News / 15th Anniversary

Disneyland Resort Paris are certainly not just looking for parade dancers for their 15th Anniversary extravaganza, set to be a veritable circus of animation and entertainment, with the advertisement calling upon bungee acrobats, jugglers, flag artists, puppeteers and stilt walkers. The two casting calls are scheduled for Lyon and Montpellier on the 21st and 23rd September 2006 respectively, with the listing informing participants they should plan for the day with casual (sports) clothing, sneakers and a possible call-back in the afternoon. As usual, the casting has a height requirement of between 142cm and 193cm.

Rumours suggest the parade will only feature around 50 dancers (around 20-30 fewer than current parades in high season), since the balance will be shifted more towards character performers for the new parade. The silhouettes of the parade floats confirm most of what has already been rumoured about the design of the floats – here’s a full run-through of everything we can see:

Float 1: Dream of Imagination
We’ve seen this one aleady… Mickey and Minnie ride high above the clouds in a sun-stylled hot air balloon. You can see the full concept artwork here.
Float 2: Dream of Fun and Laughter
A traditional fairytale hut is featured at the centre of the float, used by Alice in Wonderland first and then Pinocchio at the rear. The Pinocchio section appears to feature “marionnette” bungee artists similar to those in Walt Disney’s Parade of Dreams at Disneyland California, bouncing on bungee ropes from supports high above.

Float 3: Dream of Friendship
Features Toy Story and Winnie the Pooh characters, with a giant storybook in the middle separating the two themes. The rear section appears to feature Winnie and friends, with lamps hanging on strings, whilst the front section isn’t too clear…

Float 4: Dream of Fantasy
The most obvious of all the designs, this very British float will feature a whimsically stylled Big Ben tower in the centre, with Peter Pan’s pirate ship at the front and Mary Poppins’ “jolly holiday” carousel and a fleet of kites at the rear. An interesting change of theme for Mary after the current chimneysweep theme, since the Disney Cinema Parade also currently uses the carousel theme.

Float 5: Dream of Power
The villains’ float isn’t too clear, but you can clearly see Fantasia villain Chernabog towering over it all and a serpent Jafar slithering along at the front.
Float 6: Dream of Adventure
Serving The Lion King and The Jungle Book, this one is bound to be popular. A giant tree towers out of the middle, with Simba on Pride Rock before it and Kong Louie and Baloo behind. You can see various animals from both films in the tree, including monkeys and giraffes. Rafiki is clinging to the tree behind Pride Rock and Timon and Pumbaa are likely featured below.

Float 7: Dream of Romance (Part 1)
The most difficult of all the artworks, float 7 is due to feature The Little Mermaid and Aladdin and Jasmine in an “enchanted garden” setting. Ariel seems to be featured at the rear, with Jasmine further forward.

Float 8: Dream of Romance (Part 2)
The grand finale to the entire parade, this float looks suitably huge and is due to feature not two but four princesses! The initial gazebo is likely for Beauty and the Beast, whilst the ornate fairytale bride is occupied by Snow White and her prince. On the hill before the giant castle stands Cinderella and Prince Charming. No sign of Sleeping Beauty yet, but the rumours of this float being articulated (split into two free-moving, joined sections) look to be quite possible.

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With a double-character style similar to Walt Disney World’s Share a Dream Come True and an extravagant, classical float design similar to Disneyland’s 50th anniversary Parade of Dreams, the first all-new daytime parade in Paris for 5 years looks set to truly be a dream come true. You can find out more about the parade here.

Advertisement scanned by Sébastien Antunes for dlrp.fr.

The alternate logo takes the newer resort logo design from the original 15th anniversary design, with the sans-serif “Resort Paris” and bold weighted “Paris”, and matches this simply with the specially-styled “15” and three stars. The original logo design (presented below), was far more graphical and complete, showing an illustration of the castle and tinkerbell, with the text on a banner. This new, supplementary logo is therefore a more linear alternative for occasions when the original logo is too bulky to be effective.

It is fairly unusual for the resort to produce two logos for the same event as different as these, showing they know in their market the easier you make it for people to advertise your product, the more advertising you get. And, with a year as important as 2007, they’ll need all the help they can get.

Beginning in just a few weeks, the Big Thunder Mountain refurbishment will be the longest in the attraction’s history, running from 21st August to 13th October. Two other icons of Frontierland are also set to get their share of paint and polish – first up, the “unsinkable” Molly Brown, who suffered major smoke damage in 2005 after the main engine overheated, will finally be given a full refurbishment over the Winter. Beginning 4th October, she will return to service in late April 2007. As she does, the Mark Twain will return to the dock for another two month refurbishment.

