Here’s a spring update from Disneyland Paris brought to us by Alain Littaye of the Disney and more blog. Alain tells the story of how the Big Thunder Mountain trains almost lost their locomotives during the recent refurbishment and shows us so lovely photos of the park. ~~Rick

Here’s an up-to-date look at the Magic Kingdom at Disneyland Paris. Our thanks to Max Fan, D&M contributor and Dlrp Welcome webmaster for the photos.

As we can see in these photos, although the day was a bit cloudy, spring flowers have finally arrived at DLP!

ob_7c37ce991b9e07cee6761c40bcace4a2_p1210619

ob_4c1aa4e470676df61945e0b982e24a7a_p1210623

ob_d5ec184662e89bbfb13228bacd1c8268_p1210626

Let’s go down Main Street towards Discoveryland…

ob_11463550dbb904dd774e3ab181aee9c3_p1210631

…where the rocks at the entrance are in need of some tender loving care.

ob_3be911476d1654603f61f173d5f6889c_p1210659

For now, they are just hidden by a wall of plants.

ob_6e0b6ada0f6ba5ac3e0b1216f3ba28a8_p1210660

These three locations at the back of Discoveryland won’t look the same in two or three years when the expected Star Wars Land is built…once the park finds money, of course!

ob_636cc9985f29e0e5b885f5f43e07cac6_p1210667

The Captain EO Theater will eventually be transformed…to a Jedi Academy, perhaps?

ob_35aaa207efdc5fbe086883df12335b87_p1210664

Pizza Planet will eventually disappear and the famous Star Wars Cantina restaurant will likely take its place.

ob_101b56a405c63203bec68aba3840eabc_p1210665

Moving on to Fantasyland, after several months with both Casey Jr. trains missing their last wagon, only one train is now caboose-less.

Before:

ob_717d3e0dfbc69eeb0ab97661a88b2147_p1200810-jpg

After:

ob_7de629bd820f8022be0c449b62ddb7ea_p1210638

In Adventureland, Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Outpost is currently closed for refurbishment.

ob_371d14b97e6951193bd976861a3a59c5_p1210647

ob_1e9208c9947c43e06e8ae929e0e9747d_p1210648

Right in front of it, though, work is almost finished on the “cool post” and ATM location.

ob_db9c35f8df5fc80fbfceb042736dd0d7_p1210649

In Frontierland, Big Thunder Mountain was scheduled to reopen on June 14th with the new disabled guest entrance. That is the good news. However, there might be some bad news: a very strong rumor has been circulating that the locomotives currently at the front of each train will be removed and replaced with a single wagon. This would be similar to the Hong Kong Disneyland Grizzly Mountain, where the trains don’t have front locomotives. As it turns out, the rumor was true at some point. They actually considered doing this, but the idea was nixed and the trains will keep their locomotives!

Why would they even consider inflicting this sacrilegious change on the Big Thunder Mountain theme? The first thing that comes to mind is that having a new wagon would add six more people to each train and increase the ride capacity. But, DLP was not considering this move to increase rider capacity. Instead, they wanted to keep overall capacity of the attraction the same, but achieve it with fewer trains running. There were so many breakdowns caused by slow loading and unloading that they wanted to increase the distance between trains. In this case, there would be a maximum of four trains on the track instead of five. Right now they are studying other ways to increase each train’s capacity while retaining the engine at the front. We’ll see if they can figure out a way to make this happen.

ob_dd40b1943147d03f10707f5539b7a39b_p1210650

ob_87875f1293b08984d7b5d50a2c9e8964_p1210656

ob_e6d3342b6f9966471d8bbe0838e1cff4_p1210657

And that’s all for today from Disneyland Paris!

We’ve been out of our Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality books for several months. But we have some good news for you. A small final shipment of English Edition copies will soon be available. You could wait until they go on sale in the MiceChat Store in the next week or two, OR you can contact [email protected] now to reserve your copy. They will likely sell out very quickly, so get your name on the list.

Sharing is caring!

Rick Wright
Rick has been a long term MiceChat author and co-founder of the Weekend Update. You will often find Rick in the position of "Greeter" at official events due to his warm and welcoming spirit. If you've got photos, news or trip reports to share, Rick would love to hear from you: [email protected]