Monday, October 21, 2013

Disneyland Paris and Ratatouille Ride Update !


Here is the Disneyland Paris update of the week thanks to Max Fan, D&M contributor and Dlrp Welcome webmaster! And we start with the latest pictures of the works on the WDS Ratatouille site where works on the parisian facades are still going on.








As you can see the facades are almost finished for the ones of the show building and the restaurant but not totally on the right side where guests will find a merchandise shop and the start of the queue line.






Let's move to the Disneyland park and check these nice topiaries in Fantasia Gardens.



Halloween is still going on with bands playing and plenty of Halloween characters for meet and greet in the park...












Outside the park the new arch leading to the Parking Vinci closed to the WDS is now finished, but the marquee is still missing and will be in place probably soon.





And next to it are the Disney Village Gaumont theaters where a giant ad for Disney's Frozen is already in place even if the animated feature won't be released in france before Dec 4.


Now, don't go away yet as Christmas is in two months from now and the Disneyland Paris From Sketch to reality book with its 320 pages and 750 pictures is a perfect gift for any Disney theme parks fan!

So here are more infos about the Disneyland Paris book and i remind you that you still can pre-order the normal edition for 55€ , the best price ever! Copies of the normal edition will be available for shipping at the end of November but we still have a few copies of the collector's edition that ship instantly! Place your order now to make sure you'll get the book in time for Christmas!

You'll find below more details about the book with a full description and a video showing you the whole book! Orders can be payed with Paypal, using the Paypal Buy it now button below or by sending your Paypal payment at: neverlandeditions@gmail.com
If you don't have a Paypal account you can pay by credit card or by bank transfer, please send me an email at: neverlandeditions@gmail.com and i will let you know how to do.

You can now pay for the book directly with your credit card through Paypal EVEN if you don't have a Paypal account! All you need to do is to send me an email with your order ( at: neverlandeditions@gmail.com ) and i will ask Paypal to send you a payment request. You will receive an email from Paypal and by clicking on the link you'll be able to pay with your credit card on the Paypal website with no need to open a Paypal account if you don't have one!

Disneyland Paris From Sketch to Reality - Include shipping
Now, what are the differences between the regular edition and the collector's edition? 

The english regular edition is identical to the collector's one and both have 320 pages and 750 pictures including 250 WDI artworks. What you don't have in the new regular edition is the gold printing on the jacket and cover text, a glossy paper, the four prints of Walt Disney Studios artwork and copies don't have a "number".

What you will have in the new english "normal" edition is the same number of pages with exactly the same pictures and text, a printing on a beautiful "silk art matte" paper, AND, because we reprint we did an update in the Discoveryland chapter with new pages on the Buzz Lightyear ride and Space Mountain Mission 2. And also in the Adventureland chapter a gorgeous WDI artwork for the Indiana Jones Temple du Peril ride is now on a full double page. See below a full description of the book as well as visuals of the inside pages, click on the mosaic pictures to see them in larger scale.

Although you've probably heard about this beautiful book, many of you may have never seen a copy of it. So we've done a video presentation of the full book which will show you each of the 320 pages of the book! The book includes 750 pictures of the park, including 250 gorgeous renderings of Walt Disney Imagineering and stunning pictures of the park seen from above. The book is so big that it took us seven and a half minutes to show you the full book, and that's without stopping turning each pages! So, if you want to have a closer look at a page don't hesitate to stop the video.




Description of the book:



The book is a gorgeous "coffee table book" with 320 pages and 750 pictures - of which 500 are park and attractions photos and 250 are Walt Disney Imagineering renderings!

The size is 9 x 12 inches, all pages are in color and it's hardbound with a glossy dust jacket. The text (by Disney historian Didier Ghez), was written after more than 75 interviews he conducted with all the Imagineers who created the park. He goes into just about everything you wanted to know about this unique place that many describe as the best "Magic Kingdom" ever created by WDI.

