Disneyland Paris has made the news mainly for its financial lack of success and near-bankruptcies. However, there is nothing wrong with the park itself. This 1992-opened venture is the most beautiful and romantic ‘Magic Kingdom’ Disney has ever built.
Instead of copying the structures and buildings of California's Disneyland, Florida's Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland, the Disney Imagineers frolicked and created a refreshingly new and inspired design for Europe's only Disney park:
• The Sleeping Beauty Castle is completely different
• Adventureland boasts an island with a great skull rock structure in its centre
• Discoveryland (called Tomorrowland elsewhere) contains a much more futuristic looking 'Space Mountain' structure
• Frontierland has its 'Big Thunder Mountain' rollercoaster in the middle of a lake, adjacent to a 'Phantom Manor' ghost house in the style of Hitchcock’s Psycho
The best attractions are:
• 'Space Mountain' roller coaster, the best of its kind! It starts with a gun-shot acceleration into space featuring great laser effects, loops and spirals. This is a much wilder ride than the Space Mountains in other Disney parks.
• 'Big Thunder Mountain' is the best version of its kind as well. This wild-west-themed mountain roller coaster is surrounded by a lake with the loading station on the shore, therefore you cross the lake twice through a tunnel. It’s a great feeling to ride underwater to a mountain island; the return trip is particularly fast, dark and thrilling. I’ve taken this ride about 15 times and I never get bored by the rattling, clattering return to the loading station.
• 'Pirates of the Caribbean' is the newest of its kind. Although it lacks the beloved Jack Sparrow animatronic, it is a well done, scenic, romantic flume ride with some funny little immersions into pirate life’s darkness, featuring a song you won’t forget.
• 'Honey, I Shrunk the Audience!' is a wonderful 3-D movie full of surprises and effects beyond the screen, featuring the stars of ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!’
What else? Indiana Jones roller coaster, Star Tours flight simulator and Phantom Manor ghost train are average Disney rides and the rest is for the kids. Together with the adjacent Walt Disney Studios, this is the best theme park in Europe.
