BENEATH the most ferocious,
shirt-piercing downpour that Northern France has to offer, some 60 adults
and children are sitting perfectly still, inside a collection of
pastel-shaded plastic elephants. Not flinching, not complaining, just
sitting patiently and waiting, brushing away the odd strand of sodden hair
from in front of their eyes.

Were
this an English fairground, there wouldn’t be a soul in sight; everyone
would long ago have legged it to the nearest shelter. But this is not your
average fairground, this is Disneyland Paris – and although, at first
sight, this ride might look like any other aerial children’s attraction,
it is, in fact, the Dumbo The Flying Elephant Experience. What’s more, the
people occupying all these pink and blue Dumbos have queued half an hour
to do so – and are damned if they are going to give up their prize because
of something as trivial as torrential rain.

Picture (left):
Minnie makeover: the boring, Brussels-type connotations of original name
of Eurodisney was changed to the more up-beat Disneyland Paris.

Painfully and slowly, then, the machine starts up and the elephants begin
to circulate – their cherubic, cheery-trunked faces at variance with the
set jaws and gritted teeth of their passengers. One man holds a tweed
jacket reverently over his little boy’s head; another father and son sit
huddled side by side, as if about to undergo some solemn rite of passage.
Dutifully, though, they still pull the levers that make the elephants go
up and down; even in the middle of a cloudburst, the quest for fun cannot
be denied.

To seasoned
Disneylanders, this kind of episode comes as no surprise. It’s another
example of the magic spell that each year induces 15 million people to
pack their bags and travel from all four corners of the world to this
patch of reclaimed agricultural land just outside Paris. And once there,
of course, to brave big crowds, long queues and unreliable weather – all
in pursuit of the Disney dream. But is it magic – or madness – that
compels them to come and worship at the shrine of a cartoon mouse?

In the past, the sheer pulling power of the attractions has been enough to
lure the punters. Now, though, with no new rides planned till April 2002
(when the adjoining Disney Studios opens its doors), the park’s management
is having to dig deep into its ideas mine and sprinkle a little glitter
over its existing attractions.

Exit, then, in a puff of smoke, the original name of Eurodisney, with its
boring, Brussels-type connotations. Enter, stage left, the bright new
Disneyland Paris, making use of not just one, but two established names in
the travel business, plus a cast of new foam-rubber characters such as
Buzz Lightyear and Woody (stars of the films Toy Story 1 and 2) to
complement the more senior Disney figures such as Snow White and Mickey
Mouse.

In terms of surface showbiz
appeal, it all makes sense. On a more practical level, however, this year
has seen two big developments: first, the introduction of a Fastpass
system, to reduce queuing times; and second, the start of a daily Eurostar
service from Waterloo direct to the Disneyland front door.

It was this second development that sold us on the idea of a long weekend
with Uncle Walt. As a parent, you automatically run any holiday proposal
through the aggrometer, an inbuilt device that pinpoints the parts of your
itinerary where everything is likely to go pear-shaped. And the mere
thought of having to get out at the Gare du Nord and carry three children
(aged 10, eight and five) and five suitcases onto the M�tro has in the
past produced off-the-scale aggro-readings.

By contrast, when we fed into the machine the concept of boarding a train
in London at 9.30am and hopping off three hours later in the shadow of
Space Mountain (Disney’s whiter-than-white-knuckle ride), the only query
it raised was whether we should take a packed lunch or rely on the
Eurostar buffet.

Packed lunch would
have been the better option, given that Caesar salad wraps and ham-and-Emmenthal
sandwiches are better suited to the international businessman than to the
average six-year-old. And if there is one place that no globetrotting
executive in his or her right mind would ever travel, it is on the
Disneyland express: this is a train that is not just family-orientated, it
is a high-speed creche, with all that this implies in terms of spilt tears
and fizzy drinks. By the end of the three-hour journey, even hardened mums
and dads were ready to throw themselves into the waiting arms of Eeyore
and weep.

But even as we dried our
eyes, a burden was being lifted from our shoulders. Behind the scenes, a
team of workers was taking everyone’s luggage direct to their hotels (in
our case, the Disneyland), leaving us all free to scurry down the
terracotta-paved hill and into the park proper.