It took five years to create the book, but it was worth all the time we spent on it, and the book looks just as good as we had hoped for at the beginning - in fact Imagineer Bruce Gordon told us that it was "probably the best book ever done on a Disney theme park". Coming from Bruce who did with David Mumford the great "Disneyland, The Nickel Tour" book, it was more than a compliment.

The first chapter about Main Street has 52 pages and introduces the reader to the "legend" of Main Street, USA. You'll learn all about the Disneyland Paris Railroad, the unique "Discovery" and "Liberty" Arcades; find out about the architecture, the restaurants (like "Walt's," a tribute to Walt Disney, but also inspired by Club 33 in Anaheim) and the shops; with dozens of photos, renderings, models, and reproduced for the first time here, all the "cities of the future" posters located in "Discovery Arcade."



The second chapter on Frontierland discusses the park's western side with extensive sections about its major attractions, "Big Thunder Mountain" and "Phantom Manor." In fact the book has the longest sections ever put together in a book on all the major attractions. The Pirates of Caribbean section in the Adventureland chapter is 26 pages, Phantom Manor has 16 pages devoted to it, as does Space Mountain, it's a small world, etc. The photo material was so great that we kept adding more pages to the book, which was supposed to have only 240 pages when we started... we ended up with 320 upon completion!



The Frontierland chapter also covers the Mark Twain, the River Rogue Keelboats, Fort Comstock, all the restaurants, the shops and Cottonwood Creek Ranch.and featuring stunning photos of Disneyland Paris from the air by Yann Arthus Bertrand, author of The Earth from Above that make spectacular "double-pages," and allow the reader to discover the park from a whole different angle.



The Adventureland chapter is even more interesting, as many elements of the land exist only in Paris - such as the Bazaar and Aladdin to Africa and the ex-"Explorer's Club." Plus there's a long section about "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril," "Adventure Isle" and "The Swiss Robinson Treehouse" and, of course, "Pirates of Caribbean" the land's major attraction and featuring its amazing Audio-Animatronics! All in all there are 56 full pages about Adventureland, and as in the previous chapters, there are dozens of photos, lots of concept art, and many shots of Imagineers at work. There's even a great bonus here, with the Marc Davis artwork for "Pirates" also included.



56 full pages are also dedicated to Fantasyland. There's an extensive look at Sleeping Beauty Castle, sections on all the dark rides (Snow White, Peter Pan and Pinocchio), as well as a look at "Alice's Curious Labyrinth," the "Mad Hatter's Tea Cups," "Storybookland," and "Casey Jr." There are even 14 pages about "it's a small world" with stunning photos of nearly all the scenes in it. Here the reader can discover a new attraction that exists only at Disneyland Paris, with a great view from above of Alice's Labyrinth.

Discoveryland also gets 52 pages of special treatment, with sections on the Visionarium, the Nautilus, Star Tours, Space Mountain, and everything you wanted to know about the other attractions in this land – Autopia and Orbitron. In fact the Nautilus chapter takes you on a visit with photos of every room of this detailed walk-through and two double page photo spreads, one which makes you feel you're inside Captain Nemo's grand salon, and the other showing you a unique view of Discoveyland featuring the Nautilus and Space Mountain in a kind of "CinemaScope" view.



When the book was released in early 2002, the Walt Disney Studios didn't exist, so you won't see them in the book. But there's still one last chapter about the hotels of the park, and Disney Village too, with the great Buffalo Bill Wild West show that entertains hundreds each evening.

And because every day in a Magic Kingdom should end with a parade and fireworks, we have the Main Street Electrical Parade that close the book, with also an Herb Ryman gorgeous painting in the very last pages!



Order the book directly from this page and proceed to the payment with Paypal by clicking on the "Buy it Now" Paypal button below! Don't forget to let us know your shipping address and to confirm your order and payment by sending us an email at: neverlandeditions@gmail.com

NEW! : You can now pay for the book directly with your credit card through Paypal EVEN if you don't have a Paypal account! All you need to do is to send me an email with your order ( at: neverlandeditions@gmail.com ) and i will ask Paypal to send you a payment request. You will receive an email from Paypal and by clicking on the link you'll be able to pay with your credit card on the Paypal website with no need to open a Paypal account if you don't have one!

