If you’re a Disney Parks fan who “grew up” at either Walt Disney World or Disneyland Resort, you’re probably really familiar with the versions of Disney classics like Big Thunder Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean at your “home resort”. It can be quite a brain drain to travel to the other resort. For example, if you’ve ridden Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion all your life and then you travel to Disneyland for the first time, you’d probably be speechless about Californian version! They’re so alike, but so different!
But what about traveling outside of the U.S.? Below, we’ve collected seven classic Disney attractions that look VERY different on the other side of the ocean. Some of our favorite rides take on entirely new identities in the Disney resorts of Paris and Tokyo. It’s enough to make a first-time visitor think they’ve stumbled on some sort of evil twin! Which of the unique takes on Disney classics would you be most excited to try out?
1. Pirates of the Caribbean
© Disney
Location: Disneyland Paris
Video: YouTube
Four “copies” of Disneyland’s original Pirates of the Caribbean are spread across the world: in Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo, and Paris. But the French version of the ride is far and away the most unique. Put simply, Disneyland Paris’ version of the ride is more or less backwards compared to the story most of us know.
The ride begins by drifting past a jungle-outpost restaurant called Blue Lagoon (equivalent to Disneyland’s Blue Bayou) before an old cargo lift draws the boat up to the top of a ruined fort city that’s on fire. There, a group of jailed pirates are trying to lure a dog to bring them the keys. Yep, if you’re used to the American versions, you’d be preparing to disembark. In Paris, you’re just getting started.
Image: Disney
The boat falls through a hole in the fort formed by a rogue cannon ball and slides down its first drop, into the lagoon outside the city where the Wicked Wench pirate ship is blasting the fort’s walls. The boats then pass through the village scenes from the original, enter an ammunitions room where an explosion leads to the ride’s second drop into the haunting waterfall grottos that are the ride’s opening scene elsewhere. The infamous skull-and-crossbones who warns that “Dead men tell no tales” in the U.S. gives a safety spiel on how to exit the boat…! The “flow” of the ride that feels second nature to American Disney fans is so changed in Paris, you might be genuinely surprised by each twist and turn!
2. Discoveryland
Image: DLPWelcome via micechat.com
Location: Disneyland Paris
AKA in the USA: Tomorrowland
Between Disneyland and Magic Kingdom alone, Tomorrowland has had quite a few identities over its lifetime. Even so, a prominent image remains at its heart: a Space Age, optimistic, technological future of white and silver, marked by swirling rockets, sleek, aerodynamic Googie architecture, and mid-century modern styles and ideals rooted in the Space Race…
… All images that would have zero resonance with Europeans.
That’s why designers in charge of the Parisian park went back to square one, working to sever the inherent Americana from Disneyland. One radical change? Tomorrowland was eliminated completely. In its place stands Discoveryland – an organic, glowing, golden seaside port that’s more fantasy than science fiction. Discoveryland turns back the clock and represents a future as it might’ve been envisioned by great European fantasy writers like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, or Leonardo da Vinci; a future of zephyrs, bubbling lagoon, astrolabes, submarines, and lighthouses.
Image: Jack Spence
Discoveryland not only gave Disneyland Paris a sensational, conceptually brilliant new kind of Tomorrowland; it also proved something massively important to Disney executives: that they could indeed solve the “Tomorrowland Problem” that continuously left the land looking dated by failing to keep up with the real future. By its very nature, Discoveryland had no interest in actually predicting the future; it was about a literary, retro-futuristic view from the past – an important new direction that would create Magic Kingdom’s sci-fi alien spaceport Tomorrowland in 1994 and its Lost Legends: Alien Encounter and The Timekeeper.
