Disney Adventure World: The ugly duckling becomes a swan

I’ve been writing now for a couple of months about how much the expansion at Disneyland Paris could change the park and how we perceive the second gate in Paris. Last week I was able to go in behind the construction walls and experience it - I’m pleased to say that it is mission accomplished. Stepping into Disney Adventure World feels like stepping into an entirely new theme park, it is so radically different to all that has come before it in the Walt Disney Studios Park. Where we complained the Studios looked ugly and concrete, Adventure Way is lush and green. Where we complained the buildings wrecked ugly blocks, Adventure Way goes all in on Art Nouveau. This is a new era for the second gate - and long may it last.

This weeks newsletter talks in detail about the expansion, as well as giving you links to my website to read more - and YouTube to go watch and experience it. Let’s get going.

Let’s face it, anybody who has been to the Walt Disney Studios Park knows it is an ugly theme park, it has been known as the worst Disney Park and not without reason, the aim was to create a theme park on the cheap, that prioritised the reality of a film studio as opposed to the fantasy that one has in one’s mind. Disney isn’t in the business of selling you reality, it is to sell you dreams.

A story you’re likely to hear time and time again over the next few week’s as we discuss the second gate in Paris is how Michael Eisner took board representatives around the park on the eve of opening in 2002. At one point a board member stopped him and said something to the effect of “this is great Michael, but where’s the theme park” - Eisner had to tell him that he was stood in it and so began the downfall of the Eisner era at the head of The Walt Disney Company.

A lot of these issues still exist in the park, although they have been greatly improved over the years. That is to say that when you transition from old into new, you feel the difference. It is like transitioning from a concrete jungle into the lush greens of Adventureland, it’s pretty stark, but fixable. What they promised is for the park to over double in size - from doing a lap of the expansion that is a massive tick. It’s hard to overestimate how large this is. They’ve completely opened up the park and all the possibilities it can hold. We know there is a Lion King land opening - in fact they’re currently deep in the construction phase of that project - and we have been heavily hinted that an Avatar expansion is also on the way. But it does feel like they could keep going if they so wished. The lake is the new “hub and spoke” for the park and around it is plenty of seating, lush greenery and ample positions to watch the nighttime spectacular on the lake - this is an expansion that has been designed with a nighttime show in mind, and it really shows, there are no bad positions to watch from.

But it’s that feeling you get in the land, this is dream-like, it’s whimsical. Everything from the art direction to the music is radically different, it sets a manifesto for the future direction of the park. It also has to set the manifesto for the what the older areas of the park need to become, the facade work on the two theatres and Crush’s Coaster will not be enough to satisfy what they have built. Investment needs to go into World Premiere Plaza to bring it up to the same quality.

I invite you to read my review of Adventure Way on DLP Town Square, but also to take a watch of the land walkthroughs at day and by night on YouTube.

The expansion of Disney Adventure World also sees a brand new nighttime spectacular launching in the second park. Here is the cool thing here, it’s a very tiered viewing area and so it feels like you’ll get a pretty good view quite easily - you might miss out some of the effects on the water-level but these are quite minimal. The show has a very cool 15 minute pre-show area music that is very reminiscent of something out of Fantasmic! in Disney’s Hollywood Studios or from EPCOT. The only thing is, this high energy music does not quite match the show which clearly attempts to play on your emotions rather than being a high energy dance party type of show.

For me, the show has impressive drones and effects, but lacks the emotion. But the drones make it unmissable.

Again, I’ve got a full YouTube video of the show, with a review to follow:

The highlight of the expansion is the World of Frozen land - at least it’s the highlight if you read the marketing material, for me the clear highlight is Adventure Way. This land brings Arendelle to life and features two boutiques, a restaurant, a show, and the Frozen Ever After attraction.

Here’s the thing, this land is going to be mega-popular, and it is located at the very top of the lake - meaning you’re walking for something like 10 minutes to get to it. Then, when you’re there, there is one big thing to do and not everybody is going to be able to do it. In fact, Disney are already sending out emails to guest to pre-warn them of the queuing situation and that entry into the park does not necessarily mean you’ll get to enjoy the World of Frozen. This land really required another attraction at the very least, it probably could also do with a slightly larger surface area. It’s pretty much a Frozen corridor at the moment. The good news, it’s a good version of Frozen Ever After and the attraction looks great - we have to hope that the reliability issues that seem to be plaguing the previews are resolved before next week.

Again, a full review will appear on the website shortly, but for now enjoy the walkthrough POV I uploaded to YouTube:

I’ll have much more to say about Disney Adventure World over the coming weeks and months. If you happen to be experiencing it soon, have fun and enjoy it.

Wednesday, March 18th was a big day for The Walt Disney Company. Bob Iger finally retired (again) and Josh D’Amaro took over as CEO. His first task was to deliver the Annual Meeting of Shareholders which included a really nice Disney sizzle reel, tribute to Bob Iger and a message from Josh. The core takeaway seems to be that Disney will be operating as “One Disney” as he calls it. That means that everything you experience within the company will be interconnected. That feels important as Disney Experiences, for example, have always seemed to struggle to keep up with new releases outside of merchandising. We’ll have to see how this works out, feels like it could take quite some time to bed in and so we’ll have to be patient.

Also notable was his comments on Disney’s use of AI. Josh noted that human creativity needs to remain at the core of Disney, and that AI should only be leveraged to aid humans not replace them. In a world where Bob Iger has invested a healthy sum of money into OpenAI’s Sora and envisaged integrating AI-generated user content into Disney+, it will be curious to see how D’Amaro navigates this.

The era opens optimistically, Josh is a confident speaker, personable and very likeable. Many parks fans really hope that he succeeds in the role. I’m right there with them.

🛳️ Disney Cruise Line named their 9th ship this week, the Disney Believe will make its maiden voyage in 2027. Itineraries and destinations are not yet known.

📚 Disneyland Paris have announced a new 450 page book entitled “Adventure has a new name”. This book charts the story of the Walt Disney Studios park’s transformation into Disney Adventure World. It goes on sale in April (precise date TBC) in stores across the resort.

🎮 Fortnite announced the inclusion of Star Wars themed user-created experiences. Creators can use a wide range of Star Wars assets in their projects to create fully-fledged experiences in the game. Players will be able to play these experiences from May 1st 2026. Don’t forget that a large Disney integration into Fortnite is coming later this year and so this is very much something to watch to get a flavour of what to expect.

That’s all for this week, follow me on twitter (X), Instagram, Threads, or Facebook for more and please do subscribe if you like what you see - or drop a comment and let’s chat!