Walt Disney Studios Park

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This is the Walt Disney Studios theme park, or at least the main building at the entrance. You pass through this building to reach the rest of the park, and I find it the most visually interesting part of the place. It's a vast hangar-like structure made out to look like a kind of fantasy Hollywood at night, with restaurants and Disney shops. Nothing particularly unique about this, of course—faux cityscapes are routine in amusement parks and similar centers these days—but it's rare in Europe, and a pleasing diversion.

As for the rest of the park, which is modeled in the Universal City Studios style as a supposedly working movie studio that is really nothing of the kind, there is a “studio tram” that takes you past a number of fixed sights and tries to convince you that you are really touring a studio; an indoor roller-coaster promoting the group Aerosmith for the teeny-boppers; and a number of other attractives that emphasize interesting visual experiences, such as a glow-in-the-dark stage show (well done, although the ultraviolet lighting is not maintained as well as it should be), an “in the picture” trompe-l'oeil show (also well done), a nice outdoor stunt-car show, and so on.

I'd like to say that this newer park is worth the admission price, which is the same as that of the Magic Kingdom, but I can't. There are fewer attractions, they aren't as interesting, and lines are long even when the crowds are light. The Rendez-vous des Stars cafeteria-style restaurant is nice, though—one of the few that hasn't yet reverted to pizza, and usually not very crowded.

Don't fall for the two-in-one ticket deal that Disney is pushing: with this arrangement, you get all-day admission to Walt Disney Studios, followed by admission to the Magic Kingdom after 5 PM. This is a trap for the unwary, because Walt Disney Studios won't keep you occupied for an entire day, and it's impossible to see all of the Magic Kingdom in one evening. The main purpose of this ticket deal is to offload crowds into Walt Disney Studios during the day, but it is not cost-effective for guests. (It would be if the parks were reversed in the ticket arrangement, but then that would obviously aggravate traffic problems for Disney at all, since the Magic Kingdom already attracts most of the crowds and has the biggest problems with capacity.) I recommend that you spend at least one full day, and preferably at least two days, in the Magic Kingdom; and then, if budget permits, you might want to spend a day at Walt Disney Studios.

Walt Disney Studios is the second theme park to be built at the resort. The original plans call for a variety of parks, similar to the philosophy for Walt Disney World in Florida, and these parks are gradually being built one by one. Disney had some rather draconian financial arrangements in the beginning, which, coupled with the cluelessness of Europeans who took forever to discover what Disney was all about, made for some hard times initially. Now that the resort is doing much better, the plans for expansion and development are being pursued.

Photographed in April, 2002.