Though Magic Kingdom’s “timeless” New Tomorrowland would squeak through, the disastrous financial opening of Disneyland Paris caused then-CEO Michael Eisner to squash any other big-budget projects happening in Disney Parks. As such, when Disneyland recieved its own New Tomorrowland in 1998, it wasn’t the ambitious Possibilityland: Tomorrowland 2055 that was once imagined… Instead, elements of Discoveryland (primarily, its brown and gold colors and its grounded Astro Orbitor) were cobbled together in California with the Declassified Disaster: Rocket Rods as the only noteworthy new addition… Needless to say, that dreaded New Tomorrowland ’98 crashed and burned and has mostly been undone.
3. Tower of Terror
Image: Disney
Location: Tokyo DisneySea
AKA in the USA: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
Video: YouTube
Forget everything you know about Hollywood 1939, a beacon for the showbusiness elite, five people stepping through the door of an elevator and into a nightmare, and a rogue lightning bolt striking the Hollywood Tower Hotel… Sure, that tried-and-true trip through a living episode of The Twilight Zone has delighted guests in Orlando and Paris (and formerly California, by way of the Lost Legend: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror version) for years, it’s not quite the same elsewhere.
Image: Disney
Even though you may know the story of Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone all too well, Japanese Disney guests didn’t. So instead, Imagineers turned to their own storytelling skills and S.E.A.: The Society of Explorers and Adventurers – the cross-continental continuity Imagineers created to connect multiple rides and attractions across the globe. Turns out one globetrotting member of S.E.A. traveled the world stealing priceless treasures and hoarding them in his New York City hotel… a hobby that turned deadly when one particular cursed artifact decided to put an end to the millionaire en route to his penthouse…
Naturally, we couldn’t resist taking our own tour of the shuttered Hightower Hotel – closed since that fateful New Year’s Eve 1899 accident – in its own full-blown, in-depth feature: Modern Marvels: Tower of Terror – a must-read for Imagineering fans.
4. Phantom Manor
Image: Disney
Location: Disneyland Paris
AKA in the USA: Haunted Mansion
Video: YouTube
When the Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland in 1969, it stunned audiences with its otherworldly special effects – both groundbreaking and time-tested – hidden within the walls of a stately white plantation house in the park’s New Orleans Square. Years later, Magic Kingdom in Orlando got its own version, there placed in a red-brick New England mansion in the park’s Liberty Square. Tokyo’s mansion resembles Florida’s, but is located in Fantasyland – a response to Japanese culture’s understanding of ghosts.
When the time came for Disneyland Paris to get its own spooky haunted house attraction, it got the same treatment as the rest of the French park: a romanticized, story-driven, European and detail-filled twist. Here called Phantom Manor, the ride is located in Frontierland and tied to the story of the land as a whole: the miserly Mr. Ravenswood – founder and president of the Big Thunder Mining Company – who built an elegant frontier manor on Boot Hill overlooking the land’s red peaks, misty geysers, and the town of Thunder Mesa.
Image: Disney
While it features many of the Haunted Mansion classics (a séance, a dinner party, and a graveyard), Phantom Manor is a dark ride that explicitly tells the story of Mr. Ravenswood’s daughter, Melanie, who is forever cursed to await the return of her groom, murdered by a mysterious phantom on her wedding day. The ride also includes a whole new finale including a trip through the earthquake-destroyed village of Boot Hill.
With additional scenes, new music, and a full story, Phantom Manor may even best the original Haunted Mansion, which is why it, too, earned its own in-depth Modern Marvel: Phantom Manor feature.
5. Pooh’s Hunny Hunt
Image: Disney
Location: Tokyo Disneyland
AKA in the USA: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Video: YouTube
If you’ve ridden The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh dark ride at either Magic Kingdom, Disneyland Park, or Hong Kong Disneyland, you’ve see the lovable Pooh Bear’s stories brought to life as a classic dark ride in the style of Fantasyland’s originals. As your cart proceeds through black light scenes, you see Pooh nearly get blown away on a very blustery day, celebrate his birthday, and fall into a nightmare of Heffalumps and Woozles.
