Our first full day at Disneyland Paris was spent at the castle park, without leaving until security (kindly) ushered us out about an hour after closing. We checked into Sequoia Lodge and slept well that night. The next morning saw us up early to enjoy the extra hour inside of the parks that comes with staying on-site at the resort. Making it through security was a breeze and, before long, we were standing at the gates of the infamous Walt Disney Studios Park.

There were many stories and thoughts I’d heard (or read) over the years about the second gate at Disneyland Paris. Almost none of them were good. By the time we visited, I had a strange kind of morbid fascination with the park. It couldn’t be that bad, right? Once we were inside the park, the sky started spitting rain at us. This might have been the theme park gods saying, “Yes, it really can be that bad.”

Before I detail the day, I should say that we visited Walt Disney Studios Park at a terrible time. The cynic might say that it’s always been a terrible time. But the amount of construction walls we saw would have made Epcot’s recent transformation blush. To the resort and Disney’s credit, they are trying to revitalize (and rename) the park and there’s a lot of work to be done. That meant for our visit, we basically had one road to walk through in the whole park with a couple of offshoots. I’ve been in California Adventure, Hollywood Studios and Epcot as they were being reconfigured but had never seen a Disney theme park like this.

Even with all of the construction, Walt Disney Studios Park managed to have 11 attractions open. We opted to start the day at Ratatouille : L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy​. This was the original Ratatouille attraction and the Walt Disney World version is essentially a copy. The biggest difference is that the Epcot version requires 3D glasses and the Paris version does not. I prefer no 3D to be honest, it helped ease the transitions even if the ride is still too screen heavy. The Ratatouille ride isn’t my favorite no matter where it is but I did like the area around it in Walt Disney Studios Park which amounts to a theme park version of Paris. This is maybe the only spot in the whole park where I thought the aesthetic was enjoyable.

Comparing the Ratatouille area to what’s above is night and day. So many areas either feel half baked or lacked imagination which is a far cry from Parc Disneyland right next door.

We moved along to another popular attraction – Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure. This is close to a copy of California Adventure’s WEB Slingers, another attraction I’m mixed on. This is fun enough but not a game changer for a park that could really use a few. The inside looks well maintained and the gameplay worked though. We’ll take the minor victories!

We capped off Avengers Campus with Flight Force, a reskinned Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. I will say that the re-theme works well here and there’s a few nice touches. I especially liked the Iron Man animatronic and the plot setup was good enough for a thrilling roller coaster. I put this at number 3 in our attraction rankings of the park behind Tower of Terror and Ratatouille but it might deserve second place, surpassing Remy.

After completing those 3 big attractions, we were a little flummoxed on what to do. In hindsight, we should have just waited out the Tower of Terror or Crush’s Coaster line. At that point, they had grown long though and we had the whole day for that. Instead we started knocking off some of the smaller attractions. Here are photos of those rides and an adequate amount of sentences to describe our experience on them.

This is the Flying Carpets Over Agrabah. It is not a good spinner ride and in a very random, ugly spot of Walt Disney Studios Park.

Here we have Melissa and two strangers (shout out to the single rider line) on Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop. The experience was fine, although the wait was way too long for what it was. The ride amounts to Jumpin’ Jellyfish but goes much higher, which is a plus!

RC Racer is way more fun than I thought it’d be. This is a halfpipe roller coaster and is a good thrill introduction for kids or 34 year old men who still aren’t very brave on rides. Of the Toy Story Playland attractions, this is the best of them.

Lunch was nearing but we had time for a few more attractions. Cars Road Trip was just about to open (it didn’t open until 11 for some reason) so we walked over there and were on the first tram tour that left. This is a reskinned studio tour that is themed to Cars. It’s terrible. This lasts about 10 minutes and solely exists to get guests to ‘Cars-tastophe Canyon’, where we see a tanker catch fire and water rush down. Everything else is window dressing, at best. This attraction is primed to be Walt Disney Studios Park next expansion.

We finished off the morning with Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin, a perfectly fine carnival ride that spins. Shout out to my guy, Slinky, who looks great while constantly chasing his tail. The ride is okay but the sightlines above are just so bad. I don’t mind theme park lands bleeding over into each other but when there’s absolutely nothing dividing them then the point of themed design is lost. Toy Story Playland is a decent idea for adding ride capacity but the aesthetic was disappointing to me.

Before lunch, we had raced through 8 attractions. We were more than happy with that! Don’t let my negativity about the park throw you about our moods, we both were having a great time. Some of that was the aforementioned morbid fascination, some of it was just experiencing new things.