Disneyland Paris From Sketch to Reality - Include shipping

Pictures: copyright Disney, Dlrp Welcome

Video: copyright Alain Littaye 2012

Saving Mr Banks Premiere at London Film Festival



It was the big day yesterday for "Saving Mr Banks" as the awaited movie in which Tom Hanks plays Walt Disney with Emma Thomson and Colin Farell had its London Premiere during the Closing Night of the 57th BFI London Film Festival at Odeon Leicester Square.

Jump to D&M Facebook page to see more pictures of the London Premiere and today's additional posts!  You can also read two of the first reviewHERE and HERE

Interesting Universal patent that could be used for the new Harry Potter Diagon Alley "Gringotts" ride


Screamscape talks about an interesting Universal patent that could be used for the new Harry Potter "Gringotts" ride. Basically, the patent is about creating "barrier configured to remain transparent after multiple blasts of a flame from a device for generating a flame wherein the flame is blasted proximal to the barrier".

Screamscape add: "The barrier would be placed about 3 feet away from a flame projection effect device on one side, and guests / viewers on the other side. Flame shoot out, hit and are blocked by the invisible barrier as if you were protected by an invisible shield. To act as a thermal barrier and prevent soot from building up from the flames the flame side of the barrier will also be coated by a liquid resin with a conductive material and charged by an electrode to keep the soot from building up."

No need to say that this invention would be perfect for an encounter with the Gringott’s dragon... More news about Diagon Alley on Screamscape HERE and you can see the full patent with more explanations and drawings HERE 

Also, don't miss my today's additional posts on the D&M Facebook page HERE!

Picture: copyright Universal Studios


Sunday, October 20, 2013

Hong Kong Disneyland 2013 Halloween Report


Hong Kong Disneyland Halloween season is running until October 31 and i have great pictures of it for you! New Halloween photo ops have been installed this year starting by this great Chernabog figure - above and below - close to Sleeping Beauty castle.




The "dark force" also expand to Toy Story Land and Grizzly Gulch, with this creepy photo op below of Toy Story's Babyface placed in Toy Story Land.


...While in grizzly Gulch guests can test their luck at Grizzly Gulch Fall Harvest Games.



But as usual it's HKDL which succeed to create the creepiest Halloween theming and this year the park introduced the "Scream no more" challenge, i.e HKDL guests must succeed to go through the different Halloween areas without screaming!





So, let's have a look at these "no screaming" areas, mostly located in Adventureland.



 Let's start our tour by the Graves Academy in which guests can find different scenes...



...The Library scene...


...The Laboratory scene...


...And the Gym room scene...


...While at "Revenge of the Headless Horseman" nearby they come face to face with" the Beeboy being trapped by Spidergirl"...


...or enter the Magician head-off scene.


Another thing pretty cool ( if i can say ) is the Sideshow Carnival Extraordinaire...


Where guests can meet at night creepy creatures on kind-of "freaks" circus trailers with three different colors.




Have a look at the video below showing guests walking through this Sideshow Carnival Extraordinaire.




In Main Street U.S.A, just like last year, the Vampire Coven and the Werewolves Tribe, two emerging forces of evil, are stirring up an intense clash to determine who will be the ultimate leader of the darkness that permeates every corner of the Park.


But it's also there that guests can enjoy the always popular HKDL Halloween parade.



Here is the video of this year's Halloween Parade.




And, last but not least, in HKDL Tomorrowland guests can enjoy another Halloween special on the Halloween stage.


Mickey and his friends welcome you for HKDL Halloween until October 31st...


..And make sure to don't miss the Halloween merchandise!


If you haven't downloaded it yet, my HKDL application with more than 200 gorgeous high-res pictures is always available on the iTunes Store - click on the picture below!



Also, don't miss my today's additional posts on the D&M Facebook page HERE!

Pictures : copyright Disney