Stories Untold: An Armchair-Imagineered Build-Out Reimagining of Disney Adventure World at Disneyland Paris

Before: Adventure Way, Part II

We’ve already said a lot about Adventure Way – including already deleting the “stick” portion of the lollipop-shaped land to make room for Neverland.

But we still have at our disposal the rest of the land – primarily made of the pathways that encircle the Adventure Bay lagoon. We’ve already decided that it’s a “non-negotiable” that we keep Adventure Bay as part of our Build-Out, because this is the park’s portal to expansion. Over the next decades, the “slots” around Adventure Bay will inevitably fill until Adventure Way becomes a very large Hub, with spokes branching off into “Living Lands” that will one day adjoin The World of Frozen.

As was pointed out when photos of both lands’ respective construction were filling social media simultaneously, Adventure Way has more than a little in common with Celestial Park at Universal Epic Universe. Both are stylized, art nouveau lands filled with seafoam and teal accents; both are built around circular bodies of water; and both are quite literally meant to be “worlds between worlds” – the neutral, comfortable, pleasant spaces we continuously return to as we chart course from one land to another.

And god, are these neutral zones increasingly needed. The more that these lands become all-encompassing sensory assaults (in the positive way!), you need a “palette cleanser” in between – someplace with wide vistas and relaxation spaces before you’re dropped into the next compact, hyper-sensory land. It’s sort of a miracle that Epic Universe – really the first kind of “post-Potter” park comprised entirely of Living Lands – managed to get this right right out the gate.

If there’s a clear distinction, it must be that Adventure Way lacks the science-fantasy mythology of its parallel-evolved sister in Orlando, and– now that we’ve gotten rid of the Tangled and Up flat rides, really nothing to do. Nearly the only building or structure remaining is the REGAL VIEW RESTAURANT AND LOUNGE. As its name might imply, the two alluring elements here are the Regal (giving this park its obligatory Disney Princess character dining outpost) and the View (across the lagoon and undoubtedly premium seating for the nighttime water and drone pageant set to take place there).

To that point, the restaurant’s interior is filled with stylized paintings and tile mosaics of the Princesses, but subtly enough that this still reads like a lavish, plush, fine dining establishment the likes of which the old Walt Disney Studios would never have approached. (Even the other table service restaurant, Bistro Chez Rémy, couldn’t help itself and “shrinks” guests to sit on thimbles and matchbook booths instead of aspiring to recreate the classy Gusteau’s restaurant from the film.)

My other problem here is somewhat esoteric, but I guess I’m not sold on Adventure Way as a place of… adventure? Adventure rarely manifests in the delicacy of art nouveau, right? If the implication is that it leads to grand adventures, fine, but even so, “Adventure Way around Adventure Bay at Adventure World” is just so… meaningless. Which, I guess, fits with the brand’s motif of being all-encompassing and entirely noncommittal…

Actually, “Adventure Way” strikes me as being exactly the opposite of what this space is, which is a place that’s intentionally neutral and restful and serene. Like Celestial Park, it’s meant to be flexible! A palate cleanser! We expand here, then compress ourselves into dense, layered, heavy worlds. This is our place to reset and refresh! So I want to actually use this space to tighten up our expression of the park’s literary Theme. Here’s what I envision…

Table of Contents: POINT D’INSPIRATION

We’ve called each of the lands so far “Chapters” and only now – in the middle of the “story” – arrive at the “Table of Contents.” That speaks to the inherently difficult layout we’re working with here, and the inevitable frustrations of nesting a “Hub” so far back in the park. (Of course, we acknowledged that I’m making that even worse by burying access to the lagoon behind Neverland, so who am I to complain?)

Anyway, my first move here was to rename this land Point D’inspiration. Obviously it’s a perfect cognate to English. But I also think that the framing that works best in the Story Realms context is to embrace this space’s neutrality, art nouveau elegance, and “natural” beauty to imagine that it’s a place of ideation. This is Inspiration Point – a place that we can imagine all artists retreat to in order to revise, to reflect, to find respite, and to refresh.

Inspiration Point might be a physical place, or it might be a quiet, subconscious one that exists only in our heads. It exists at no specific time or place. Artists may come here between chapters; between books; between projects; when they hit a dead end, or feel like giving up, or deal with writer’s block… The point is that we all need Inspiration Point, and in fact, that we share this space with authors and artists across genres, time, and space.

Anyway, our addition of Neverland actually prevents this land from having a full circle, parade-sized midway (which I think is fine… Pedestrians can still circumnavigate the whole lagoon via paths in front of the restaurant, they’re just not “midway” width.

