Little bread-and-butterflies kiss the tulips
And the sun is like a toy balloon
There are get up in the morning glories
In the golden afternoon
Aaah, Wonderland. That fabled, through-the-looking-glass place of whimsy and colour dreamt up by Lewis Carroll way back in 1865 and turned into a musical motion picture by Walt Disney in 1951.
On opening day in 1955, Disneyland premièred the Mad Tea Party spinning tea cups. On opening day in 1992, Euro Disneyland premiered its own Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups… and something else rather special. Something inescapably European. Something green and luscious, waiting to be explored. Something entirely unique, exclusive to the Paris park and never duplicated.
Welcome, to Alice’s Curious Labyrinth.
But alas, sixteen years on, the feeling of Wonderland is fading by the day…
No.4 - Return to Wonderland
On a warm summers day, the labyrinth at the back of Fantasyland is still a delightful place to get away from the rush of pushchairs, popcorn and balloons in the park’s busiest land. But take a closer look — is everything still as ‘wonderful’ as it should be? It was the popular French message board Disney Central Plaza which recently brought to light the fading magic of this whimsical corner with the photographs featured throughout this Wish List entry. The problem, however, isn’t a recent one.
Have you ever left the washing up until tomorrow, let it stand for a few days? When you finally come to do it, the simple 5-minute task becomes a nightmare. Alice’s Curious Labyrinth certainly knows the feeling…
Step into the walk-through attraction today and you can rack up an endless list of faded paintwork, broken props and cheap fixes. In the opening scene of confusing signs, shrubs around the fake trees have been replaced by concrete rather than replanted. The hedge surrounding a small door for children has been replaced by a hastily-cut –and rather less magical — green fence panel. The red edging around all of the paths is no longer bright and vivid.
The attraction has had refurbishments in its 16-year history, however. The replacements and easy fixes above are the fruits of those. As far as regular maintenance goes, though, the labyrinth appears to operate to a less than dedicated regime. In fact, rumours on the aforementioned French message board go as far as to say that all maintenance budgets for the attraction have now been cut completely. Truth, or a fan community scare? Let’s just say that, according to information on the resort’s official website, Alice’s Curious Labyrinth definitely does not appear to be scheduled in for its usual May/June spruce-up this year.
Which is… distressing, for a fan, when you realise how rapidly this Wonderland has faded recently. Disney often talks of “bad show”, particularly to its Cast Members. This is when the “show” — the illusion — of the parks is broken — a backstage door left open, litter on the ground, Cast Members from Frontierland in Adventureland, for example. By those terms, the current state of Alice’s Curious Labyrinth must be one of the worst — or rather, harshest — examples of “bad show” a Disney park has ever seen.
Signposts dirtied by the Marne-la-Vallée weather and a klaxon falling from the hedge join relics such as broken electrical fittings and unhidden lights and power cords. Look around the receding hedgerows of the labyrinth and you might be surprised what you find. As the hedge becomes a replacement green fence panel, you find even find a door! A door! Just like in the story, remember? Well, bad luck — if you dare to go near these rotting and faded doors, you’ll find them locked and without handles.
The same problem doesn’t apply everywhere, however — the disabled gates in the circular labyrinth swing wide open, beckoning most guests to step through and miss out most of the path and at busy times, cause a jam of people. Their latch is broken, and the purple paintwork is turning green. The pink and purple-stoned towers which house jets of water splashing over guests’ heads are also getting dirtier and dirtier, where they haven’t been chipped without any repair, at least.
Elsewhere, paintwork remains relatively intact in the Cheshire Cat Walk, which provides a bridge between the initial labyrinth and the upcoming Queen of Hearts Maze. The area is always empty — maybe it has something to do with having giant green electrical boxes as its only themeing? Once in the Queen of Hearts Maze, you’re due to encounter the angry monarch several times, popping up at various points as she hunts you through the maze of hedgerows. Don’t worry, she’ll never catch up — she’s been stuck in here trying to get out for so long that her clothes are becoming covered with dirt.
