Over the next year, the plaza at the heart of Disneyland Paris will be transformed in its biggest way since the opening of Walt Disney Studios Park — and here’s the first floor! Steel supports have now been pieced together to lay out the footprint of World of Disney, a new flagship store at the entrance of Disney Village, after the temporary top soil on the site was scraped off and trees replanted. This isn’t your average building site, either: the store is being built right on top of the high speed TGV train lines, on the huge concrete box built over the tracks during the resort’s construction, adding some unique challenges and complications. These steel ground floor supports are very different to the method over at Earl of Sandwich, for example, and that huge box tower looming over the site is a ventilation shaft for the platforms below. The floor plan of the store narrowly avoids a second ventilation duct in the photo, above.

Final concept art for the store emerged last Spring, showing a slightly revised exterior which appears to reference a more Californian Art Deco — rather similar in style to the Franklin Department Store façade not far away on the Studios’ Hollywood Boulevard and very, very different to the existing World of Disney stores in Orlando and Anaheim. It is expected the store, anchored by a huge blue globe topped by Tinkerbell and due to open in 2012, will completely replace the existing Disney Store in Disney Village, possibly triggering a series of refurbishments and replacements along the Village’s main thoroughfare.

VIA Grandmath, G-Force (Disney Central Plaza)