Les Voyages de Pinocchio
| Les Voyages de Pinocchio | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park (Paris) |
| Land / area | Fantasyland |
| Type | Dark ride |
| Opened | April 12, 1992 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | None |
| Status | Operating |
Les Voyages de Pinocchio is a dark ride in Fantasyland at Disneyland Park (Paris) at Disneyland Paris. It retells Disney's 1940 animated film Pinocchio in a ride-through sequence of scenes, following the wooden puppet from Stromboli's puppet show to Pleasure Island and the belly of Monstro the whale, and finally home to Geppetto's workshop. It opened with the park on April 12, 1992, as the Paris version of Pinocchio's Daring Journey.[1]
History
Pinocchio's Daring Journey was a late addition to the classic Fantasyland dark-ride line-up. A Pinocchio ride had been considered for an unbuilt Dumbo's Circus Land at Disneyland in California, and the attraction was eventually built instead as part of the 1983 rebuilding of Fantasyland there, replacing the Fantasyland Theater. A copy opened at Tokyo Disneyland in the same year, a few weeks before the California original.
Paris therefore inherited a ride that was already a proven, if comparatively recent, design when its own Fantasyland was planned, and Les Voyages de Pinocchio was one of the park's opening-day attractions, standing next to its older neighbour Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains. The two rides make a pair: both are traditional scenic dark rides through a single animated film, built side by side in Fantasyland's Italian-styled quarter.
The Paris version is not an exact copy inside. Although it shares the same building footprint as its cousins, French building regulations required thicker concrete walls, so the interior space is slightly smaller and the ride runs a little shorter. Paris also uses a different ride system feel: its six-seat vehicles appear to swerve as they round corners, as if hurrying through the story. The attraction has otherwise kept its opening-day form, maintained through periodic refurbishments rather than rethemed.[2]
Experience
Guests board vehicles seating six, in two rows, and set off through twelve scenes. The story is told in the film's order and without narration, through sets, figures and music. It begins with Pinocchio performing in Stromboli's puppet show, singing with the other marionettes, and then moves to his capture and escape, helped by the Blue Fairy — who vanishes in a Pepper's Ghost effect, leaving only a scatter of fibre-optic fairy dust.
The middle of the ride is the cautionary part of the tale. On Pleasure Island the colours turn lurid, boys run wild among fairground booths, and Lampwick's transformation into a donkey is shown with the holographic mirror effect first developed for this attraction family: the boys hold mirrors to their faces and turn to reveal donkey heads. The tone darkens further with the coachman and the escape, before the ride reaches the sea, Monstro the whale, and Pinocchio's rescue of Geppetto.
It ends, as the film does, back in Geppetto's workshop, with the workshop's clocks and toys in motion and Pinocchio restored and rewarded. The whole ride lasts under three minutes in published timings — around 2 minutes 50 seconds — but packs the film's complete arc into that time, which is why its scenes can feel brisk. DLP Guide warns that some of the darker scenes may frighten very young children, though they pass quickly and the overall tone is playful.[3]
See also
- Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains
- Peter Pan's Flight
- Disneyland Park (Paris)
- Disneyland Paris
- Pinocchio's Daring Journey