Yes my friends, I promised You a three part series and after having written about the idea for a Little Mermaid ride in Paris and about the ride itself I now feel there is the need to rap the whole thing up by answering a few of the questions popping up in my mailbox (hey thanks for writing), as well as finishing up the story and possibly looking at some hints of how, when and where all these concepts for a Mermaid ride were created and then leaked out into the world of fans - and if the various rumours about possible new locations for the ride hold a bit of truth.

So let's start at the very beginning: a few of You asked why I talked about this ride (and the Beauty and the Beast show) in the first installment of the series as something which would have taken the Disney Fantasyland concept into the new millennium as well as these rides being something chalenging for the designers of Europe's Fantasyland.
Well, as You all might know or have realized each Magic Kingdom (since Disneyland opened in 1955) has a Fantasyland (well Duh-!), the land which is supposed to be the home to all the Disney Characters from the movies. But the Fantasylands in all the Magic Kingdom's of the world differ only very slightly regarding their attraction roster. So with these two rides the Imagineers for EuroDisneyland wanted to revive the original idea of the Magic Kingdom in Florida: having a completely new set of dark rides in the latest Fantasyland.

You see gang, Fantasyland dark rides where classified by moods with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being the scary, Peter Pan's Flight the beautiful and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (never built for Paris) being the crazy one. 
The original plans for WDW's Magic Kingdom called for a Sleeping Beauty ride as the scary, an Icabhood Crane and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow ride as the crazy and a Mary Poppins ride as the beautiful one. As intriguing as this idea seemed it was eventually Roy Disney Senior in 1968 that said "no give the guests the same thing as in California". All the Imagineers therefore did was updating the rides interiors and providing a more cohesive storyline (in California up until the 1983 redo passengers where meant to think they where Snow White, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad - a trick the guests never understood).

The idea of having a few different dark rides in Fantasyland had always felt like a good one to the second generation Imagineers which therefore immediately included a Pinocchio ride for the Tokyo park and for the 1983 Disneyland Fantasyland redo (designed by non other than the soon to be EuroDisney lead designer Tony Baxter), but for Paris they wanted to do more!
Therefore the little Mermaid Ride and the Beauty & the Beast show represented an update of the whole Fantasyland concept, an update for which the foundations had been laid with those ideas for Florida which were never realized there before at least some elements came up again for Tokyo and the redo 1983 in Anaheim. So the proposed Fantasyland for Paris would have been the spectacularl  highlight of this evolution in 1992 EuroDisneyland.

Which brings us straight to the second important thing to remark about this never built dark ride: "if the Imagineers, and especially the park's Art Directors (Tony Baxter up until 1994 and Tom Morris from then on) where so keen on this ride (and the Beauty and the Beast show) why was it indefinitely scrapped?"
Two major reasons folks: EuroDisneyland was in desperate need of added capacity (something which these two shows could not provide in relationship to the money invested) and dark rides and animatronic shows simply seemed not to be so well received by Europeans.

As incredible as it might seem when talking about EuroDisney the theme park itself never really had problems in attracting guests, the financial problems where stemming for them trouble they had getting the guests to spend money in everything from the food to the shopping options to the hotels. Guests where literally walking through the gates with there picnics, doing the rides and then heading back home at the end of the day without shopping.
This was a major problem for Disney since it meant that the hotels (5200 rooms on opening day that is) where relatively empty and the shops had tons of unsold stuff! EuroDisneys solution was to find a way to keep the guests for longer in the theme park by adding so much stuff that: a) nobody could possibly do everything in one day (that would solve the hotel problem) and b) add capacity so that people wouldn't stand for hours in queues and would have the time to shop and eat.

The question was: on what type of attractions could be counted to achieve these goals? The answer was a whole list of possible attractions, a new development plan. It included a whole range of walkthrough attractions (the Fort Comstock featuring The Legends of The Wild West, Le Passage Enchanté d' Aladdin, the Pirate's Beach and the Pocahontas Indian Village) and some slow but high capacity rides such as the Story Book Boats and the Casey Jr. Circus Train. The plan also called for the immediate addition of another roller coaster (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril) to diminish the average two hour waiting line the Big Thunder Mountain coaster was regularly having while preparation was continuing for the Discovery Mountain (which in 1995 opened as Space Mountain).
But why these attractions instead of all that stuff which was featured in the "future attraction concept art map" presented in 1992 and still sold years later in the park's shops? Why not Beauty and the Beast and the Little Mermaid but Space Mountain and a slightly themed coaster bought from an outside company (Indy)?