Every single major attraction in Disneyland Park is scheduled in for at least a two week refurbishment, with the programme so expansive that even La Tanière du Dragon and Liberty Arcade are due for 2 and 3 week refurbishments respectively. Over at Walt Disney Studios Park, the 5-year-old attractions will also finally be getting a greater share of care. CinéMagique and Animagique will both have 1-week closures, whilst Studio Tram Tour will be given an mysteriously epic 3-week closure in November this year. The most interesting addition to the calendar, however, is surely Flying Carpets Over Agrabah. Closed from 5th to 23rd March 2007, it seems almost certain this will be to allow major work on the attraction to further integrate it into the new Toon Studio area, which is due to be completed June 2007.

You can see all the scheduled closures listed by month here.

The official website features this preview page for the attraction, which is linked to right from the homepage of the old circa-2002 Walt Disney Studios Park website. The same has been done for each European country served by the website, and these pages must surely be gaining extra attention thanks to the very prominent direct link from each official ‘Cars’ movie website (see the the official UK ‘Cars’ movie website here for an example). At the bottom of every page in the Flash websites, a large banner reads “Cars: The Ride / Disneyland Resort Paris”.

The resort’s effort and success at marketing just a simple tea cups-style ride so effectively bodes well for the other riches they have at their disposal for 2007…

This brand new parade will feature totally new floats with one of the biggest ever collections of characters – indeed, it has been rumoured for a long time now that the number of characters will actually outweigh the number of dancers! Rumours of bungee stilts and trampoline effects (similar to those seen in Walt Disney’s Parade of Dreams in California) have also been bouncing around for quite some time.

Today, take a look at this exciting concept visual on the right – this is our first look at the new parade, and appears to be showing the opening float featuring the “Disney VIPs”. As Mickey and Minnie gently float by the smiling purple moon in a sun-shaped hot air balloon, Donald and Goofy float on the clouds, fishing for dreams in the world of adventure and fantasy below them. Pluto and Chip & Dale meet and greet the fans in front of the float.

The parade’s opening float seems to take the theme of “dreams” and wrap it up in more whimsy than we’ve ever seen before in a Disneyland Resort Paris parade. This looks set to be a stunning and truly original spectacle.

It was confirmed last week that the name of the land will infact be “Toon Studio” rather than “Toon Studios”. This land will then also include all the current Animation Courtyard attractions – Art of Disney Animation, Animagique and Flying Carpets Over Agrabah.

The new area will not, however, be the main marketing draw – the attractions will clearly be advertised on their own as two seperate, brand new attractions, allowing Disneyland Resort Paris to use these valuable Cars and Finding Nemo character properties to their maximum effect.

The characters featured in the visual are, from the base upwards: Mickey & Minnie, the Cheshire Cat, Daisy Duck, Donald Duck, Hewy Dewy & Lewy, Lumiere, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, Chip & Dale, the Seven Dwarves, Pluto, Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo and Tinkerbell. This creates 14 character groups – we can only presume that Mickey & Minnie will be counted seperately, to give 15 characters and candles!You can join the discussion about this image and the entire 15th Anniversary Celebration right now at the Photos Magiques forum »

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Imagine a dream that lasts the whole year…

Imagine seeing some of your favourite dreams on parade. Adventure. Friendship. Romance. All of them come to life before your very eyes.

Imagine joining Mickey and friends in a once-in-a-lifetime chance to relive some of your favourite Disney moments and stories, with some of the most recent and timeless Disney Characters. Imagine being able to laugh, dance and skip-a-di-doo-da along with the likes of Baloo, Cinderella, Timon, Woody and Pinocchio … up close.

Imagine you are here… for the all-new Disney’s Once Upon A Dream Parade, a yearlong new parade created just for the 15th anniversary of Disneyland® Resort Paris. It’s everything you’ve ever imagined. Find it all … along with surprises beyond your wildest dreams. From April 2007.

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Whilst this creative text hints that the parade will run exclusively during the 15th Anniversary Celebration and will only last one year, it is highly likely it will continue to run for many years after. Raptor1982 also shares the news that the EPC (Entertainment, Parades and Characters) department have been looking into utilising trampolines and other acrobatic effects in the parade.