After taking a shuttle motor coach direct from CDG airport, I checked into the Hotel Santa Fe. There are several hotels on property or near the Disneyland Paris Resort.
The Hotel New York reflects a Manhattan theme, although more modern and abstract than Las Vegas’ New York, New York simulacrum.
The Sequoia Lodge suggests Frank Lloyd Wright crossed with the famed National Parks lodges built by FDR’s Public Works Administration.
The Newport Bay Club is pure, concentrated New England old money.
The Hotel Cheyenne is a Ghost Town replica in the vein of Tombstone, Arizona—albeit far more kitschy and Hollywoodized.
Lastly my residence—the Hotel Santa Fe—is a sort of a postmodern remix of Southwestern style, with a good dose of motel-chic thrown in. What I’ve found interesting is that the amount and extent of the theming is directly tied to the accommodation’s sticker price. The more upscale the hotel, the more subtle (and modern/abstract) the design approach. I can only afford to stay in ‘kitcheville,’ where the Hotels Cheyenne and Santa Fe sit across from one another, separated by the ‘Rio Grande’ river.
My first impression upon entering the Disneyland park, despite my extreme fatigue and jetlag, was awe. The level of detail and craftsmanship is unparalleled, even for Disney. It’s a well-known fact that the Disneyland Paris Resort failed to post profits and struggled its first few years—what’s rarely mentioned is that this was due less to lack of demand (families from all over Europe adore the place) and more a result of the outrageous sums Disney Imagineering spent concepting, designing, and constructing it.
The park is massive compared to what we have stateside, even larger than the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World (which is itself significantly larger than the original Disneyland in Anaheim).
This can be seen a couple of ways. On the one hand, the sense of intimacy that makes Disneyland a special place for so many is lost somewhat. This is a complaint often leveled at Orlando’s Magic Kingdom—the castle is so tall, Main Street is so large. Yet viewed another way, here in Paris the use of scope and land area serves to strengthen specific themes.
Frontierland is by far the largest area of the park, and with good reason—the French (and the rest of Europe, for that matter) might have quibbles with us in recent times, but they absolutely love our American western heritage.
The closing of the frontier, cowboys and Indians, gold rushes and ghost towns—all these are appreciated largely due to the influence of cinema. The shoot-em-up films of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, the epics of John Ford, the spaghetti tradition of Serge Leone—all are as popular as ever.
In making Frontierland this large, Disney acknowledges the theme’s popularity, yet the size serves the theme itself—perfectly. The original Frontierland in Anaheim is intimate, to be sure, but overly so. What made the original West so compelling was its vastness. The idea of a wilderness ‘untamed and untapped’ (except for a ‘few’ pesky Indians, of course), the challenge of settling it, the pleasure in moving about it, the glory of so much space between fellow humans.
In analyzing thematic design, I’ve often looked at the use of scale; forced perspective and other tricks of the film trade heavily influence how these spaces are built. Yet scope is just as important as scale, and in giving Frontierland room to breathe, it becomes many powers more real. The endless trails, dead spaces, and the pacing with which sites and landmarks are spaced give a true taste of the openness of the American West.