The same dirt can even be found on some areas of the Queen of Hearts Castle itself, usually one of the best-kept parts of the attraction. The castle hosts the maze’s most famous lost relic — a spiral slide running around the turrets into the main entrance hall, closed soon after the park’s opening due to safety issues. You’d think having the slide free of screaming children would please the Queen, but no such luck — by her second appearance, she has become so mad as to lose her yellow crown and cause several cracks to appear across her face!
You’ve not seen the best one yet — the final appearance, or rather, the non-appearance…
Whilst the mechanics remain, the Queen of Hearts is now long gone. The fence is low enough that most adults have a ring-side seat for what lies inside, especially if they stand on the helpful concrete step next to the fence (everyone does…).
Phew! We’ve finally reached the castle and the end of the maze. On a hot summers day in Wonderland, it’s always a pleasure to discover the Queen is well-equipped with air conditioning, don’t you think?
The stairway to that closed spiral slide also reveals a little too much about the Queen’s way of living. Are there some blocked toilets up above, by any chance?
There’s no need to worry too much about the Queen of Hearts Castle, however — it might still be able to give children an electrifying amount of fun…
Whether a real safety threat or not, the missing cover on that outdoor socket is just one more missing piece of the Wonderland labyrinth that it seems we’ll never see return. A little like the hedges in the final parts of the maze — where brilliant arches of hedges previously grew over guests’ heads, or those thousands of twinkling lights which used to illuminate almost every tree in this corner of Fantasyland. Today, the labyrinth stands mostly dark come nightfall, save for the Cheshire Cat’s endless grin.
You could argue that it’s the guests who have given Alice’s Curious Labyrinth its current look. True, for the scuffed paintwork and chipped props it probably was. But, for many of the areas above, certainly not. Whether a budget big enough to return this to its full former glory currently exists or not, something backstage needs a drastic rethink. After all, is this “the kind of experience no one else but Disney can offer” that Karl Holz frequently trumpets, and expects us to pay for?
The book ‘Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality’ shows the labyrinth and gardens in their proper colours and full growth from page 208 onwards, including a wonderful double-page aerial photo from the park’s early years. It would be sad to see that brilliant tome become a history book rather than a dedication to the everyday magic of the park, but, the way things are going, that’s what we’ll be using it as. In fact, we just did, already.
Here’s a hint — have a quick clean up of that dirt, get some red paint to bring these pathways back to life. As Walt always said, you just need to “feed the birds” from time to time. Take care of the little things, so that the big problems never happen. Unfortunately, this one has already happened, and we have to hope that Disneyland Resort Paris find the money to Return to Wonderland sooner… rather than later.
– With thanks to webmasseur and other members of Disney Central Plaza for all of the photos (except no.1) and some of the words featured here. Click here if you dare to see even more.
‘Fate is kind’ - Does our wish have a chance?
Now, that depends who you believe. Listen to some of the more brash discussion board commentators and you could begin to think the labyrinth is being left to rot so as to make a replacement — such as a Little Mermaid or Winnie the Pooh dark ride — seem suddenly more appealing than a refurbishment. Alternatively, it could, apparently, simply be that Euro Disney SCA are leaving the attraction to decay until it can no less magical and a full refurbishment will be ordered, saving money on regular maintenance until then. The same scheme taking place at the similarly bad La Cabane des Robinsons since 1992, then.
Ironically, the two attractions either side of the labyrinth have just been given large refurbishments — the British cottage exterior of Peter Pan’s Flight and much of “it’s a small world”. It’s not only the big attractions given a sizeable refurbishment budget, either — right next door, Fantasy Festival Stage was given a complete repaint in recent years… after being left untouched for years beforehand. Let’s hope that these will be the first of more Fantasyland clean-ups in 2008…
Makes no difference who you are…
Our comments system is currently down whilst we work on implementing it into the new DLRP Today layout — please visit again soon, or post a your thoughts on magicforum instead!
If you’re due to visit Disneyland Park soon, and see the Labyrinth to still be in this state, why not drop a note in at City Hall? And whether you’re visiting or not, an email to Guest Communications can never hurt.
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Wish List returns next Wednesday, 27th February 2008.
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