A more industrial walkway, Discovery Arcade is dedicated to the great inventors and visionaries of the early twentieth century, lined with startling artworks and surprising inventions...

The arcade can be reached via entrances at either or by Main Street Marketplace on Market Street. Disney Clothiers, Market House Deli, Cable Car Bake Shop, Harrington's and Victoria's Home-Style Restaurant link directly onto the walkway, which is also the home of The Coffee Grinder and The Ice Cream Company.

Attraction Experience

Through the heavy wooden doors on Town Square or the open walkway from Plaza Gardens, you step into Discovery Arcade and a time of great ideas and great inventions. The boom of the turn-of-the-century gave those of the time a feeling that anything "can, and will" be achieved by man. Discovery Arcade pays homage to these great minds, from their ingenious yet humble patents to their wildest dreams of futuristic cities.

As you stroll along the warm, gas-lit arcade of wooden features and striking green ironwork, large, startling posters depict cities 100 years into the future, whilst in contrast, display cases house inventions and ideas from the most local, small-town turn-of-the-century visionaries.

Like Liberty Arcade, the central area of Discovery Arcade is a break from the style of the two walkways either side. Here the optimistic warmth turns to a more industrial brickwork and faintly gothic features - a sign of the challenges of the future, and a lead-in to the worlds of Discoveryland which lie beyond...

Fun Facts & Footnotes

Discovery Arcade is completely unique to Disneyland Park in Paris - never designed or built for any Disney park before or after.

The story of the ideas and inventions filling the display cases is even more remarkable than the ideas themselves. To be granted a patent between 1790 and 1880, Americans were required to submit a working model of their invention to the U.S. Patent office. Models were usually limited to no larger than 12 square inches and were accompanied with paperwork and diagrams explaining the invention’s purpose, construction and operation. More than 200,000 models were submitted during this time. However, fires at the patent office in 1863 and 1877 destroyed tens of thousands of the models, and eventually the agency ran out of space - Congress then ordering the remaining patent models to be sold in 1925. American millionaire Cliff Peterson bought close to 40,000 of the models and much of their paperwork, his collection then being sold to enthusiast Alan Rothschild in the early 1990s, when it numbered 4,000 pieces. Today, examples from Rothschild's collection can be seen only in two places - the Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia and here at Discovery Arcade in Disneyland Resort Paris, where fifty-two of the authentic proposals are on display.

The much-celebrated posters lining the walls of Discovery Arcade, depicting cities of the future at the next turn-of-the-century from the eyes of late 19th Century visionaries, infact date back no earlier than the late 1980s! They were all designed, drawn and painted exclusively for the park by Jim Michaelson, Maureen Johnston and R. Ziscis in the style of 19th Century French artist Albert Robida.

The metalwork supports lining the arcade are decorated with Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

History

Following the decision to build two arcades on either side of Main Street rather than a roof over the entire area, the Imagineers, led by Main Street's chief show producer Eddie Sotto, immediately set about finding themes for the two walkways. Nothing at Imagineering is done by halves, and both arcades would eventually become packed with story and detail on a scale perhaps never achieved before. Liberty Arcade took inspiration from the late 1950s plan for a 'Liberty Street' extension to Main Street in California, and so it was only natural that the second arcade, Discovery Arcade, would finally bring the second unrealised idea for Main Street to life - Edison Square.

Edison Square was planned as a new cul-de-sac land between Main Street, U.S.A. and Tomorrowland in the original Californian park, a place where guests could experience the buzz and excitement the boom in inventions spread across America after the introduction of patents and intellectual property rights. Though the land never became a reality, the EuroDisney project was the perfect opportunity to resurrect the idea - Discoveryland was replacing Tomorrowland as a land based more on inventions and futuristic ideas of the past, the arcade then serving as a humble introduction to this futuristic past.

Like many of the invetions and patents on display in Discovery Arcade itself, some of the Imagineers' ideas for the arcade never become an everyday reality. The most speculated of these is without doubt the Elevated Electric Railway. The idea began back at Magic Kingdom in Florida's Main Street before its 1971 opening, where a young Eddie Sotto imagined a great elevated railway spanning the length of the street along one sidewalk, drawn on translucent acrylic over a silkscreen print of the street. The idea never came to be, but when Sotto was charged with the task of Show Producer for the entire land of Main Street, U.S.A. in Paris, the vision came far closer to reality...

Eddie and his team were aware that an American street based on the Victorian era - a style practically invented in Europe - might not be the best introduction to the European park. Looking at when Europe first became very aware of American culture, they decided upon the 1920s - the emergence of film, and of jazz - that made the United States and exciting and vibrant distant land. The street would have been populated with gas stations, motor cars, electric-lit billboards, gun-fighting gangsters and commercials all over - a big-city, grown-up version of Walt's quaint, small-town vision. At the heart of the project, the old Elevated Electric Railway spanning one sidewalk. Not just a clever means of transportation, but a useful rain shelter for crowds watching the daily parades. However, Disney CEO Michael Eisner and project management never caught on to the idea of the railway, especially seeing one of the famous parades against such an industrial and "un-Disney" backdrop.

The next idea, one which the Imagineers ran with for quite some time, saw the elevated railway now hidden inside Discovery Arcade, spanning the length of the 1920s arcade from a station on the final location of the Main Street Transportation building to Plaza Gardens Restaurant. Unfortunately for Eddie, his idea hit the breaks again when - legend has it - Michael Eisner caught a re-run of gangster film "The Untouchables" and immediately retracted on the 1920s, gangster-filled street as the welcome for a Disney park. As Main Street, U.S.A. moved back in time to its turn-of-the-century roots, the eletric trolleycar was, ironically, replaced by its predecessor - the Horse-Drawn Streetcars, now even housed in the Transportation building on the exact spot of the proposed electric railway terminus.

A final unrealised idea from Eddie Sotto involved an "Automata Exhibition", allowing guests to play with antique mechanical toys in a set-up similar to Disneyland's original Penny Arcade. The idea can be seen somewhat with the pre-show area of Art of Disney Animation, allowing guests to try old animation toys.