Category Archives: Disneyland Paris

Set a Course For Adventure:

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The fabled Adventurer’s Club at Disney’s Pleasure Island was much loved and many protested loudly when it was shuttered for good. It (like all of Pleasure Island) always felt a bit forced to me. Too much pretending that it was New Year’s Eve (when in fact is was Tuesday November 8th or whatever) and too much contrived “spontaneity” for my taste. Things either really happen organically and randomly to produce fun or they do not, pretending that carefully orchestrated events are spontaneously happening in this setting always felt off. However the actual building and the art direction was spectacular. I often wished that I could just roam around and check out the details without being jostled by drunks in flip flops looking for some faux frivolity or being accosted by drama school drops outs dressed in feather boas… but that’s just me. 

The mothership may not be all she was cracked up to be.
What many don’t realize is that there was a sister establishment of sorts across the ocean at (then) Euro Disney. The original Adventurer’s club opened in the spring of 1989 while the new Explorer’s Club opened with the rest of Euro Disney three scant years later in 1992.
 
Adventure awaits… and a standard 15% gratuity.
Situated in the new park’s Adventureland The Explorer’s Club left behind the bar-nightclub model and opted for a full service sit down restaurant instead. Much of the theme and general feel carried over. It was a home away from home club for the adventurous world traveler. While never explicitly stated it was generally set in the late thirties much as the Adventure’s Club was. It shared the exotic theme of being a gathering place for explorers and bons vivants filled with props and photographs from around the world festooning the walls and dangling from the rafters. 
The early days.
Where the Adventurer’s Club took on a more formal European gentleman’s club feel the Explorer’s Club was set on the edges of a dense jungle and the foliage was in fact taking over much of the club. Overgrown trees sprouted from several spots within the club, their branches forming a leafy canopy above dinners. Perched within the leaves were several audio-animatronics birds that would put on shows and interact with guests. This concept dates back to the original Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland and has been toyed with many times in Disney’s past. This was the perfect execution of it, as dinners would enjoy the show while experiencing a full British Colonial menu. 

The main dining room as seen today, no more table cloths and far fewer animatronics.
The former bar area still has some props hanging around.
Dramatic murals depicting journeys from around the globe ringed the main dining room. This was classic Disney, details upon details poured into a unique spot. They took much of the best of the Adventurer’s Club and shook it up creating an outpost unlike any other. Come to think of it they really should have switched the names; The Explorer’s Club felt more adventurous than the Adventurer’s Club did. 

Click on the pictures to see big versions… great detail and check out the “EC” logo.
Parkeologists will find these lost clues to the past.

The first guidebook for the park described it as: 


“Another luxuriously comfortable atmosphere is yours if you choose to dine at the Explorer’s Club. Here the very best authentic cuisine is quietly served among lush vines, rare exotic flowers and even a few surprising trophies!” 


The murals cover everything from the wild west to the deep see to dense jungles and the frigid arctic.

Furthering the depth of the experience, (and undoubtedly upping the annoyance factor) were costumed actors playing the roles of explorers along the lines of David Livingstone, William Parry, amelia earhart or even Indiana Jones. They would interact with the patrons as well as the animated birds and props. The club also had a resident musician, a ukulele playing Brit who would often don a pith helmet and sing somewhat racy songs. Combining the music hall tunes, the actors and the animatronics along with the deep theme and many props it is easy to see that the Explorer’s Club had great potential. 

This classic peice of concept art shows the original Explorer’s Club bar area.  Notice Hemingway and
Jacques Cousteau and the bar and Indy way at the far end.  Originally the Paris park was to have
it’s own version of the Indiana Jones Adventure just beyond the Explorer’s Club.
Then the park opened and the place tanked. The mistakes made by Disney with the opening of Euro Disney are legendary… too many hotels, not enough attractions and too many sit down dining establishments (the small original park had five of them). Disney reacted and the Explorer’s Club was hacked apart and transformed rather quickly into a counter service joint. Briefly they served Chinese food before being changed again into it’s current incarnation; Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Outpost. There is nothing particularly bad about this standard Disney Pizza restaurant. It still has a nice setting with outdoor seating overlooking waterfalls. It still has the murals and even some of the trees and props… but much of the charm and mystique are gone. 
The two surviving fugitives of the restaurants glorious past.
A pair of birds survived, silently sitting as sentinels of the main dining room, the bar area was removed to make way for the counter service area, more tables were crammed in and over the years most of the props and detail has been stripped away. Look closely however and you can plainly see the Explorer’s Club past staring you in the face. The “EC” logo remains on light fixtures, a fireplace screen and on some of the murals and fixtures. 

