Two Parks To Choose From

The Paris Disney collection of theme parks is made up of 3 sections, Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney Studios Park, and Disney Village.  Disney Village isn't really a theme park as much as a shopping location with all kinds of themed restaurants and shops.  Disney Village is also the central point that all of the Disney hotels in the area surround.  While the Disney Village is an official Disney attraction, it is far from being a theme park, and doesn't even require any kind of ticket to go.  Today I'm going to focus on the two theme parks from Paris Disney, Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios Park.

Both of these parks take their cues from other Disney parks in other parts of the world.  Disneyland Paris, much like it's name, is a French version of Disneyland in California.  Much like all of the Disneyland/Magic Kingdom parks around the world, the park is designed in a spoke system with the castle (Sleeping Beauties Castle) in the centre.  Around this castle there are 5 different themed lands, Main Street USA, Frontier Land, Adventure Land, Fantasy Land, and Discovery Land.  Each one of these "lands" also take their cue from other Disney parks, however many of these have twists, as well as attractions only available at this one location.

This park is said to be the crown jewel of this whole resort complex, many say that this is visually the most beautiful of all Disney parks.  I'm really looking forward to checking out all of this eye candy, but that's not all.  There are several attractions here that are only available at this one location, such as Alice's Curious Labyrinth and La Taniere Du Dragon. There are also many rides that are in Disneyland (that I've never visited), but not in Disney World, that I'm really excited to see.  Finally, there are many rides that are in Disneyland Paris that are in the other parks as well, however many have a slightly different twist that I'm excited to explore.

Walt Disney Studios Park is the black sheep of the Disney parks world.  I have yet to read a great review of this park on any Disney fan blog.  Most say that there's not much to do, and that the theming is really mixed up.  I've checked out photos and maps of this park, and while it doesn't seem to have the pizzazz that many other Disney parks has, it still looks like a lot of fun.  I have a feeling that many Disney bloggers dislike this park because they have something in mind when they think of a Disney studios theme park.  I however have only been to the Disney Hollywood Studios park once before, and that was well over 10 years ago.  I really have nothing in particular to reference it to, and I'm really looking forward to a few of the attractions.

While I'm not a big fan of most "shows" at Disney parks, I still plan on checking a few of them out at WDSP. In particular the Animagique and Cinemagique shows look pretty cool.  I'm also really looking forward to the Pixar related areas of the park.  There's a section of the park dedicated to Toy Story were you're shrunk down to the size of a toy in Andy's backyard.  There's also a section of the park dedicated to Ratatouille that looks pretty cool too.  This park also has one of my favourite Disney rides of all, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror; I'm certainly going to ride that a few times.

Our plan at this time is to spend at least one day in each park; with a third day to visit anything we've missed or want to do again.  Fortunately the parks are very close to each other, so on the third day we can park hop between the two.  I have different expectations from each park, but both look like they're going to be a lot of fun.