As mentioned last week, I will be posting articles comparing the Fantasylands in Disneyland Paris and in the Anaheim park every Monday from now until the end of the year.
I thought I ought to start with the obvious: Sleeping Beauty Castle.
The French equivalent, officially known as “Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant”, is 167ft high, compared to California’s 77ft.
The interior of Paris features several coats of arms, with different designs. One design which does not appear is the one prominently featured on California’s Castle, the one with three lions passant thereon which is often believed to be the Disney Crest. This lion-heavy design DOES appear in Disneyland Paris though, in The Backlot Express (a restaurant in Walt Disney Studios Park) also above a door.
[The actual crest of the Disney family is of three fleur-de-lis].
The design of California’s castle is based mainly on Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein Castle (with the windows being a tribute to Notre Dame), whereas the one in Paris is based more on the one in the Disney film (including the surrounding square trees) and also the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy.
Both castles have shops in the interior, a hidden Mickey in their tiles (although not one I have been able to find) and a walk-through section telling the story of Sleeping Beauty, although Paris’ walk through is a lot less enclosed, yet harder to navigate correctly.
Both castles are disabled friendly: Anaheim’s has a virtual tour on the ground floor, whereas Le Château has an elevator for this purpose, which calls in on all three levels. The top floor is the diorama. The ground floor has the most common access to Main Street, U.S.A. and Fantasyland. The lowest level takes us to La Tanière du Dragon, featuring an audio-animatronic which, at the time the park opened, was the world’s largest. Not suitable for the very young.
Portions of the above were first written for DLDhistory.com