Disney Story Realms, Part II: The Continued Journey Through a Reimagined Disney Adventure World at Disneyland Paris

In the time-honored tradition of me yapping too much about theme parks, we find ourselves here – in a “Part II” of our walk through a transformed Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris. As you hopefully noticed, Park Lore is 100% ad-free and powered by supporting Members, not pageviews. So I promise, the inconvenience of clicking to a second feature is merely because these Build-Outs are too image-heavy to be contained in one article.

If you haven’t already, I recommend starting your tour in Part I, which covered the basics about the park and the first half of its themed lands. But so far, by simply removing pesky little irritations like budget, time, and corporate constraints, we have reestablished Disneyland Paris’ second gate as Disney Story Realms – a park that both celebrates fantastic worlds born of books and arranges those worlds as a timeline of Disney’s adaptations of them.

So far, we have entered through The Grand Library – a new, centralized frame story and icon for the park. Then, we explored The Royal Forest, devoted to early fairytales (and Disney’s Golden Age adaptations of them). That gave way to Silver Age ’50s lands like Wonderland, Neverland, then ’60s adaptations of Jolly London, and The Jungle Book – and crucially, the reframed Point D’Inspiration that now connects them.

So our trip around Disney Story Realms continues now on both tracks – as an ode to the incredible worlds drawn from books, and as a living timeline of these stories.

For the first time in my theme park Build-Outs, we now enter a period where there is no “before.” We are now essentially building on land that’s unused – even in the real life Disney Adventure World of 2026. We’re instead doing what real Imagineers will eventually have the chance to do, which is to fill these spaces around the lagoon. The difference is that we don’t have a mandate to focus them on high-earning franchises.

Instead, we have our own mandate to build a timeline of Disney-produced adaptations of stories that began as books. So far, our tour through Disney Story Realms has exclusively included films by what’s now called Walt Disney Animation Studios, which makes sense. But it’s not a requirement that we stick to animated fare, and as we head into the ’60s, we stumble upon a perfect fit for this park in the wider pantheon of book-sourced Disney…

Chapter Four: CHERRY TREE LANE

At least according to Disney legend, Walt’s daughters Diane and Sharon were enamored with Australian-British writer P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins novel series (the first of which was published in 1934). He allegedly promised his young daughters that he’d adapt the story of a magical, “practically perfect” British nanny into a film eventually – a feat that turned out to be much more difficult than he anticipated, taking the better part of twenty years. (Travers, it turns out, was resistant to licensing her stories. Even when she relented in the ’60s in exchange for a major royalty fee, it was only if she could serve as a consultant on the film, where she became notorious for her exacting vision.)

But when Mary Poppins premiered in 1964, the chemical reaction of Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, the direction of Robert Stevenson, Walt himself as producer, and of course, the musical genius of frequent Disney collaborators Richard and Robert Sherman proved worth the effort. Walt was immensely proud of the film and considered it a crowning achievement of his career. (Profits from Mary Poppins allowed Disney to vastly expand the scope of planning for “The Florida Project,” directly leading to Disney World’s land acquisition.)

Despite clearly being a gem of Disney’s catalogue, Mary Poppins has fairly little representation in the parks. That could’ve changed! At the 2019 D23 Expo, a “Cherry Tree Lane” expansion was announced for the United Kingdom pavilion in EPCOT’s World Showcase. But like much of what was teased or even officially announced at that year’s Parks Panel, it was quietly cancelled in the wake of COVID-19. (Later leaks signaled it was going to be an elaborate set dressing for a teacup spinner anyway, not a true dark ride.) We can change that.

First of all, I have to say that there’s a (coincidental!) brilliance to the notion that both Wonderland and Neverland connect here – to a turn-of-the-twentieth-century London that would’ve at least been experienced by both Lewis Carroll (author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and J. M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan). Therefore, I have those pathways converge in a fountain plaza with busts of Carroll, Barrie, and Travers standing at the portals to the lands drawn from their respective works.

I created a much larger version of this London neighborhood than EPCOT would’ve, with a central park that includes both a GREAT LAWN (for open play, and to serve as a seating area for pop-up show experiences on the central gazebo and its associated stage) and a PLAY PARK for young explorers. I also included a PENGUIN SLIDE, painted as an ode to “The Penguin Dance” sequence from the film, and allowing visitors to climb and slide down a classic British “Helter Skelter” lighthouse slide. Given how dense and compact these “Living Lands” have been, the negative space of a park feels like it’s arrived just in time.

