Disneyland Paris Secrets You May Not Know About

Every Disney theme park has a fair amount of mystery. Disneyland Paris is no exception. It’s built on history and it’s bursting with inspiration.

Yet that powerful imaginative force does more than just break the moulds that came before it. It reinforces the philosophy that Disneyland Paris began with.

Not surprisingly, Disneyland Park has nearly as many historical architectural and sensational details.

So many disciplines hard at work to create a tangible reality out of the stuff of dreams.

There are layers of stimuli to uncover. Here are some fun Disneyland Paris secrets and facts you may not know, but they are guaranteed to make you start looking closer at your surroundings when you visit.

Disneyland Paris Secrets To Discover

Secret Sounds

As you go around the park you are going to experience a blend of sensations. At times they are difficult to distinguish.

On the surface, they all sort of meld together into what you experience as ‘immersion’ The artificial reality Disney goes out of its way to construct, includes more than just the proprietary paint and realistic rock formations made from plaster and cement. One contributor to the magic is background sounds.

The air is filled at any given time with audio that blends so naturally into every scene that it’s something imperceptible.

Music is something you expect as you stroll around the many lands, but layers of theatrics are provided by the sounds you will hear emanating from Main Street apartments and even a tombstone at Phantom Manor.

There are also phones on Main Street that you can pick up to discover another conversation on the party line.

This is one added touch I always am sure to take time to appreciate because it’s so unnecessary, but it gives the illusion that little extra push that it needs to drive home the concept that you are in an early 20th century midwestern American town.

Sneak into Frontierland

This is a little-known path that is good to be aware of rain or shine. If you take the covered arcade up the left side of Main Street there is a left turn at the end.

Instead of going up the middle of the street toward the castle, Stay on the left side of Town Square and enter the long gallery that takes you the back way toward Frontierland.

It’s a great way to beat crowds if you are in a rush to get to Big Thunder Mountain. You can take that corridor straight into Frontierland without leaving shelter.

That makes it useful in the rain as well. It’s also a neat place to stop and admire some displays most people don’t know about. It’s a little bit like a museum.

There is another arcade on the other side as well. This one leads to Discoveryland. This arcade has the same benefits as the one that leads to Frontierland, but it is less useful as a shortcut, because more guests are inclined to use it being that it is on the right side and not the left.

Perhaps the Discoveryland attractions are more popular as well. Either way, You can get the drop on Frontierland first with this shortcut. Discoveryland looks best in the evening anyway and there are fewer people there after dark.

Explore the Castle

Sleeping Beauty Castle is full of enchantment. You can explore the castle for yourself and take in views of Fantasyland from a unique perspective.

There are gorgeous tapestries to behold and even a pair of snoozing knights, an homage to the night the three fairies made the whole kingdom sleep until Aurora’s spell was broken.

Another secret lurks in the caverns below the Castle. If you dare enter, you may come face to face with a 70 foot animatronic dragon.

The 27-meter-long animatronic itself is no secret, but you may not realize that this imprisoned dragon was not the original plan.

Imagineer Terri Hardin first planned to have the dragon fenced in by the slain dragon skeleton of Maleficent. Some think this dragon is supposed to be maleficent, but the official backstory is that it was Merlin’s own dragon that he had since it was an egg.

The Victorian Sci Fi Trilogy

Discoveryland is often thought of as a Jules Verne inspired Tomorrowland. There is some partial truth to this, but it is only half the story.

Walt Disney had a natural connection to Jules Verne with the production 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Space Mountain lent itself nicely to a thrilling adaptation of From the Earth to the Moon.

Which was its original iteration before Star Wars took over. At one point in time there was even supposed to be a Journey to the Center of the Earth drop ride!

There is one more Victorian reference in the area but it isn’t from Jules Verne. The Hyperion Cafe is a nod to the airship from a 1970’s Disney film The Island at the Top of the World.

In addition to these victorian era inspired designs there is a whole history told through the architecture of Discoveryland.

The sci-fi inspiration that subsidizes the Victorian-era tribute consists of references to the Renaissance and the more recent Raygun Gothic aesthetic which you can see in the architectural details surrounding the Autopia.

Slick Spires

Sleeping Beauty Castle in Paris is a major deviation from the four Disney castled that came before. It’s well documented that Disney struggled to create an attraction worthy of a land with so many real castles nearby.

So, they took a more fantasy inclined approach to their new castle and the surrounding landscape.

The result is a splendid mix of real world inspiration and fantasy that seems to leap straight off of the fairytale page. Although this is an incredible achievement, the true attention to detail pays a strange homage to a popular French dish.

The golden spires that top the castle were intricately formed. Much more intricately than necessary considering their size and distance. Virtually any casting would do, but Disney took the French inspiration one step further.

The knobs you see the spires lined with are actually in the form of snails on closer inspection! Though the connection of snails to France is fairly clear, it still begs the question: WHY?! Apparently, sometimes the only answer is: “Because we can!”

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