Adventure Isle

Adventure Isle
Park	Disneyland Park (Paris)
Land / area	Adventureland
Type	Walk-through exploration area
Opened	April 12, 1992
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Status	Operating

Adventure Isle is a walk-through exploration area in Adventureland at Disneyland Park (Paris) in Disneyland Paris, France. It is an artificial island at the centre of the land, made up of two smaller islets joined by bridges and filled with caves, waterfalls and lookouts that guests explore on foot and at their own pace. It opened with the park on April 12, 1992. It is not related to Adventure Isle at Shanghai Disneyland, which is an entire themed land — that park's counterpart to Adventureland — rather than a single attraction.

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History

Adventure Isle grew out of a layout problem. In the earlier castle parks, the island in the middle of Frontierland's river belonged to Tom Sawyer Island, but at Paris the centrepiece of Frontierland was already spoken for: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was placed on an island in the Rivers of the Far West. The Imagineers therefore moved the island idea into Adventureland and rebuilt it around pirates and castaways instead of the American frontier, giving the land a walk-through centrepiece of its own. The result has no direct equivalent at the other Disney parks: where Tom Sawyer Island is one island reached by raft, Adventure Isle is two permanent islets that guests reach by bridge and can wander without boarding anything.

To make Spyglass Hill, the rocky mountain at the heart of the southern islet, read as real stone, the Imagineers bought actual rocks found in storehouses around France and built them into the landscape. The attraction has operated continuously since opening day, and Disneyland Paris still lists it among the park's attractions as a family walk with no height restriction, as of November 2026.

Experience

The northern islet is the quieter of the two and is themed to the Swiss Family Robinson. It is home to La Cabane des Robinson, the treehouse the shipwrecked family built for itself, and beneath the tree guests can pick their way through Le Ventre de la Terre — "the Earth's Belly" — a warren of dark, root-hung caves that the family uses, in the story, as its cellar and store. Nearby, in the stretch of water the signage calls La Mer des Bretteurs, lies the wreck of the ship that brought the family to the island. Signage on this side of Adventure Isle is mainly in French.

Four crossings link the two islets, among them an elevated wooden bridge and a floating bridge that shifts underfoot. The southern islet is rockier and unmistakably piratical, and its signage switches mainly to English. Its landmarks are Skull Rock, the skull-shaped rock formation drawn from Disney's 1953 film Peter Pan, and Captain Hook's pirate galleon moored beside it, where Hook and Mr. Smee have traditionally appeared to meet guests. Below the ship is La Plage des Pirates, a small pirate-themed play beach for children.

Most of the southern islet is taken up by Spyglass Hill, a maze of caves and passages that takes its name and its treasure-hunting mood from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. One cavern is Ben Gunn's Cave, after the marooned pirate of the novel, and a hidden treasure waits somewhere inside the hill. A small stream called Frenchman's Creek, named for Daphne du Maurier's novel, completes the literary geography. Because there is no vehicle, no showtime and usually no queue, a visit lasts as long as the exploring does — typically between ten minutes for a quick crossing and half an hour for a thorough search of the caves.

See also

• Disneyland Park (Paris)
• Disneyland Paris
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril
• List of Disneyland Park (Paris) attractions