It's sad, I know, but management had to make choices and the price tag for these two attractions alone exceeded 30 million $ - and that would have added not more than a "2,000 people per hour"-capacity. And don't forget: the Indy coaster alone can handle that amount of people, costed less than 7 million $ (including themeing) and was better /easier  promotable in a TV ad campaign. With the coaster in the new attraction roster Tony Baxter and his team (now under heavy pressure from EuroDisney S.C.A.) could guarantee the theme park 16,000 more seats per hour for a total investment of 60 million $ as well as provide the park with a wider range of rides and shows.
If this wasn't enough to kill the two projects the marketing department's researches showed that shows heavily relying on AA's (such as the Visionarium and the Tiki show in the Explorer's Club restaurant) were always below the 8th position in guests satisfaction surveys topped by Big Thunder Mountain, Star Tours, Pirates of the Caribbean, Phantom Manor and others. Plus: the two Fantasyland rides had little appeal to teenagers a core group of guests which where already perceiving the theme park as too childish and were therefore avoiding it.

Oh and let's not forget that last little point: management didn't want to have to deal with another scary dark ride for kids (like the original Disneyland Snow White ride) and a giant Ursula screaming and laughing in a storm scene didn't exactly sound very "child friendly" did it?

The thrill-factor (Indy and Space Mountain) and capacity (Story Book Boats) had to be increased easily and affordable - neither the Little Mermaid ride nor the Beauty and the Beast show could possibly achieve that.
It was a sad day but Tony Baxter's dream of making EuroDisneyland the best possible Magic Kingdom by using all those beautiful but never realized concepts had to be indefinitely postponed and will most propably never be completely realized. But no good idea dies at Walt Disney Imagineering and all the Little Mermaid art was used around the Disney theme parks. The materials designed and created for the walkway leading to the façade were used in WDW's Fantasyland "Ariel's Grotto" area and the already produced mold for the Triton statue supposed for the queue area instead was used to produce two Triton fountains - one graces the WDW ex 20,000 Leagues Lagoon and the other Triton Gardens in Disneyland. Finally the AudioAnimatronic Sebastain designed for the attractions is now being used, as we saw in part two of the series, in the Spectromagic parade at WDW's Magic Kingdom.

On top of that the technology designed for the Little Mermaid ride the quiet a few concepts of the ride ended up at Tokyo Disney Seas. The dry-for-wet technology is used in the 20,000 Leagues ride and the Mermaid Lagoon façade along with many of the special effects used in the area (as the water like ceiling and the feeling of descending into the underwater kingdom) are directly imported from Tom Morris' designs for the Mermaid show building in Paris.
Which brings us full circle back to the rumours of a possible Mermaid Lagoon area at the WDS and the future of the area pinned for the Little Mermaid dark ride in the Disneyland Park here in Paris.

In late 2002 / early 2003 the Walt Disney Studios' Animation Courtyard area (specifically the space between the Flying Carpets over Agrabah and the Art of Disney Animation building) had been rumored to be the possible location of such a Mermaid Lagoon area to help the courtyard become the Studios' Fantasyland. But at the same area had also been rumoured to be pinned down for a Toon Town area or a Buzz Lightyear ride - with the Town Studios as we know by now being the concept that won in the end.
The same can be said for the area of the Disneyland Park the Little Mermaid ride had originally been designed for. Rumour has it that a copy of the Winnie the Pooh dark ride from Tokyo could land there as well as a whole Toon Town area if it is still being saved for the Magic Kingdom.

None of us here at DLP.info has a crystal ball to gaze into or can claim to surely know what the future holds for the Disneyland Resort Paris but, if what we see of late from the Walt Disney Company, the Oriental Land Company and EuroDisney S.C.A proves valuable to asses the future, it seems that there is a trend to create concepts and designs for new attractions in a way that they are flexible to be recreated without neccessarily coming up with a carbon-copy but instead coming up with a different experience in another Disney theme park (as it happened with the Winnie the Pooh ride,  the Buzz Lightyear ride, the Tower of Terror, the Flying Carpets and the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster and was supposed to happen with Armageddon in DCA). If this trend continues we might see the Little Mermaid finally arriving on the shores of the Disneyland Resort Paris.

Well gang it has been a long and bumpy ride to the end of this series therefore I wish to send a big thank you to all who helped me and to those of You who wrote in to express there pleasure with the series both via e-mail, chat and on the forum (please, keep it coming in guys).
All I can say is that for now the plans for the Little Mermaid dark ride are still alive as the ride may be a part of a future expansion phase of the Hong Kong Disneyland park set to open in September 2005 on the Penny Bay Island's shores! If the ride opens there, whenever this may be, I'll be there for a clam shell ride. Anybody wants to come along?

For now it's TTFN - tatafornow

MickeyFantasmic