News / Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars

Disneyland Paris scored an exclusive “first” yesterday as Disney’s latest heroine Moana made her first ever appearance within a Disney park anywhere in the world. Read More…

Yesterday, Disneyland Paris said “joyeux anniversaire!” to Mickey Mouse, following a number of Disney’s other resorts and media properties in celebrating the mouse’s 88th year with a host of special surprises and a global initiative using the hashtag #HappyBirthdayMickey. DLP Today was there to capture the fun in pictures and videos! Read More…

Mickey’s Halloween Celebration, Maleficent’s Court and the Maleficent Disney Villains Promenade are all on the latest official Disneyland Park Programme, published today for the first ten days of Disney’s Halloween Festival in 2014. Read More…

Remember the “Festival of Flowers” (Festival des Fleurs) of 1997 and 1998? Park icons covered in colourful spring flowers, topiaries of Disney characters all around, beautiful displays decorating the flower beds? It was a beautiful way to see in season of “printemps”.

Well, those will remain memories… but it’s this classic event that has apparently served as inspiration for a new season rumoured to begin at Disneyland Paris this April: the Spring Festival, or “Swing Into Spring” if you want the latest reported title.

Disneyland Paris in its usual self-aggrandising style has announced nothing, but information and speculation has been trickling out for almost two months now from various sources.

The speculated season looks set to revolve around a central street event, which will reuse three of the cars from Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars. The Monsters Inc and Snow White vehicles were removed from the Walt Disney Studios Park parade on Wednesday, 19th February, and are expected to be redecorated for the new cavalcade “happening”.

Joining them for the Disneyland Park event will be the Mary Poppins car, apparently leaving the Studios without a parade for the duration of the season — characters will simply perform a meet ‘n’ greet in the second park, instead. Update: @InsideDLParis informs that despite missing these three cars, Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars is planned to continue as a parade during the season.

Other rumours suggest the long-running Casey Jr train (Disney Characters Express, Minnie’s Party Train, Disney All Stars Express, Disney Dance Express, Disney’s 20th Anniversary Celebration Train) returning in some form with a similar colourful, floral, spring overlay.

Only the Disneyland Paris Casting website has confirmed plans for special spring events, with a casting notice (below) advertising for an impressive 102 dancers. Even taking into account days off, reducing the numbers in each actual performance, that’s a healthy figure.

Meanwhile, the fresh festival could also introduce some new floral decorations and street animations or meet ‘n’ greet opportunities. Concept art suggesting these was leaked by a blogger in early January and swiftly removed at the request of Disneyland Paris, stating the internal documents were not meant for public release.

More recently, a Mary Poppins “Jolly Holiday” theme has been mooted, which would be a good choice given the film’s fiftieth anniversary and renewed popularity thanks to Saving Mr Banks. This could be confirmed by the appearance of chalk paintings being tested on the pavement outside City Hall on Wednesday, photographed by @DisneylandPfans.

Created by an artist using just chalk, water and masking tape, it’s not known how these colourful paintings, like those mastered by Bert in the 1964 film, could be put to use as part of a season (or avoid the footsteps of idle visitors).

Dates: the “Spring Festival” is rumoured to run from 5th April to 22nd June, possibly with a “soft opening” day on 4th April, nicely filling the void in the resort’s calendar left by the “summer” opening of Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy. Again, no part of this speculated festival has been officially announced or confirmed by Disneyland Paris.

Gradually turning “Spring” into its own annual season makes perfect sense, and though this year looks like being more a trial of the concept (hence the lack of a big announcement too far in advance?), with continued investment it could conceivably become a third pillar season as important as Halloween and Christmas, driving repeat visitors without the need for those increasingly desperate, largely irrelevant year-long “festivals”.

Bonus: “Festival of Flowers” 1997 programme Read More…

They’re going the wrong way! It seems like the set-up for a classic something-goes-wrong Disney attraction, but the diversion of Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars at Walt Disney Studios Park you see above is actually entirely planned. Since May this year, in fact, the plan has been for the part-parade, part-show event to become a simple linear cavalcade, passing on its original Production Number show stop at Place des Stars. From Friday, the “logistical issues” which had delayed the change were finally overcome when Donald and Daisy led the parade down Rue George Méliès toward Backlot for the very first time.

Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars now follows the park’s original parade route, entering in Toon Studio between Flying Carpets Over Agrabah and Animagique, passing past Disney Bros. Plaza and exiting between Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith and Disney Blockbuster Café, without stopping. This is the first time the whole parade route has been used since Disney Cinema Parade ended its run way back in March 2008. Though guests no longer get to see the fun 10-minute musical production starring the cast of characters and their drivers, running the parade right through the park immediately allows almost twice as many people to catch a front-row glimpse of the stars.