The “EC” logo pops up here and there is you look for it.  Check out the detail
on the fireplace screen.. ecthed glass and wrote iron… nice!

Why they felt an obscure character from the Jungle Book was vital in the renaming is beyond me. Other than on the exterior sign there are no references to either Colonel Hathi or the Jungle Book in general. Ironically Colonel Hathi himself was based on the very type of explorer who would be a member of this club. 

Depiste being the namesake this is the only place you actually see the Colonel.
Why not keep the Explorer’s Club name and theme and just change the menu? Who knows, perhaps they felt they needed a clean break but the past cannot escape a seasoned Parkeologist as the photos will attest. Beyond the somewhat sad history of this place the beautiful art work and some of the themed props have survived. 

Other smaller dining rooms offer great details and the outdoor seating has splendid views.
The Explorer’s Club did not get any support when it closed, no online petitions (there was not much online in 1993) and no fan clubs. Perhaps a lone French guy shed a tear but it was only open about a year, not really enough time to gain much traction with park fans. It was and even still is a great place to see what Disney does so well. If they ever choose to flesh of the original Disneyland Paris park maybe they can reinstate the original theme and restore the place to it’s former glory… and then again maybe it’s New Years Eve. 
As seen today… HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fading Star…

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Parkeology was on location at Disneyland Paris the other week. We discovered things both expected and surprising.

The PR photos make it look so, well, magical!

Disneyland Paris features Discoverlyland in lieu of Tomorrowland. It is meant to serve as an ageless look into the future as imagined by Jules Verne. One surprise came at the realization that the costume designers confused Jules Verne’s 1886 with Bill Cosby’s 1986: 




What’s a 100 years or so between friends?

Last week there was an accident on Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland Paris. This was a week after our return but it was still sort of creepy to hear about this happening so closely to the time we were riding it again and again and again (my daughter would still be riding it if she was allowed). 


You may want to check out the posts here from the Disney and More blog… Alain does a good job keeping up with the goings on at Disneyland Paris. Ironically the avalanche scene really did drop a rock onto the tracks, the train hit the faux rock and debris hurled into some passengers, one of which was seriously injured. It sucks.

Sadly the ride that was seemingly operating the best was big Thunder.

This is what may be the biggest surprise of our visit and one that honestly should probably not be a surprise… that is the general shocking and even appalling condition of much of the park. In the near future we will post some on the flip side of this, in other words some of the cool things being done well there, but in light of the accident I wanted to share some snapshots from a couple weeks back.

It is true that we have no idea what caused the Big Thunder accident but one leading theory is poor maintenance, I think we take for granted that Disney parks will be clean, well run and in nearly flawless shape. People get all worked up when a trash can has not been painted this week or when some paint on the upper tiers of Space Mountain starts to peel… but we are talking a whole different league here folks.

The Pirate ship in Adventureland is a central key feature. Much of the land is designed around it, it was once a beautiful focal point…this is what it looks like today, right now:
(Click on them to make them larger)

I’m not sure what is better, the authentic rotting wood, peeling paint, moldy moss or perhaps the weeds
growing out of the cannon opening.

Mind you, these are not taken with some crazy telephoto lens or anything… you can walk right up to and touch the thing (though wear gloves or you will get a splinter). This is on view in plain sight of every single guest… I don’t think this was the Paris country fair or Six Flags over fromage that we stumbled into… this is Disneyland Freaking Paris!
Yea, they have announced that this entire ship will be scraped and replaced in time for the 20th anniversary of the park next year… but how could this be allowed to get to this state? How could they allow it to sit there right now like this? Do they expect people to be excited about this finally being addressed after two decades of neglect?


Looks pretty nice here.

How about that Discoveryland we mentioned before… it’s holding up right? Well the cost cutting is clear everywhere, ranging from showing old movies on screens at Videopolis instead of live stage shows (the guide promises a live Lion King show… it is not playing) to much worse. 

Even nicer here.

The French version of Space Mountain is undoubtedly the best. Not just because it goes upside down, in fact I hold that against it, rather because it has a very cool Verne from Earth to the Moon theme, onboard sound and a magnificent show building. One of the key and coolest features of the show building is that giant cannon sitting along the side. Guests used to be blasted out of the cannon with a huge “boom!” and a billowing puff of smoke. Today neither the smoke nor the recoiling motion of the cannon (or the sound) work. Worse yet rust is streaking down the sides and the new “mission 2” show is a huge step backwards from the original. Oh well.

Not so nice anymore.

