News / Walt Disney Imagineering

The first detailed look at part of the multi-year Walt Disney Studios Park expansion has been revealed, as Disneyland Paris tease a new concept image for the Marvel reworking of the park’s existing Backlot.

Spotting blown bulbs along Main Street, U.S.A. should become a thing of a past, as Disneyland Paris completes a major upgrade of its trademark “rim lighting”. Read More…

Hong Kong Disneyland just unveiled a comprehensive multi-year expansion project, encompassing major new lands attractions based on Frozen and Marvel, with the aim of bringing the struggling resort to profitability. Read More…

On Saturday 21st June 2014, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy became the latest E ticket entry in 60 years of Disney attraction history as Bob Iger himself, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, officially dedicated the new ride and La Place de Rémy.

DLP Today had the privilege of being there to experience the ceremonies first-hand and now, as Disneyland Paris prepares to open the area to the public this Thursday 10th July, we take you there. In pictures, video and lots of words in between, this is our complete retelling of the grand opening of Ratatouille: The Adventure at Walt Disney Studios Park. Read More…

Sunday 22nd June was the big day for more than 50 fan bloggers, reporters and tweeters as we were invited to discover not only Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy but a special preview meal at Bistrot Chez Rémy and an hourlong presentation on the making of the ride by two of the Imagineers themselves.

Staging an event like this purely for a guest list like us was truly unprecedented by Disneyland Paris, but hopefully its success will see the formula repeated again. Besides word that #Ratatouille briefly trended on Twitter in France, it presented a fantastic opportunity for us to gather as much information and as many photos and videos to prepare our blogs and websites ahead of the official public opening date.

In a sense, for every invitee we could take along another thousand or more diehard fans with us. Keeping the fans “in the loop” like this is good for us and great for Disneyland Paris.

No less than 41 live photos were shared on our @DLPToday Twitter feed, mostly focusing on the restaurant preview with the first pictures of its décor, menus and sample dishes. If you missed them at the time or want to relive it all again, here we go! Read More…

Beyond the all-important date (10th July if you haven’t managed to catch it yet), Disneyland Paris more than exceeded anticipation for yesterday’s rumoured Ratatouille: The Adventure announcement by including a little video teaser alongside. Well, perhaps “little” isn’t the word.

Because despite running to just 1 minute 3 seconds, for the first time ever the video reveals a number of glimpses inside the huge new Ratatouille showbuilding, allowing a look at the attraction’s physical scenery, giant props and even trackless ride vehicles. The emphasis being on giant: everything is giant.

Tom Fitzgerald, Creative Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, and Roger Gould, Creative Director Theme Parks at Pixar Animation Studios, lead the commentary to enthuse about Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy, as Tom names it, with a smile.

After seeing the huge Gusteau’s restaurant sign being lifted into place atop the building, we get a series of blink-and-you’ll-miss-em peeks inside the ride’s actual show scenes. There’s the rooftops of Paris load unload area with giant chimney pots, the cold storage with a giant fish, and the dining room with giant trolly wheels.

Towards the end, we even see a real, finished “Ratmobile” ride vehicle for the first time ever. And just to add extra intrigue, perhaps, it’s brown, not grey/blue.

There’s spoilers aplenty, of course — but don’t forget that the physical scenery and props we see here are just the “base layer” of this trackless, 3D projection-filled dark ride. It won’t look like this when you’re riding through it, with 3D glasses plus finished lighting and animation, so there’s a lot left unseen and a lot that will only ever be possible to see in person.

Watch the video now, then scroll down for 23 screencaps and extra commentary… Read More…

La Place de Rémy has officially joined the Walt Disney Studios Park map. Pre-empting the expected guide map changeover on 3rd April, Disneyland Paris has released an early peek at the new, updated map for its second gate featuring the brand new mini-land.

Depicting the Parisian quarter to the right of Toy Story Playland in Toon Studio, the park map now shows the square, buildings, façades and all-important fountain of Ratatouille: The Adventure. The marquee logos of the ride, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy, and the restaurant, Le Bistrot Chez Rémy, are both included, as is the logo-orientated style of the studio park map.

The map’s designers have chosen to end the façades immediately behind their rooftops, similar to several attractions such as Pirates of Caribbean on the Disneyland Park map, and not depict the massive showbuilding in any way. This makes the attraction the first to have a “hidden” or backstage showbuilding on the Walt Disney Studios Park map (even if in reality there’s no hiding it from within the park).

While Catastrophe Canyon and the Dinotopia set of Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic have been moved to the right in order to fit the latest expansion on, the rest of the park map remains completely unchanged:

In fact, so much so that the version sent out today still features the Playhouse Disney Live on Stage! logo — the attraction has been rebranded to Disney Junior. The full map also inexplicably features Disney Village in the bottom-left corner, seen from the same viewpoint.

Besides the park, Ratatouille will also be featured on the general Disneyland Paris resort map, with a few of its façades pictured above Buzz Lightyear:

Looking back through the park’s previous maps, it is now relatively impressive to see the changes and expansions since opening day — though they have certainly been somewhat lop-sided, with Toon Studio getting much of the attention.

In 2001, perhaps the barest Disney Park map in history was released for pre-opening brochures:

This was thankfully soon updated with more of the park’s finer details (if not any of the numerous expansion rumours of the time, which would take five years to materialise):

Then, the first and still biggest change to date came in 2007, when Crush’s Coaster, Cars Quatre Roues Rallye, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Hollywood Boulevard were all added to the map in one go:

In 2010, the map was updated with Toy Story Playland along with updated logos for Disney Blockbuster Café and Restaurant des Stars.

As with 2007, the early addition of Ratatouille will give the ride some much-needed advance publicity for guests visiting in the months before its opening.

While teasers have been shared online, the expansion must be one of the first in Disneyland Paris history not to see its construction walls decorated with even a modest teaser of what is being built within. With so many missed promotional opportunities already, it’s a relief to see this one seized, if only thanks to the traditional bi-annual guide map changeover…

Michael Giacchino’s recent Instagram insights into his Ratatouille ride soundtrack scoring sessions have been joined by a tweet from Ratatouille director himself Brad Bird.

Posting a picture of the orchestra playing away behind a Chef Rémy plush toy and a Linguini PEZ dispenser, the Incredibles mastermind said:

@m_giacchino's scoring session yesterday for the new RATATOUILLE ride for the Paris park. (I like the Linguini PEZ.) pic.twitter.com/XSAlrobUdn

— Brad Bird (@BradBirdA113) March 4, 2014

Besides the PEZ, the photo also shows how the orchestra appear to be being conducted along to a plan of the ride’s layout, projected in the background, with the “Ratmobiles” shown moving through the scenes as white shapes.

Last month, the film’s original composer, Michael Giacchino, began sharing a number of video clips from a whole week of scoring sessions, featuring soundbites of the attraction’s new soundtrack which he has composed himself.

Should Bird’s tweet be “live” and the scoring sessions have resumed, it really shows how much work is going in to provide music for the ride, restaurant and La Place de Rémy exterior.

This isn’t Brad Bird’s first mention of Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy on his Twitter account. In March 2012, long before Disneyland Paris officially acknowledged the attraction, he gave a short response to a fan stating he was very excited about the project and that “It’s going to be really cool.”

Desperately lacking a platform like the Disney Parks Blog, Disneyland Paris itself has yet to truly begin providing any teasers or insights into the attraction’s creation. So here, we have the odd situation where the film’s composer and director are providing some of the best promotion of the mega-budget attraction it’s inspiring. Note to Paris: anticipation sells, silence doesn’t.