The common thought about EuroDisneyland / Disneyland Paris since it opened is that it represents Disney’s attempt to take all they had done and learned in the other Magic Kingdoms, update it to the 90’s and perfect it to the point that it is almost like an all new creation.
European Disney fans often rave about how Pirates of the Caribbean’s storyline in Paris is presented in a chronological order, how the Phantom Manor clears up those loose bits of storyline in the Haunted Mansions around the world, how Space Mountain is revolutionary for Disney, how our Big Thunder Mountain is the best and on and on….
Probably a lot of fans would go into saying that Paris has the most details, the most intimate and unknown paths, that each land represents a theme park of it’s own, that the castle seems to come straight out of a fairy tale - but especially that Disney could have gone the easy way and copied the Tokyo park but instead gave us a new amazing park and on and on…

But ask that same question to Disney fans who have followed all the back stories of Disney, or better yet to an Imagineer! There answer would most probably be something like “EuroDisney represented the possibility to build and use all those great ideas and storylines which had never found a way inside our theme parks until then” - and that is without even talking about rides, but only about the lands and the atmosphere!

When Tony Baxter first came to Paris to lead the presentation of what Disney was going to do there, his first sentence to Eisner, Fitzpatrick (the first EDL president), Marty Sklar , Frank Wells and all the other members of the project was: “We can’t just take Tokyo Disneyland and place it next to Paris, we need to do something new”.
Tony then called a big meeting at Imagineer which practically everybody attended and asked the question: “If you could do Disneyland all over again what would you keep, change and throw away?” (just the the type of question which would flood our Imagineering Forum). All sorts of answers came in from the most out of this world blue sky ideas to more subtle ones, so Tony made a big list and saved it on a floppy disk (which he still has to this day) and then started selecting and analyzing all this stuff Imagineering had come up with during the brainstorming to end up with the potentially good ideas which would finally make it into the themepark.

Most of all Baxter knew that all the errors previously made in designing the various lands of Disneyland should not be repeated - he knew that each land in the other parks had flaws, incohesive storylines or lacked potential. Therefore he asked his fellow Imagineers to think of the lands as enclosed but connected areas, each being synergistically a part of EuroDisneyland but at the same time also being a complete story surrounding the guests 360° within itself.
In order to achieve this Imagineering retrieved many unbuilt projects to provide inspirations and storylines for each area of the park. Baxter’s team also looked back at all previous projects where they had to “cut corners” and make some sacrifices (such as the 1983 Fantasyland redo at Disneyland Anaheim). But most of all Tony and his team wanted to make a homage to all Imagineers which created Disney magic before them - from Walt Disney to Marc Davis, Claude Coats, Herbert Ryman, Harper Goff, ...
Tony Baxter, Tim Delaney, Tom Morris, Chris Tietz, Jeff Burke and Eddie Sotto (the five designers who each were in charge of one one the five lands of the park) are infact among the most well known “second generation Imagineers”, the term with which all younger Imagineers at WDI who unfortunately never had the luck of working in Walt’s time are affectionately called by. With EuroDisney there opportunity had arrived to pay tribute to their teachers, to their mentors and to the very people which had inspired them with their creations to become Imagineers themselves.

One of Marc Davis' most beautiful, yet unbuilt, ideas was the Western River Expedition. This stunning AudioAnimatronic ride was to take guests in a western scenario down a river visiting and seeing all type of western scenes - think Pirates of the Caribbean in a Cowboy versus Indians setting. This ride was to be Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom answer to Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean (which due to the proximity of Florida to the featured region was thought to be not adequate for the new Orlando theme park). The Western River Expedition was planed to open in 1974 (two years after the initial WDW opening) and, with that timing, was meant to do for WDW what Pirates did for Disneyland Anaheim: bring in flocks of guests to visit/revist WDW to visit and certainly revisit this never before seen amazing use of space age technology (of the time) in such a richly themed environment.
Most of all Marc Davis’ dream plans for Western River Expedition called for a huge show building done in the shape of a mountain range inside of which the ride would have been housed while guests could have either taken a donkey ride outside up the mountain/building to the Mesa (=“village”) on top of it or ridden a runaway mine train which would have run right all around, over and in one scene inside the Western River Expedition show building/mountain!

And what was the proposed name of the whole area? “Thunder Mesa”!
Yes that’s right my friends; the same name given to the bustling town which sets the backdrop for Disneyland Paris’ Frontierland - “Thunder Mesa”. And to add a bit of soap opera style drama to the story consider that Marc Davis’ assistant (the person in charge of developing Marc’s runaway mine train idea) was Tony Baxter. The mine train was actually supposed to be a secondary feature of the area, something people would ride maybe after the Western River Expedition - but Tony’s design work for the ride was so good that Cardon Walker (then CEO of Walt Disney Productions) ordered this newly hired boy to develop it into what we now know as the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. An amazingly detailed (and long) report about the Western River project and its story was published by Jim Hill and will hopefully go online again in the future.