Sometimes it is not big expensive things… ever hear of a vacuum cleaner guys? I think vacuum is a French word… Le Vacuum s’il vous plait?

This is the ceiling as you enter Buzz Lightyear caked with dust and cob webs… it doesn’t really cost much to clean this off say every 5 years or so, does it?

And speaking of big expensive things… it looks like they are going to allow the Nautilus to head the way of the Pirate Ship. It HAS to costs less to fix this thing now than is does to replace it in 3 years… or maybe they will just shut it down and remove it like they did with the once (but no longer) functioning geysers in Frontiereland. By the way, most of these shots were taken the actual first day the Nautilus came back from a month long rehab… what exactly did they do during that time? They did not even bother to clean the garbage out of the pond. Imagine what it was like BEFORE the rehab!

The 3rd and 4th shots may look almost the same… but they were
taken days apart and no one bothered to remove the soda can
floating there for that whole time. Oh yea, the sub is
also falling part.

Pirates of the Caribbean actually just came off a month long rehab as well and yet the sword fighting pirates were hidden behind a thatched curtain for a good part of our trip (when they are broken they are hidden from view) and the once swinging pirate is now the motionless hanging pirate… I guess it takes some work to keep these things functioning huh?

This may look exciting but when you see a him just hanging there with no motion
it is not quite as amazing.  He does not even get a yeti strobe light!

Check out these shots of the concrete in the large plaza area between Disneyland Paris and the dreadful Walt Disney Studios Paris (better than years before but still amazingly bad). Again, these are not some isolated small patches of hidden concrete… this is what the majority of the ground is like, you cannot walk without navigating large potholes. This type of thing exists in the actual parks as well.

The attention to detail is just astonishing. They have perfectly recreated the pot hole
ridden streets of New York or Chicago, BRAVO!

I could go on and on, there really is this type of thing all over the parks, especially the older and much more detailed Disneyland Paris park.

See that scroll molding above the display.  On your next visit look closely,
you will see one missing.  that was the one that nearly ended up
embedded in my head 6 years ago… and is still not repaired.

In 2005 I was standing in one of the covered arcades that run parallel to Main Street. As I was admiring a display I heard a loud snap and a decorative piece of molding came tumbling down from the top of the display. This is a piece of wood molding about 3 feet long, is crashed to the floor nearly hitting me on the head! I took the wood and leaned it on the display, assuming that it was a freak occurrence and that it would immediately be repaired. In Japan the arcade would be shut down while teams of uniformed workers rebuilt the entire complex, probably repaving sections in gold and magic but this is Paris not Tokyo… I did not expect much. Well 6 years later that same molding is still missing from the same display… simply never replaced or perhaps even noticed. A sign of unfortunate things to come.

OK, there must be a French word for paint because they are using some here.

Now to be fair they are currently repainting the castle (it needs it), recently rebuilt the Molly Brown paddle wheeler (which was in almost as bad shape as the pirate ship) and have been repainting much of Main Street (of course the tarps are un-themed white eyesores but there is painting going on at least).

I think the current management has realized how horrible parts of the park are and they are desperately trying to address some of this prior to the spotlight that the twentieth anniversary will shine on them. But for example the rehab plans do not address the Nautilus or Space Mountain at all. They seem to be trying to spruce up some of the more obvious and famous facades while letting others fade… and don’t even think about something as unheard of as adding a major new attraction.

Pardon monsieur, may I have your assistance in climbing the fence and
destroying the landscaping?  Merci.

Europeans do not have the same admiration and social respect for the parks as Americans (and certainly not the Japanese) have. This general chaotic nature of the guests makes it challenging to maintain the park. During a small parade all hell broke lose with guests climbing over fences, trampling landscaping and generally acting what we would consider to be rude. But that is cultural differences and should be expected… but the lack of any Disney supervision or guidance is still shocking.

In Tokyo this would be the stuff of nightmares.

At one point we were trying to cross the street prior to a parade heading in. The cross path was clearly marked but several guests were sitting in the crosswalk smoking and blocking the way. A cast member was standing feet away… when I asked him to move the guests he shrugged and looked at me as though I was insane… then motioned to climb over them as though he could not be bothered.

The park still is wonderfully designed, contains some impressive attractions and could be a true gem, but alas it has been allowed to decay, to literally rot in some cases. It is likely that we hit it at a low point, that it has never been worse and will only get better… but should it ever have been allowed to get to this point to begin with.

Wake up guys! Allow me to translate:

“Réveillez-vous!

Votre parc est en train de s’effondrer et bientôt personne ne se souciera plus.”


Looking good Jules!