When Disneyland Paris celebrated it’s 10th anniversary in 2002, a second park was added to the resort called Walt Disney’s Studios Park. Let’s dive in the history of this park and see how much or little it has changed since opening day.
Opening
The second Disney park in Paris opened on March 16th 2002, so it was already open during the actual 10th anniversary of the resort which is on April 12th.
The second park is located next to the entrance of Disneyland Resort and Disney Villages, which is super confident since you can easily hop from one park to the other in just a couple of minutes instead of using any type of transportation.
The original idea was to open a second park in 1996 called, Disney’s MGM Studios Europe but due to the resorts financial situation this idea never went thru. Once the financial situation for Disneyland Paris got better they decided to open a smaller park, based on the behind the scenes of movie making.
The Park layout
You enter through a huge gate and arrive at Front Lot. A big beautiful area where you can find guests services, stroller and wheelchair rental, baby area, toilets, some stores and meet and greets with Filmmaker Goofy and sometimes you will even find Mary Poppins and friends.
Then you will walk into a huge building called studio 1, where you will find yourself in a Hollywood street like filmset. On the left you will find a couple of stores and on the right you can find restaurant en coulisse. If you look a bit closer you will see that the entire building is a set due to all of the cardboard backs of buildings and the details you’ll find if you look closely.
If you exit studio 1, you will find yourself outside again looking at a couple of buildings (studios), the Tower of Terror and a huge Mickey’s Magician hat.
Let’s get to the left side towards Toon Studios and go into Art of Disney Animation, the building underneath the hat. You’ll find a new show called, Animation Celebration – Frozen: A Musical Invitation, a meet and greet with Olaf, a merchandise shop and you can also get a drawing class.
Inside Animagique Theater you’ll find our favorite show ever, Mickey and the Magician. and next to that you’ll find the Flying Carpets Over Agrabah and Crush’s Coaster. You can also meet some characters in a very small area called Toon Town and across of that you can find Cars Quatre Roues Rallye, a Cars themed fun ride for the entire family.
Than on the left side you’ll walk into the latest edition of the park and you’ll find yourself In the streets of Paris. Once a year there is a food festival and you will also find a Ratatouille shop and the super famous dark ride, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy.
If you go through a tunnel you will find yourself in a brand new area of the park, Toy Stort Playland, where you can find lots of fun attractions like, RC Racer, Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin and Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop.
Once you exit Toy Story Playland you’ll find yourself behind the Art of Disney Animation building and walk towards the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
Now you will find yourself at the Production Courtyard, where you can find Studios 2, where they show snippets of the latest movies, Stich Live! and there used to be a Disney Junior on Stage show, most of the time you’ll find a huge stage in front of the Tower of Terror where they give seasonal shows and have events.
That’s the entire park as it is today.
Opening day attractions and additional attractions
So lets see what the Opening Day Attractions were:
- Flying Carpets Over Agrabah
- Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith
- Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic
Also stunt show Moteurs…Action! was already at the park for some live entertainment for the guests. ( This show is still going strong today!)
So even though there where a couple of attractions and a live show, there wasn’t a lot to do at the park and people didn’t really seem to care for the park, so they added a couple of attractions and lands throughout the years.
In 2007 they expanded a little called Toon Studio, a area in the Animation Courtyard. This part of the park is a cartoon like part where you could meet some Disney figures. To this day you can meet Toy Story characters or Pluto and friends. That same year they added two new attraction to the park, The very famous Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and a uniek attraction to any Disney park, Crush’s Coaster.
One year later in 2008 they added Stich Live! which is a interactive show with Stich from Lilo and Stich. In 2009 they when they celebrated the resorts 15th anniversary, they added Cars Quatre Roues Rallye.
In August 2010 a brand new piece of land opened behind called, Toy Story Playland, which was the first one in the world! This area added a couple more rides to the park like, RC Racer, Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin and Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop.
On July 10th 2014 a new uniek part was added to the park based on Paris with a dark ride called, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy. Which is now being build in Epcot due to it’s popularity.
Future
There used to be another part of the park which held a couple of pretty populair attractions like, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith and Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux, called Backlot. A piece we didn’t mention in the layout above because that entire piece of park is closed at the moment due to the build of a new Marvel themed area called Avengers Campus, with a Spiderman ride.
There is also a brand new show coming to the park debuting this Spring at the Production Courtyard. In between Studio 2 and Stich Live! where the Disney Junior on Stage show used to be. This brand new show will be called, Disney Jr. Dream Factory.
At this point Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic, is closed because they have to move the entrance of this attraction for a huge expansion of the park. But this ride will stay, but will return with a Cars twits. The ride will open in the Summer of 2020 with the new name Cars Route 66 Road Trip.
But for the most exciting thing we have to wait a little bit longer. They are currently building a huge expansion of the park right behind the Tower of Terror. This huge new piece of park will include Frozen and Star Wars themed areas, there will also be a huge lake coming to the center of the expansion.
We are really excited to see what will happen to Walt Disney’s Studios Park in the future and how the expansions and changes will work out.
Have a magical week!