You see what I’m getting to here gang? Thunder Mesa is not only a beautifully detailed bustling western town, or the perfect excuse to tie together all the various elements which form Disneyland Paris Frontierland. It is a way for all the second generation Imagineers to pay tribute to one of their most beloved predecessors, Marc Davis, and his most beloved, but never built, dream ride: Thunder Mesa’s Western River Expedition.
For sure the coherence of the Thunder Mesa town environment puts Paris' version of the wild west a notch above the other Disney versions of the same land - the story rwoven into Phantom Manor, the artist renderings of the town in the Lucky Nugget Saloon, the farmlands near the Train Depot and the Cowboy Cookout Barbecue all provide excitement and beautiful details for every guest, but devoted Disney fans, and most of all the Imagineers, know that this bustling western town known as Thunder Mesa represents a small tribute to the never built dream of the great Imagineer Marc Davis.

There are more stories like this one in every land at Disneyland Paris - due to the already explained decision of Tony Baxter to take all the abandoned plans for the earlier Magic Kingdoms and use them as some sort of inspiration for his team...

Eddie Sotto’s first idea for Main Street, U.S.A., was infact of pushing the area 20 years forwards, from the turn of the 20th century to the roaring 20’s. Those of you who have seen concept art of this Main Street concept (as detailed in the new book "Disneyland Paris - From Sketch to Reality") will certainly have noticed the art renderings of various speak easies instead of restaurants, of black suit steetmosphere actors and of an elevated trolley line. Yep, since the inspiration for this Main Street were the roaring 20’s Eddie Sotto and his team immediately saw the opportunity of revive the elevated trolley line and side arcades idea which was first pitched for Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. The Imagineers especially liked the idea of adding some sort of covered parade viewing area by opening the area underneath the trolley track to the guests. The trolley, so one of the ideas, also could have passed through some kind of tunnels on the side of the Main Street, basically some arcades which would have feature decors and renderings of the American way of life in that time period.
Eisner though wasn’t exactly excited at the idea of having European guest percieve America as a Gangster society and most of all couldn’t get himself to visualize a Disney Parade in front of such a backdrop.

Eddie Sotto therefore went back to the drawing boards - and to the WDI “morgue” where all abandoned projects are “stored” - and came up with the Victorian style Main Street as we know it today. But at least some elements of the original proposal were transferred into the new one - including the arcades running on the sides of the Main Street, which came in so handy with the less tropic weather of Paris. Still their design had to be changed and so Eddie Sotto decided to pay tribute to one of the very first expansion ideas for Disneyland Anaheim: Liberty Street and Edison Square.  These two projects were meant to form a connected expansion area near the Town Square on the right side of the Main Street, where guests would haven been able to see exhibits featuring scenes from the American history, e.g. the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell or the construction of the Statue of Liberty,  and wax figures of American presidents and inventors, such as Washington, Lincoln, Franklin, Edison and Newton.
Eddie Sotto took the very core of these old ideas and once he had decided that the American presidents would not fit into Paris (the idea had already been used in WDW’s Hall of Presidents anyway) he ended up with two of the old concepts to provide him with one theme for each arcade: the story of the construction and inauguration of the Statue of Liberty (also a not too subtle way to show the connection between France and the USA) and the way Americans envisioned their cities and live 100 years later (seen from ca. 1900) served as the themes of the Liberty Arcade and Discovery Arcade.

See gang - another tribute to a lost idea proposed nearly 20 years earlier by the Imagineers who actually taught Tony Baxter and his team how to design and build theme parks. Never mind those windows on Main Street we all know about or the “Walter Elias Disney - Contractor” mini plaques which the Imagineers placed all over this and all the other theme parks as if they where still working for Walt, here we are talking about taking some of the best ideas which were never realized and reviving them in a “silent tribute” to their creators inside EuroDisneyland. By the way, the idea of the trolly wasn't lost forever either - instead it was realized, even so Eddie Sotto already had left WDI at that point, in the "American Waterfron" area of Tokyo Disneysea.

But back to Paris - while those tributes to the Imagineers of the first generation surely were important to the creators of EuroDisneyland some Imagineers where also very keen in being featured within the lands they worked on... Eddie Sotto for example wanted to himself  “permanently inside EuroDisneyland”, so he recorded himself doing all sorts of stints - in fact credit has to go to the "audio artist" Eddie Sotto for being the dentist and the patient who you can hear in that second floor dentist office on the right side of Town Square, but also for providing the voice for the safety spiel on Big Thunder Mountain which warns you that this here’s the wildest ride in the wilderness”! Another example of Imagineers finding a place in their creations is said to be Phantom Manor: according to that of the faces projected onto the singing busts only the one of Thurl Ravenscot is one of a singer while the other faces are of various Imagineers who worked on the attraction and simply “left there souls” there. Also if you take a tour on the Boot Hill cemetery you will actually find a tombstone for “The Hole in the Wallet Gang” listing all the names of the Imagineers who worked on Frontierland (and whose extra plussing  of EuroDisneyland might have created a little hole in the Mouse's wallet).

See my friends, there is much more to Disneyland Paris then what can possibly be taken in by a guest in a first visit. After all some of us visit the theme park so often that we count in multiples of 50 but still every time there is that new little detail to discover, that new little tribute to something which makes us smile - and quiet often the first time guest we are visiting with asks “Why are you smiling?” and we reply “Oh, nothing it’s just this little thing ...”

I Hope I gave you a few more reasons (if needed) to return to the park and discover something new in it - and to add even more reasons I’ll be covering some more secrets, tributes and backstories of the other lands next time...

For now it's TTFN - tatafornow

MickeyFantasmic