After a run of five years, it was time to stop dreaming of the magic, and to start celebrating it, which is just what the new parade Disneyland Paris presented for the 20th Anniversary was all about. The emphasis certainly was on celebration, from the dancing, the floats and even the music. Disneyland Paris has turned 20 years old, it's time to celebrate that the only way Disney know how, with your favourite Disney friends!
On the face of it, large parts of this parade are imported directly from Disney's Once Upon A Dream parade which ran from 2007 until 2012, two floats of the new on Parade are 'new' (Opening and Final 'core' Disney character float), the other floats have had minor touches added to them relating to the 20th Anniversary such as Hamm using Disneyland Paris 20th Anniversary playing cards, small features but fantastic to see. The stars of this parade however are the fairies, watching them glide down the parade route is an absolute joy and creates an air of believability to the idea that they are flying.
Image: Disney
The new floats offer a perfect bookend of this parade, for a celebration of the twenty years of the resort, there is no better way to open than a part mockup of the turret of the castle. The castle is the icon of the entire resort and seems logical to focus the celebrations onto it. The parade reaches it's finale with the redesigned 'Dreams of Romance' float, say hello to the ultimate party float, with Mickey and friends in their wizard costumes and Mickey Mouse the centre point of the parade up on a pedestal. The parade nicely rounds off the magic theme with a special surprise on the back of this final float. Tinkerbell waves her magic wand as she waves goodbye to all the guests who had come out to enjoy the parade.
Image: Disney
The theme song for the 20th Anniversary, and the parade song for Disney Magic on Parade! is called 'Magic Everywhere'. It is both a song, a statement and synopsis of the park, not just the parade. Disney have proudly bragged about 'Disney Magic' for many years, thus the theme of the parade and the year. The catchy song, much like 'Do you Believe?' sneaks in yet another Disney reference, namely 'Neverland's forever'. The song itself is incredibly catchy and full of joy, it's rare to not see families smiling and dancing during it.
Disney Magic on Parade! is a perfect celebration of Disneyland Paris and Disney magic in general, the already impressive floats have been given a new lease of life and a top tapping tune bringing us many years of joy and laughter. Parades are a huge part of a day in a Disney park often providing popular, guest pleasing entertainment. Disneyland Paris's show department usually pull out all the stops to give us world leading parades such as Disney Magic on Parade! and on this occasion, they have succeeded in bringing us a fantastic daily highlight which continues to grow with the already announced redesign of the princess float.
You're invited. As simple as that, one of Disneyland Paris's biggest ever advertising campaigns had begun promising a year of celebration like no other. The fifth anniversary was celebrated by a 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' style celebration, the 10th was marked by a whole new Disney park opening. But none of these really made a big point about 'celebration'. For the 15th anniversary this was all to change, not only would we celebrate like never before, we'd enjoy no less than four new attractions, a new parade, new character experiences and new shows. The red carpet was rolled out, the castle decorated. The party was set to begin, and how best to announce the start of a party? With a evening extravaganza filled of wonder, music and Disney friends. (Video: DLRP magic)
The launch was one of Disneyland Paris's most star-studded to date featuring performances from Daniel Powter before the opening of the celebrations to guests the next day by Miley Cyrus from the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana.
2007 was a bumper year for new entertainment in Disneyland Resort Paris starting with a brand new parade, Disney's Once upon a dream parade, running from 2007 until 2012. Each all-new float was given a name relating to the themes it represented such as 'Dreams of Power', which featured the Disney villains. Whilst the theme song for the anniversary was 'Just like we dreamed it', each float of the parade featured its own soundtrack, a soundtrack that can still currently be purchased within the resort on the 'Les parades en musique' CD. (Video: DLRP Magic!)
In addition to the traditional daily parade, Disney characters could also be seen, for the first time, on the Disney Characters Express train, which took place on the Casey Jr. float from The Wonderful World of Disney parade. The soundtrack to this mini-parade, Tous en Train, was entirely new to Disneyland Paris having previously been performed at Tokyo Disneyland. For 6 years this parade has allowed guests to meet their favourite Disney characters, some incarnations the characters have been randomly selected (such as the 15th Anniversary version), others will see the same characters each day (Disney's 20th Anniversary Celebration train), for those 6 years, this has been one of the most popular daily entertainments in Disneyland Paris. (Video: DLRP Magic!)
