Having left our bags in the real world, it was time to enter the
world of movies at the newest of Disney's European parks, Walt Disney
Studios.
The park is widely known as the lesser of the two and something
that can easily be covered in a few hours. EuroDisney's, erm,
small issue with their Disney Dollars a few years back meant that the
park had to be vastly scaled back from the original plans - apparently
it's only a third of the size it should have been.
The symbolic entrance gate and Earful Tower.
Notice the yellow slip hazard cone - these were to feature heavily
over the first couple of days.
A giant Chicken Little was there to greet us outside
Disney Studio 1.
Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse beckon guests in
Michael Eisner (boo!) adds his welcome
First stop was Rock
'n' Roller Coaster at the back of the park. This is a
coaster everybody seems to rave about. It's themed around an
experiment Aerosmith are carrying out to combine music and
rollercoasters, with the result being a ride "through" some
of their music.
Wahey! I'm about to experience my first ever
Disney ride!
The entire ride takes place inside. After a short pre-show
riders get into the station and, after a few minutes more queuing,
board the trains. After bashing your knees as you realise just
too late how deep the cars are, you're seated and ready to go.
Rock 'n' Roller Coaster uses an LSM launch to accelerate trains up
to 57mph in 2.8 seconds. The specs are pretty similar to Rita
at Alton Towers, but it doesn't feel quite so forceful.
Once they are up to their top speed, the trains are right in the
heart of the rock show, taking in three inversions in the minute or so
ride time. The coaster itself is extremely smooth - see: Vekoma
can build smooth rides (even if they won't officially admit to having
anything to do with it)!
Next up was Armageddon - all plans for what to do
afterwards were abandoned.
One of the meteorite drilling machines from the
film.
Armageddon starts with a presentation about special effects and
introduces the scene we are about to take part in: A load of
rocks are about to hit the old Russian Space Station we've somehow
found ourselves inside.
It's very interesting seeing the various ways Disneyland Paris deal
with the problem of presenting things in multiple languages: being in
Europe they can't rely on everybody speaking the same one. In
Armageddon, the main presentation was made in French, with screens
around the pre-show area displaying subtitles in English, German,
Italian and a few other languages.
Following the presentation riders are shown through to the space
station set. The director calls "action" and the
effects begin. Bits falling off, smoke, water, fire, shakes and
drops all feature heavily. It may not be particularly realistic
but it was a lot of fun and, at the end of the day, Armageddon wasn't
the end of the world.
After a few more rides on Rock 'n' Roller Coaster we went to see
CinéMagique, one of the mostly highly praised shows in the park.
The magic of cinema awaits ...
CinéMagique is extremely impressive. Without giving too much
away, it tells the story of the history of the movies through a very
clever film mixed with lots of Disney surprises. I have no idea
how some of the special effects work - maybe they really are magic?
The Studio Tram Tour had broken down and Animagique had finished
for the day, so we made for The Art of Disney Animation. What a
disappointment after seeing CinéMagique!
In the first half of the attraction we were sat down in front of a
screen and shown a seemingly endless montage of not particularly well
edited clips from various Disney films in different
languages.
After that finally came to an end we were moved into another
theatre for a presentation from an animator. This was made in
French, with headphones available for translation into other
languages. Unfortunately they were not good enough to block out
the loud French soundtrack so it was very difficult to follow what was
going on.
With no sign of life in the tram tour and having
done everything else available to us, we decided to head out of the
Studios and in to the main park for the last few hours of the day.
Most people had the same idea.
|