Eight rides before lunch will make anyone hungry! That led us to our favorite part of Walt Disney Studios Park, Bistrot Chez Remy. I had booked our lunch a month or two ahead of time and am so glad we did. Both of us thoroughly enjoyed the meal. It’s funny to have a restaurant that is so themed inside of a park that isn’t. Bistrot Chez Remy really takes guests inside of the movie and does it while serving excellent food! Read our full review here.

After a fantastic lunch, we walked over to Together: A Pixar Musical Adventure. We barely made it into the queue before they capped the line. The show was an unexpected treat that used some video components along with a live orchestra playing tunes from classic Pixar films. The story was good, not great, but the music made up for some shortcomings. As a whole, Disneyland Paris seems to put an emphasis on live performances and we really appreciated that.

We made our way to the front of the park. Melissa stopped to shop for a little bit while I took photos. I’m still stunned that they thought this was an adequate park entrance. I like the fountain pretty well but there’s no other icon outside of a building that looks like a soundstage. There’s also a water tower in the distance, so it has some of that MGM Studios vibe. In the end, that’s what Walt Disney Studios Park is modeled after. I’m glad most theme parks have moved past the ‘create a movie studio’ phase. That theme only seems to work if there’s an actual movie studio nearby.

With only 2 nights at Sequoia Lodge, we wanted to spend a little bit of time there outside of sleeping. Early afternoon seemed like a good time to take a break, so we left the park and walked back to the hotel. We went for a quick swim in the Quarry Pool, which is a nice feature of the hotel! I walked around and took a few photos before taking an hour or so to relax.

On the way back into the parks, we grabbed a sandwich from Le Comptoir in Disney Village. The counter-service options in Walt Disney Studios Park were basically non-existent so settling for this sandwich wasn’t bad. We stopped at this place a few different times for coffee or a quick snack. It’s not great but good enough.

Once back inside of the park, we decided to wait out the line at Crush’s Coaster. The posted wait was a little over an hour and we made it into the loading room in just under an hour. Unfortunately, right before we got on, the ride broke down! On the bright side, Cast Members gave us a FastPass (or whatever you want to call it) for the next day. We were grateful for that!

Walt Disney Studios Park closes a little earlier than Parc Disneyland so we rushed to Cars Quatre Roues Rallye and the Dr. Strange nighttime show. The Cars attraction was similar to Mater’s in California Adventure but with a slight change in the ride system. It whipped us around and was a good laugh even if the decorations around weren’t great.

The Dr. Strange show has ended its run since we were there but was interesting. There aren’t many character based nighttime shows. Fantasmic is the exception but even that show is vignettes with different characters. Dr. Strange was on stage the whole time. The show worked well enough and held guests attention. This was longer than anything done in DCA’s Avengers Campus and I’d be curious if something similar could work there. I’d also like to see Walt Disney Studios Park add a steady nighttime spectacular once a few more projects open.

We hopped back over to Disneyland Paris after the show. The castle park had an event going at the time with decor that was only okay. But I did really like this Anna display and lighting by the entrance.

We didn’t have much time left in the night and were continuing our quest to complete all of the resort’s (open) attractions. That brought us to Autopia. You know what? We had a good time! I’m as surprised as you are. Loyal readers know that Autopia in Disneyland and Tomorrowland Speedway in Magic Kingdom are among my least favorite attractions. This version had cooler lighting displays and smelled less like gasoline! Good job by them.

We did mistime things slightly and should have fit in an attraction before the long wait at Autopia. By the time we were out of the car, the park had closed and the nighttime show had started. I used the time to take photos in Discoveryland, which is an absolutely gorgeous land.

Parc Disneyland doesn’t do Walt Disney Studios Park any favors with how beautiful it is. The contrast is stark, where one cares more about being beautiful than anything else, the other is just not pretty at all. I think that will change over time and should be the first goal of WDSP.

I finished my photos in the land just in time to catch the end of Disney Tales of Magic. I don’t have the kindest things to say about Walt Disney Studios Park but it was a really fun day, highlighted by Bistrot Chez Remy and laughing through some silly rides. Disneyland Paris’ second gate has a long way to go but it will improve. There’s nowhere to go but up! We walked back to our room and rested before one final day at the parks.

Our next installment of this trip report will be about that third and final day! Let us know what you thought of this post, along with any questions you might have, in the comments below! Planning a trip to a Disney Resort? Check out our Travel Guides to help you along the way! You can also find discount tickets on this site. If you enjoy what you are reading here on Wandering in Disney please share this post with your friends, as well as like our social media pages. You can also subscribe to the blog via WordPress or email. All of those links are on the right side of this page. Thank you for reading, we really appreciate it!