Perhaps one of the more strange parades seen in Disneyland Paris during its history is 'Alphabet you are!', which, according to this DLRP Today! post towards the end of its run in 2007, often scored high of guest satisfaction. The premise of this mini-parade was simple, every morning letters would dance down Main Street USA spelling out 'Disneyland', each letter had a unique Disney character spin on them. (Video: DLRP Magic!)
On top of all the new entertainment, the Tarzan and Lion King stage shows were almost performed multiple times daily (as well as the Walt Disney Studios stage shows).
The big selling point of these celebrations were, of course, the 'new land' featuring two new attractions. Toon Studio opened on 9th June 2007, both Crush's Coaster and Cars: Quatre roues rallye opened at this time.
The Crush's Coaster has become synonymous of long queues and guests, young and old, wait to be part of this rush through the East Australian Current (EAC). This attraction has stroke a perfect balance between the thrills and storyline, as we board a shell and go through the reef where guests find Nemo and Squirt, suddenly guests meet our Shark 'friends' and glide through the EAC whilst spinning 360 degrees, such an attraction is unique to Disneyland Paris.
Cars Quatre Roues Rallye is a more simple attraction based on the world of Radiator Springs, but that certainly doesn't make it any less enjoyable. Guests queue through Flo's admiring the wall displays (which are often humorous) before boarding a car in an experience that is quite similar to the Mad Hatters Tea Cups in Disneyland Park, but perhaps slightly more thrilling.
Main Street USA received decorations in the form of giant banners up the street which lit up at night featuring the 15th Anniversary emblem and one of the 'mascots' of the celebration Lumiere. The biggest change was the classy castle decoration. The lower window being covered over by the 15th emblem and each turret receiving a Disney character holding a candle.
Each night, as Disneyland Park prepared to close it's doors to guests, a special celebration took place in which these candles would magically come to life with a bit of help from Mickey Mouse in a ceremony featuring dancing and characters 'Candellebration'.
In fact, Disneyland Paris extended it's 15th anniversary for an extra 12 months with even more new attractions and shows, it was even marketed as being bigger than the first year with the tagline 'The celebration continues BIG TIME!'. Urgency was added into the marketing from the outset of this extended celebration as the white rabbit holding a pocket watch appeared in the promotional material ensuring we visit the resort before we're 'out of time'.
This second year saw the launch of 'The Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror' and Stitch Live! On April 5th 2008, Disneyland Paris inaugurated the Tower of Terror in front of the worlds press in perhaps one of the resorts most impressive attraction openings since Space Mountain. The opening featured a mix of actors and video mapping onto the attraction. (Video by DLRP Magic!)
Despite the April inauguration, this attraction actually opened in December 2007, Stitch Live! however, did open closer to the press event. Stitch Live! allows guests in Disneyland Paris to watch, and become part of, a transmission to outer space; not only that, but guests could actually talk to Stitch. . This attraction is offered in multiple languages and replaced the former Disney Channel Studio Tour, Cast Members working here still wear costumes featuring the Disney Channel logo.
This extended year also saw us wave goodbye to the Disney Cinema parade, but we'd have to wait until March 2009 for Disney's Stars 'n' Cars parade. Disney welcomed in the Enchanted Fireworks which ran from 2008 until 2011 before making room for Disney Dreams!
Overall, Disneyland Paris marked this year impeccably, including to Disneyland Paris fans by launching their blog which featured fantastic inside information. Whilst this blog is unfortunately now offline, fans can still watch the videos on Daily Motion.
The 15th anniversary of Disneyland Paris felt like the party of the decade, and provided the 20th anniversary with a tough act to follow. We hope the party atmosphere returns to Disneyland Paris in four years time for the 25th anniversary!
DLRP Rewind is a feature celebrating Disneyland Paris's past. Thanks for this article go to DLRP Magic! - The Number 1 Disneyland Paris guide website and their impeccable coverage of the 15th anniversary.
Behind the world that we, the guests, see lies a world inhabited by over 14,000 cast members. Les Artisans du Rêve invites us into their world for a one hour glimpse into the part of Disneyland Paris that is hidden from most fans. Lets start by saying that this 50 minute look into backstage life is brief and only an
introduction, (We're not saying that's a bad thing, but Disney fans wanting an in depth look at what goes on behind the scenes of a Disney park will need to look elsewhere) but what that means is that during the 50 minutes we get a good look at many different departments over a wide variety of time. One thing we did notice which confused us a slight bit was the opening which featured beautiful tilt-shift shots of the parks, including the Walt Disney Studios park, but this second gate was not mentioned once during the film itself which leads us to believe that this could have, unfortunately, made the cutting room floor.
