Mousekingdom Blog

Last week Monday I didn’t know I was going to be at Disneyland Resort Paris, 2 days later, on Wednesday, I had everything planned and ready to visit the Press event of the new Toon Studios area at the Walt Disney Studios. As I have been ‘recruited’ to be the principal research assistant for Simon and Susan Veness ‘A Brit’s Guide to Disneyland Resort Paris’ book, I was able to attend the big opening special event party. It would be wrong calling this a working weekend as it was way too much fun for that, but I did already send back my full report to Simon, showing my dedication to the job. I can only imagine how much work it is to write and publish a guide, so I am even more thankful that I got to do the fun part.

So how did the weekend go? Here some of the highlights of the trip, the event and of course the rides and the Toon Studios itself.

Saturday morning, after collecting all press related information and my event badge, I wanted to go to the Studios and see the new Toon Studios as soon as possible. Once entering the area my excitement was rewarded. What I saw, once entering the Toon Studios, was the new future for Walt Disney Studios in Paris. The imagineers where given the possibility to make the area magical… and they delivered!

We all heard the mixed reviews on the Studios, and even with some fantastic experiences how the magic is missing. With Toon Studios this is being turned around. It really feels like Disney; Great theme-ing, superb detail and magic. Just looking at Nemo’s Crush’s Coaster building, the Cars area, the decoration, the meet and greet areas. This is a park that is growing.

Although I did have a good look around I am sure I missed a lot of little gems in the area that I might spot the next time, or even on a third visit. I am looking forwards to it already.

But I can hear you already, “How about the rides?” Well, Crush’s Coaster had a queue build up all the way up the Flying Carpets, turning back and all the way up the outside area of the coaster. If you would have gotten in the queue a waiting time of 2 hours might have been a minimum, but it could well have been a lot more. No worries, I was going to be able to ride it later in the evening during the event.

“Cars” has a big queue area, but again, being a ride with low capacity, it was going to be a long waiting time for those in line. As you can see, planning ahead to be able to ride these first thing in the morning is inevitable.

As I knew I would be riding in the evening I went over to the Disneyland to enjoy some rides and meet some friends for lunch and to watch the parade. (I could not beat my former Buzz record, and was not able to on this whole trip)

Comes the evening, comes the press event party. Time to test the rides, most importantly: the new Coaster. But before we could walk over to the new Toon Studios area we where invited for a cocktail and a little snack and for a special showing of the new “High School Musical” street performance.

I am not a big fan of the musical (sorry true believers), but I could appreciate the performance that was given too us. I think the singers and dancers where of high standard. I am sure High School Musical fans will love this, but for me once will be enough. (and I was way to excited about riding Crush)

Once the show was over we walked into Studios 1, all the way through until we where in front of the Tower of Terror to be. Here we got a speech, a welcome word and the introduction to the new Toon Studios. After that a whole collection of celebrities where welcomed by Mickey and Cast Members. One by one they passed the Toon Gates, luckily all other invites could walk on a sideway to the new area as this was going to take a while. (I didn’t recognized any of them as they obviously where mainly French celebrities)

Now, finally, time for the Coaster! I was ready for my test run. With little queue that started inside the building it still took about 30 minutes before we could ride. With this in mind, looking back at the morning queue, when the queue started outside of the building it must have been well over 2 hours waiting time. The inside queue area is nice. You’ll hear Nemo, but the most fun comes from the seagulls going “Mine, Mine, Mine…” You can’t miss them, they are loud enough and a lot of fun.

The first ride I took was in a backwards seat of one of the 4 seated “turtle shells”. Although the coaster will start spinning during the coaster part, the first part, going outside and with the Nemo indoor dark ride section, it stayed in position. Now this makes this part of the ride an experience that will be different when going forwards or backwards. I have been able to do the forwards experience too, and this is the way you want to ride if you want to spot the hidden Mickey inside the attraction. Too see the hidden Mickey look up to the right where the mines are, you will see three of them forming the Mickey Head! The dark ride part is very nicely themed, maybe a little short because before you know it you’re on the lift hill The lift hill is really fast and fun, still themed and has Bruce lurking for by passers. Once up there, there real fun begins…

The first drop is a real surprise, the turtle shells start spinning and you are disorientated from the beginning. Smooth down, and up again, ready for a second drop. After the second drop you get a collection of drops and turns and twists, never really knowing where your at and what direction you are going in. All this spinning doesn’t give you a chance to even know where you are on the track. It will be a while before I’ll get the feeling and will get to know the bends and turns like I do on the other coasters. I rode the ride with a smile on my face, and even shouted out a couple of time… and I totally loved it. This is an awesome ride, a real winner, lots of fun… but be prepared to do the waiting game as it will be very popular.

Cars is another attraction that involves spinning. This time a little more gently as it is targeted towards the younger audience. You have two spinning disk next to each other, each with “cars” on them. When they turn around the cars switch over from disk to disk and are turning around themselves too. A lot of spinning, and although I did see lots of children on it having fun, I am not sure if this is the ride to do if you suffer from motion sickness. The attraction looks great though and parent will have a hard time trying to convince their children not to ride if the queue is to long.

Toon Studios looks really nice with 2 superb attractions. It is an outstanding result and for sure will win over the skeptical Disney fans too. Once the façade and the Tower of Terror is ready we will have a great Studios.

After all the work it was time to relax a little (yes, I am goofing around). Enjoying the great party Disney set up for the press, a little bite, a drink, great cheesecake and in fantastic company of many Disney Characters. Well done Disneyland Resort Paris team; you have some real winners here. I can’t wait to return for more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Disney Theme Parks, Trip Diaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.