When Disneyland Paris was built it had several attractions planned to be added to the resort at a later date. Unfortunately as a result of the resort's early failure, almost none of them would end up getting built.
Welcome to a new series here at TPE, where we explore attractions that were planned but never built for Disneyland Paris/ Euro Disneyland. Today we are exploring a canceled musical animatronic show based on Beauty and the Beast.
As we discussed in last week's exploration of the canceled Placu's Intergalactic Revue, the 1990s is when the concept of the musical animatronic show died. There were several proposals for musical animatronic shows throughout the 1990s but they were all canceled and we have not seen any new ones since then.
One of the final proposals was for a show involving the Beauty and the Beast.
This show would have retold the story of the film in two parts, a preshow, and the main show.
The preshow we don't have any released concept art for but it would have involved a stained glass retelling of the story before Belle came in.
You would then proceed to the main show.
The show would be told in a theater in the round style similar to that of the Enchanted Tiki Room with the action taking place mainly in the center but also all around you. But this show would have also combined live characters with animatronics. Picture it as the Tiki Room meets the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour. It also would have been on a slightly larger scale.
The show would have mainly followed three animatronic characters as your guides, Lumiere, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts. Belle would appear as a live character and would interact with the audience at specific points as well as with an animatronic version of the Beast. The show would conclude with an audience assisted version of the final transformation and a live appearance by the prince to join Belle.
You can definitely tell that certain elements of this were carried over into Enchanted Tales with Belle at the Magic Kingdom. It has a similar idea, just leaning more into the audience participation and using updated effects not available when this attraction was being developed.
This show certainly would have been nice to see. Beauty and the Beast is criminally underutilized in the Disney Parks worldwide (although that is being corrected with the upcoming Tokyo attraction) and it is a bit upsetting to know there were plans to bring the movie to the parks so early after its release in such a major way.
Would you have liked to have seen this attraction fully realized? Let us know in the comments below and check out our explorations of other canceled Disney attractions from all around the world here.
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