We really liked how this documentary, whilst seemingly targeted at fans of Disneyland Paris, did not alienate visitors who had never visited by giving introductory piece of aspects of the park, examples of this include cast member costuming how 'each land has it's own look, it's own costume' and during the segment about park refurbishment Main Street USA was described as 'The Champs-Elysées of the park'. The film gave a good insight into 'operational backstage' as we are going to call it, for example we are shown the costuming department solving problems, such as fixing a parade outfit, or creating Mickey's 20th anniversary wizard costume. Our criticism however with this section was 'sugar-coating' aspects of the process, we are treated to Cinderella's presence in the department as she has a problem with her dress, we are then given a 'tour' of the dress and as the filmmaker asks Cinderella a question she looks almost blindly towards the camera in a 'I've been told not to say anything' sort of way, it's a small complaint for a otherwise fantastic insight into the work of Disneyland Paris cast members. The brief nature of each segment of the documentary means we can see a diverse range of roles offered at the resort, perhaps the most well realised section is the day in the life of a parade performer, we learn just how much work these cast members put in before they make it out for that 7pm parade.
Some information given is not there to shock fans of the parks, it's doubtful that if you are reading this that you'll be sitting mouth open as you are told that Main Street USA is a representation of an American town at the turn of the 20th century and inspired by Walt Disney's birth town, but there are wonderful shots behind those green maintenance fences as we discover the care and attention given to make our parks look as beautiful day in and day out as they do. It's little facts such as where the inspiration for our version of Sleeping Beauty Castle came from and how the colours of it were chosen that is likely to make you want to pick up this film and spend 50 minutes of your day watching it. Fans of ride maintenance won't be disappointed as we are treated to a few minutes of overnight maintenance footage on both Indiana Jones et le temple du péril and Pirates of the Caribbean, again don't be expecting information on the ride system but seeing how much care is put into the rides from both an artistic and technical viewpoint was something to behold. Again we were very impressed with the segment on the care of the audio animatronics both by those tasked with locating the problem animatronics and those tasked with the unenviable job of creating and fixing them. Something that we can't overlook in the park is the excellent work by those who work on the parks horticulture, and whilst perhaps this team is given the briefest section of all the teams featured it is enough to convey for a neutral audience, the love and attention given to each individual plant. A gardener is asked about an individual plant and he could tell us immediately its age and when her birthday was, a real eye opener.
Perhaps the longest section (at over 10 minutes) was reserved for a behind the scenes look at the work put in each day by the team of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. We felt the time reserved for this was perhaps a bit over what we expected compared to other roles in the resort but interesting nonetheless. If behind the scenes of this show interests you (horse training, how the actors prepares and a bit of information on the props) this is an ideal film to watch in itself.
Overall, this is a basic introduction to the world of the backstages of Disneyland Paris, fans of the parks are not going to be shocked or amazed by a wealth of information, however what you will get from this film is a look behind the scenes and interviews with the people that make the magic happen everyday, you will see their passion and determination to do their job to the fullest so that we can enjoy ourselves.
This film is not for those who do not care for seeing underneath the magic, if Disneyland Paris for you is what you see in the park, this film really is not for you, you might not enjoy the sight of a 'naked' pirate or a Fantillusion float in the daytime.
We really enjoyed the film and gave it a 4 star rating, our wish is for it to be a little bit longer and to go more in depth. (But for French speaker we have France 3's 'Disneyland et ses secrets' for that).
This film is presented in French with English subtitles and can be purchased from the French Amazon website.
Finally, a note of thanks from us to all cast members of Disneyland Paris, past, present and future. All fans of the resort really appreciate the work you put in to keep our resort looking fresh and giving us unforgettable days each time we visit. This DVD serves as a tribute to your work and hopefully brings your work to a wider audience. Thank You! ~ I'm sure we'll return to thank cast members in a later post.
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Technical Profile
Les Artisans du Rêve
Studio: The Walt Disney Company (France) - Bonne Pioche Télévision - Disney Channel 2012
Director: Dominique Lenglart
Narrator: Tom Novembre
Running Time: 50 minutes
Language: French
Subtitles: English
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After a run of five years, it was time to stop dreaming of the magic, and to start celebrating it, which is just what the new parade Disneyland Paris presented for the 20th Anniversary was all about. The emphasis certainly was on celebration, from the dancing, the floats and even the music. Disneyland Paris has turned 20 years old, it's time to celebrate that the only way Disney know how, with your favourite Disney friends! 
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