We noted at the event’s arrival in 2009 how the small, low-level Place des Stars stage wasn’t really suitable for a “main event” like this, allowing so few people to get a good view, which must had led to many poor guest experiences. The only downside of this extended parade run is that the twelve cars appear exactly as before, only with Donald and Daisy taking the lead while Mickey and Minnie provide the finale behind 2010’s added Ratatouille car. Without any dancers or action in-between the vehicles, or a stage show to provide a raison-d’être, does the cavalcade stand up as a parade on its own?

VIA @InsideDLParis (Twitter)

They say no ideas at Disney ever go to waste and for Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars, the daily parade-come-show at Walt Disney Studios Park, that means a refreshed format reported to begin this summer will be a lot like a look at “what could have been”. Matthew Burggraeve (aka @InsideDLParis) tweeted on Friday that the parade would lose its “petite surprise” stage number and instead become a “parade with a meet ‘n’ greet showstop”. Before its Parisian debut in April 2009, the parade was due to become exactly that, before that idea was overtaken by one to pile all those individual show stops into one “mega show stop” on the arguably inadequate Place des Stars stage in Production Courtyard. This has often led to guests needing to arrive over half an hour (and perhaps up to one hour) in advance to find a spot on the front row for this performance, with the vast majority of guests behind them getting a poor view of the action in the cramped and untiered viewing space. If the event becomes a more standard parade, the amount of visitors able to feel part of the action will almost double as the route up through Backlot is brought back to life, for the first time since 2009’s High School Musical Party! show departed.

Meanwhile, Disney’s Once Upon a Dream Parade will reportedly see even more tweaks after the “interactive” show stops introduced for the Magical Moments Festival don’t appear to have been received too well. Changes apparently due early this month include “more dancing, less interaction and new music”, which might upset those hoping to hear the return of the “Just Like We Dreamed It” theme song written specifically for the parade in its show stops. In this case, you could have said way back in March: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

VIA @InsideDLParis (Twitter)

In its original life as Disney Stars and Motor Cars Parade, the Studios’ current parade event certainly wasn’t free from chopping and changing its guest list, with additions such as Monsters Inc., Lilo & Stitch and, er, the Power Rangers during its time in Florida.

The move to Paris saw a glitzy new “Stars ‘n’ Cars” decoration added to Mickey’s lead car, whilst The Muppets’ old vehicle underwent a makeover to become Donald and Daisy’s car.

So now, their first test — making a completely new car from Florida’s old Star Wars vehicle.

We couldn’t have more worthy first additions to the parade, for this Parisian park, than Rémy and Emile. The concept art and making of videos looked promising — and now, just look at the finished car!

With a table setting of hot ratatouille and a fizzing glass on its hood, Rémy and Emile’s brand new car comes decorated with the vintage Parisian posters created by Pixar to promote the film. Behind the pair — dressed in chef’s hats — lies the aftermath of their cooking: a huge pile of pots, pans and kitchen utensils that wobbles, sways and hisses with smoke as the car drives along.

Here’s the official video footage from our new Stars ‘n’ Cars addition:

As you can see, the rats also invade the “production number” on Place des Stars Stage, launching into a specially-recorded can-can with the car drivers donning chef hats and aprons to kick along with the beat.

Impressionnant!

Photos, videos © Disney

Yes, it was probably pitched something like that.

But first, a nice compilation from behind-the-scenes at yesterday’s press events, as a Disneyland Paris video camera follows the press around the new shows and events to give a feeling of these busy press days in the parks:

Now that’s got you warmed up, onto the main show!

Titled “The New Gen Show”, the opening ceremony and dedication of the New Generation Festival has all the usual ingredients of these one-off Disney grand opening spectaculars — a ridiculously large cast, jazzy projections and an “interesting” mélange of music.

On the one hand we have Buzz Lightyear reliving his French disco days, on the other Nemo coaxing Dory (right?) into the arena in something out of an arty theatrical show. All wrapped up with music from… Pixar Play Parade at Disney’s California Adventure.

Yes, it’s an eclectic, enormous and show-stopping opening ceremony for the year ahead. Might they have actually outdone all past efforts? Perhaps — in numbers and scale — even the opening of the resort itself!

It’s a shame, of course, that these kind of lavish events are reserved only for “VIPs” who probably couldn’t give a hoot about seeing a show like this. We have to wonder how much of the footage and how many of the images shot this weekend will really make an impact, or be featured in the media. It’s a tradition now that Disneyland Paris puts on one show for the visitors and one superficial blow-out to look good for the cameras. It’s something for the archives, for them to pull out and say “remember 2010?”.

Although given that they used the stunt arena this year, which has 3000 seats, this would have been a good chance to say, give away a few extra tickets in a prize draw to Annual Passport Dream holders… if only to see the show, to spread word of mouth, and not to enjoy the free food.

Videos © Disney