Also set in the park is a carousel for Disney Story Realms, which I called MERRY MERRY KNICKKNACKS. This is actually drawn from one of the eight books in Travers’ series – 1952’s Mary Poppins in the Park. In that anthology of mini-tales, Mary takes the Banks children into the park by their home (the very park we’re in!). One of the tales includes a vignette where objects from the Banks’ mantle spring to life and leap out the window, including a carved wooden fox, granite eggs, painted apples, ceramic swans, a broken lion figurine, and a sailing ship inside of a jam jar. While a classic carousel if associated with Mary Poppins, we want to use that imagery later. So our park merry-go-round becomes a curious collection of these knickknacks, allowing us to ride along to the calliope of the Sherman Brothers’ music.

Across the park I have the GOOSE & SWAN PUB (named for Travers’ short story “Every Goose a Swan”) and FLYING KITES – a yo-yo swing style flat ride that I guess you could say is a relocation of the Up swings coming to the real Adventure World’s Adventure Way. But here, on the park’s edge, these circling swings set to the orchestral triumph of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” becomes a perfectly-placed piece of kinetic energy and something of a “weenie” for the land from both its Neverland / Wonderland entrance and its Point D’inspiration entrance.

Just across the way from the Flying Kites swings, I also placed the JOLLY HOLIDAY BAKERY CAFÉ – a quick-service eatery modeled off of Disneyland’s restaurants on the Hub, offering covered gazebo seating, soups, sandwiches, lemonades, teas, and pastries.

Finally, we need to give Mary and Bert the ride they deserve. Entering through the Banks’ home at 17 Cherry Tree Lane, at the far end of the street, we find MARY POPPINS AND THE PRACTICALLY PERFECT DAY. I wanted this to be this park’s “Haunted Mansion” in the sense of being a high-capacity Omnimover dark ride filled with wonderful stage effects and music, just continuously re-rideable and enjoyable. Boarding the continuously-moving carousel benches from a circular platform, we’d leap off the carousel and be whisked away into magical moments from the film and the wider book series.

In the real Adventure World, this “slot” is currently filled with the Cars Road Trip redux of the long-abandoned Studio Tram Tour. (Mary Poppins and the Practically Perfect Day more or less sits where “Cars-tastrophe Canyon” does.) It would probably be fair to assume that Cars Road Trip is only hanging on as long as its capacity is needed, so we’ll probably see something fill this space in the real park sooner rather than later. The chances of it being Mary Poppins seem to be about zero.

After all, what place could a beguiling British nanny drawn from a classic novel and Walt’s crowning achievement have in a brand-forward, Disney+-era park like Disney Adventure World? But in Cherry Tree Lane, I think the “boldness” of this theme becomes apparent. Snow White and Alice and Peter Pan are all properties modern Disney is delighted to draw from. But now we’re starting to actually press back a little and demonstrate that this park is willing to look beyond the convenient and obvious in pursuit of bringing stories to life… So let’s keep moving into our final ode to the “Silver Age.”

Chapter Five: THE JUNGLE KINGDOM

1967’s The Jungle Book was the last animated film to be produced by Walt Disney, who died ten months prior to its release. The film is based on the stories of the orphan boy “Mowgli” in Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 tome, The Jungle Book. Raised by wolves in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Mowgli learns from the protective and reluctant panther Bagheera and the carefree bear Baloo how to avoid the jungle’s dangers – including the mischievous King Louie (jealous of humanity’s mastery of fire), the sly and starving snake Kaa, and the menacing Bengal tiger Shere Khan.

If you haven’t watched The Jungle Book in a while, it’s so worth a visit. It’s a slim 78 minutes and filled with a wonderful score by George Bruns and a soundtrack that includes Sherman Brothers classics like “I Wanna Be Like You,” “Trust In Me,” and “Colonel Hathi’s March.” (The film’s breakout song, “The Bare Necessities,” was written by Terry Gilkyson for an earlier, scrapped, darker version of the film.) Altogether, The Jungle Book is just great. It’s vivid, jazzy, easy-going, and a whole lot of fun. No wonder it’s considered one of the greatest pieces of animation ever produced. A not-insignificant number of animators cite the film as the reason they become interested in the art form, and the designs and style of The Jungle Book are often regarded as the blueprint for the Disney Renaissance that began thirty years later.

So though I considered maybe slotting in Disney’s Robin Hood or Winnie the Pooh here to force us to advance to the ’70s, I ended up really glad that I kept this much more fun, colorful, and saturated Jungle Kingdom instead…

Entering from Point D’Inspiration, we’re absorbed immediately into The Jungle Kingdom by being surrounded in the ancient ruins of Southeast Asia and the deep underbrush that consumes them. To the right is a great introduction to this land’s spirit. ROYAL RUINS ADVENTURE TRAIL is the largest interactive playspace in the park – basically, Story Realms’ version of Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland, Camp Jurassic at Islands of Adventure, or what I consider the magnum opus of this “genre,” the Redwood Creek Challenge at Disney California Adventure.