Image: Disney
When it came time to import Pooh to Tokyo, Disney Imagineers had a brilliant idea. Instead of a typical dark ride, Disney utilized a much newer ride system. In Tokyo, you step into oversized “hunny” pots that do not ride on a track! Four hunny pots at a time proceed into a full audio-animatronics dark ride. With no track, the four pots line up, separate, travel down separate paths, dance around each other, and come within inches of colliding as they spin and frolic – the same mind-blowing technology behind the Modern Marvels: Mystic Manor and Ratatouille: L’Aventure in Hong Kong and France, respectively.
Pooh’s Hunny Hunt isn’t a simple, classic dark ride like its American cousins – it’s a major E-ticket using a cutting edge technology, and it’s easily one of the park’s most mindblowing draws.
6. Big Thunder Mountain
Image: Disney
Location: Disneyland Paris
AKA in the USA: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Video: YouTube
In the shadow of Phantom Manor is Mr. Ravenswood’s literal gold mine, Big Thunder Mountain. A re-organized park layout in Paris also gives Big Thunder Mountain a unique placement, essentially replacing Tom Sawyer Island. That means that the entire coaster is located on an island surrounded in water, as the park’s giant sailboats grace the waters around it.
The ride itself is also unique, with a layout that deviates from the cloned versions in Tokyo, Orlando, or Anaheim. It includes a washed out trestle, rusty aged trains (to match the time period of Phantom Manor and the rest of the land), and unique animal encounters along the route. The highlight of the ride, according to many, is the last drop, which unexpectedly plunges down into a mine for the return trip under the Rivers of the Far West and back to the station.
7. Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune
Image: Disney
Location: Disneyland Paris
AKA in the USA: Space Mountain
Video: YouTube
Remember Paris’ Discoveryland, based on the retro-futuristic ideals of great European thinkers? A stark, white, Googie-styled Space Mountain wouldn’t do in a golden, organic version of Tomorrowland. So Space Mountain in Paris looks quite a bit different. When it opened in 1995, the ride was appropriately named Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune, based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne (the author behind 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, also celebrated in the land). In that book, explorers are blasted into outer space by the enormous Columbiad Cannon.
Maintaining that fantastic storyline, Space Mountain in Paris takes on the steampunk style of a copper mountain covered in rivets, golden plates, and iron towers with the elaborate brass Columbiad Cannon leaned against it, leading to a giant red aiming scope along the mountain’s top. As you might imagine based on the story, Space Mountain is a launched roller coaster that blasts riders out of the cannon and into space, complete with three inversions, some one-of-a-kind effects, and an entirely unique story. It masterfully fused Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon with the groundbreaking, 1902 Georges Méliès film it inspired.
Unfortunately, a few ill-concieved redresses mean that Paris’ Space Mountain is a beauty on the outside, but a Star Wars thrill ride inside, just like every other Space Mountain on Earth. And that’s a shame! You can catch up on the entire in-depth story in Lost Legends: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune.
And yes, when Disneyland in California “borrowed” Discoveryland’s styling for its ill-fated 1998 re-do, it included painting the Californian ride’s exterior brown and green – a mind-boggling, brief state captured by our friends at Yesterland. Like the rest of the dingy, dark overlay to Anaheim’s Tomorrowland, the look was utterly out of place given the land’s Space Age origin and architecture, and the fact that once guests stepped inside the awkward, brown mountain (or any of Tomorrowland’s earth-toned facades) they were once again firmly in the Space Age future the land had always been about.
Across the Pond
The fact that Disney gives even “clones” of its classics new personalities across the globe is a great thing. It means that even if you think you know the Haunted Mansion, there’s something new to see elsewhere in the world. New stories, new characters, even new ride technologies bring even the most well-known and well-loved rides to life in a new way.
We’ve got to ask – which of the reborn “classics” above would you be most interested in experiencing for the first time? If you’ve been across the world, do you think the Paris or Tokyo version of any these rides is better than the U.S. original?