Speaking of which, I’ve renamed The Royal View Restaurant AUTEURS. (That’s French for “authors,” but is also been coopted by English to mean a filmmaker whose style is so pervasive in a film as to make them the singular “author” of the work… So yet again we find a lovely multi-lingual word that – in this case – actually bridges the “book” and “film” ethos of the park beautifully!)

I have also used the existing lakeside structure as ILLUMINATEURS, a coffee and pastry spot with a patio overlooking the new fountain at the land’s entrance from Neverland. A coffee spot really feels like a must-have if we envision that folks will spend most of their day here in proximity to the lagoon, always-returning to it and circling around it.

I have also added a few new rides here. First, in one of the terraced garden spaces, I added the CAROLWOOD DERBY. This ride is inspired by one of my favorite quirky attractions – Cedar Downs at Ohio’s Cedar Point. It’s a remnant of a now-rare ride called a “Derby Racer.” In short, it’s a carousel… but fast?

The wide turntable upon which the mounted horses spin is quick enough to give a bit of a thrill, and at the same time, the four abreast horses leap not just up and down, but forward and back, giving the real sense of a “race” that leaves family members hooting and hollering to try to get ahead of each other, and is as much fun to watch as it is to ride. It’s a whole lot of spectacular fun, and you disembark thinking that it’s a bit of a shame that the Derby Racer didn’t “catch on.” (Three were built, and only two remain – at Cedar Point and at England’s Blackpool Pleasure Beach.)

Second, I wanted to give this park its long-needed version of Soarin’. I decided that Point D’inspiration was the right place, creating SOARIN’ – EVOLÉES IMAGINAIRES (the French evocation of the English term “Flights of Fancy”).

Part of the strength of the Soarin’ concept is its ability to be adapted to different parks’ Themes, which is why it’s so disappointing that all four versions of the ride are “wrapped” very differently, but culminate in the same “Around The World” ride film. In keeping with this park’s Theme and the land’s broader bend, this Soarin’ is meant to take us to places that have inspired storytellers for millennia… from the Black Forest and Neuschwanstein in Germany to Spain’s Alcázar of Segovia (an inspiration for Cinderella’s castle); the provincial charm of Colmar, France, to Scotland’s Fairy Glen, and onward to the floating ice fields in Tromsø, Norway (where animators visited when adapting Frozen)…

Obviously, since fairytales exist in every culture around the world, so too do natural and manmade places that inspire them. But in a way, I don’t mind that we allow this to cleverly amount to a “Soarin’ Over Europe,” pulling from the continent’s storybook locales that inspired everything from Red Riding Hood to Frozen… and without visiting the Eiffel Tower, the Tower Bridge, etc. It’s a cool connection to make, I think, placing these lands alongside the real-world locales animators travel to to be inspired(!) as they translate these works from page to screen.

For the “wrap,” I wanted to create a sort of ode to the Central Dome of the 1889 Exposition Universelle (the World’s Fair for which the Eiffel Tower served as icon). It’s at least an interesting idea to tap into this Expo as a bit of iconography and establishing detail for this land, which already feels like it could exist around this time. Especially now that we’re leaning into French for its name and contents, it feels like a nice nod to make the Dome the “weenie” that draws us into this literary version of Soarin’.

And finally, we have a third ride, PETITS AVIATEURS. Nested into the gardens around Soarin’ (and along the path that’ll eventually connect us back toward the Grand Library as our Grand Circle Tour continues), this ride for “Little Aviators” would be a Zamperla Giant Sky Chaser. It’s an off-the-shelf product that we could beautifully “dress up” with the art nouveau grandeur of the Exposition.

This unique spinner ride model lets guests climb up into a flying hang glider, lying on their stomachs and gracefully circling. It’s fairly low capacity, but I think if positioned as a ride primarily for children and a complement to Soarin’, it becomes a nice B-Ticket support.

For Point D’inspiration, my hope was to actually take that idea of a late-19th century spring surrounded in art nouveau beauty and reinforce it. Imagining this as a sort of literal and figurative retreat filled with nods to timeless authors and artists feels like it just takes flight. It allows it to remain neutral and classy and timeless, but with an identity and a “story” of its own to tell.

Okay, so now our blueprint for Disney Story Realms really reveals itself. With Point D’inspiration as our new canvas to build off of, it’s time for us to continue our journey through the worlds inspired by timeless tales… and since we left off with our route around the park focused on films of the ’50s, our first “spoke” off of Inspiration Lake will lead us into Disney films of the ’60s, each bringing to life an author’s work…

But since we’ve reached the halfway point in our journey (and by the way, nearly 16,000 words in…!), it’s time that I make the unfortunate but logistically-required request that you jump with me to a standalone Part II of this Build-Out where we can fill in the rest of our timeline, from the ’60s to the Dark Age, the Renaissance, and eventually, the Revival era. I hope to see you in my Build-Out of Disney Story Realms: Part II!