So here, among the runs, are our opportunities to scurry along rope bridges, climb up rock walls, slide down zip lines, and (in righting some of the inevitable wrongs of a ’60s movie set in Southeast Asia) actually learning here and there about the traditions and history of India through scavenger hunts. This can also be our dedicated meet-and-greet space for Baloo, King Louis, and other characters from the story.

Across the way, we climb up onto the open plaza and then into the root-encased entry of the kingdom’s central temple complex for KING LOUIE’S JUNGLE JAMBOREE – this park’s equivalent of Toy Story Midway Mania! Passing through the orangutan’s throne room, we find ourselves invited to the jazzy ape’s annual Jungle Jamboree – a sort of musical Olympics that fills the kingdom with energy and sound.

So seated on our own stone thrones, we travel into the temple and surrounding jungle to play games. As we aim for targets and collect points, Louie’s games have us knock papayas out of trees into baskets; we toss rings around ube as it grows, yanking the root vegetable from the ground; we dart dragonfruit as it grows wildly from its plant; we toss balls to shatter the sheels of rambutan.

And after our scores are revealed, our vehicles pass by a final scene: an Audio-Animatronic of King Louie himself, bathing in a stone basin of the colorful fruit salad we’ve unknowingly been gathering the ingredients of all along. As Louie delights in dangling fruit over his mouth, two chimps fan him with banana leaves. (Thankfully, a JUNGLE JULEP HUT snack stand at the ride’s exit gives us the chance to taste the fruity drink we inadvertently helped to produce.)

The central plaza of the land is a Seoni village (known by the story’s animal characters as the mysterious and unapproachable “Man Village”). It’s a blessing to have human architecture to work with in a story populated by and primarily about animals. So here in this small village, we can lean on that to include a SEONI HOUSE quick service eatery and BASKET BHANGRA, a “scrambler” style flat ride that sees guests sit in woven baskets, whirling around beneath a thatch-roof Seoni dome.

But the real anchor is JOURNEY INTO THE JUNGLE BOOK. What I’ve done here is to quite literally re-use the exact ride system and blueprint planned for the real Adventure World’s upcoming Lion King E-Ticket – effectively, a version of Splash Mountain finally making its way to Paris.

We already know that The Lion King cannot exist in this park (it’s not based on a book) and even if it could, it wouldn’t be where the land is taking shape (because that would ruin our “timeline”). Ergo, we have the opportunity to re-use this log flume ride system, and actually, I see no better substitution than The Jungle Book.

I mean, obviously, both are set in jungles. But again, remember that The Jungle Book sort of served as a blueprint for the vivid Technicolor style, musical levity, and character design aesthetics of the Disney Renaissance as a whole. So it’s almost a stunningly natural fit to take that idea of a flume ride / dark ride centered on The Lion King and give it a new wrap here, allowing us to drift down the rivers of the Jungle Kingdom alongside Mowgli, Bagheera, and Baloo on a musical journey.

Journey into the Jungle Book still allows Paris to get its long-sought-after “Splash Mountain” and even keeps it a joyful musical adventure through a rich, saturated jungle populated by fantastic characters. And I’ll tell you what – at least in concept (since the actual Lion King ride doesn’t exist), I think a Jungle Book wrap is at least as strong for the ride, and certainly a better fit for a land (again, in no small part because we have actual human architecture – from temples to the “Man Village” – to use).

On paper, I’m not sure you could design a more balanced land. We have our “B-Ticket” scrambler flat ride, an elaborate “C-Ticket” adventure and exploration zone, a “D-Ticket” interactive dark ride with no height requirements, and then an “E-Ticket” thrilling flume ride packed with music and Audio Animatronics, all supported by a quick service eatery and two retail spaces. I don’t know… it just feels really nice, yet sufficiently wild.

Oh! And since we’ve worked our way all the way out to the edge of the property theoretically available for this second gate, I tried to angle things in such a way that we get a bonus feature here: a pedestrian entrance that connects this park to Disneyland next door. We’re actually able to create a little temple courtyard with its own Guest Services and Ticketing buildings and turnstiles, all connecting to the original park’s Frontierland. This incentivizes Park Hopper upgrades, of course, but it also creates a unique transition… from the wilderness outside of Thunder Mesa, descending into the pages of The Jungle Book. Kind of a neat feature.

We’ve also hit a narrative inflection point. With The Jungle Book representing Walt’s last animated feature, we head forward in our timeline with the need to represent the two “eras” separating us from the locked-in Frozen land – the “Dark Age” of the ’70s & ’80s, and the Renaissance of the ’90s. So let’s fill those slots…