Playland marked a change in direction for the park, with some actually love and affection found in the details and design process. And this looks like the way to go for the troubled park. 

The huge popularity of Marvel, Star Wars, and Frozen are bound to bring in the tourists and help transform WDSP into something much grander and beautiful. 

A park to be proud of.