By 2.30pm French time, we were walking down Main Street USA, a full-scale
re-creation of small-town America during the 1930s. And, if these were the
Depression Years, they can’t have been so bad after all, in that every
shop was full of people falling over themselves to buy Disneybilia from
wizard’s hats to Mickey Mouse ears, from souvenir Winnie L’Oursin (The
Bear) lollies to 4ft-tall Tiggers at Ff990 or �99 (the handy
Ff10-to-the-pound conversion rate is another welcome new feature).

Looking at the list of rides, we were surprised to see that they were
almost exactly the same as they had been on our last visit to Disneyland,
five years ago. Something that has changed, though, is that when the park
first opened, it attracted an unmanageable 85,000 people a day in summer,
and a pitiful 500 a day in winter. Now, thanks to differentially priced
seasonal packages, the park rarely has more than 50,000 visitors a day in
summer – or less than 10,000 in winter.

The queues, as a result, are now shorter. At no point did we have to wait
more than 30 minutes for a ride, and 20 minutes was the norm. However,
there are still three rides where the human traffic can start to form
jams, and it is to disperse these that the Fastpass has been introduced.

The way it works is that you feed your admission ticket into a machine
that then prints out a time at which you can come back and get straight on
the ride (well, within five to 10 minutes anyway). Sometimes, you just
don’t need it; for example, when we got to Peter Pan’s Flight, the
advertised wait time was only 10 minutes, yet the Fastpass return time was
three hours later.

It did come in
useful, though, at the Indiana Jones Backwards ride; we arrived there at
5.30pm to face a 40-minute wait or take a Fastpass and return any time
between 6.10pm and 7.10pm (more specific times do not work because people
arrive late). We took a Fastpass ticket, went away and had tea. On our
return at 6.40pm, we were discreetly fast-passed onto the ride – the dirty
deed being carried out round a corner and out of sight of the rest of the
queue.

“It can cause problems if
people see what looks like large-scale pushing-in,” confided one of the
guides. And problems are not something that are welcome in Mickey’s Magic
Kingdom. Indeed, for those of us accustomed to the edgy, tattooed-arm
world of British fairgrounds, it is quite remarkable how 50,000 people can
spend the day in one park and cause so little trouble.

Yes, of course, the whole thing is sanitised; the tram horses on Main
Street wear leather satchels on their bottoms to catch the dung before it
hits the streets – and, when the skies open, men with brooms are sent out
to sweep the water away and make the puddles disappear. Picnicking is
discouraged, bare-chested people are told to put their shirts on, and all
public consumption of alcohol is banned apart from in the restaurants.
However, given a choice between this and the kind of ambience created by
England fans at Euro 2000, it’s not surprising that most families are
happy to go along with the Goofy code of conduct.

That’s not to say that the atmosphere is one of peace and love and
spontaneous fraternisation. At Disneyland, it is not so much a feeling of
one, great interconnected mass of humankind, but of thousands of little
family units, piloting their own private paths around the park. At the
back of your mind, you know that should you collapse on the ground, the
rest of the queue behind would – methodically and without malice – walk
right over you. What’s more, you would understand and approve, like some
stricken wildebeest which knows that the unhindered progress of the herd
is more important than the fate of any individual beast.

For us, the most dramatic manifestation of Disneylanders’ animal instincts
took place during our photo-shoot with Mickey Mouse (mute, incidentally,
like all the other characters). Not only did the star rodent turn up with
his own minder, but he had to be protected throughout the 10-minute
session from an advancing and ever more aggressive tide of children, all
demanding cuddles and autographs from their little, bow-tied hero. In the
background, like generals at a battle, a crowd of parents urged their
little darlings up the hill; eventually, Mickey and our photographer were
forced to take refuge in the Queen of Hearts’ castle.

“It is always like this,” sighed Sebastien Frank, the media liaison
officer, gently barring the way to other visitors. “Whenever Mickey and
Minnie enter the park, they are mobbed. As a result, they are never
allowed to go out alone.”

A strange
sort of parable, this, that in a place where happy endings are obligatory,
the hero and heroine should end up trapped indoors by too much love. Not
that this kind of reflection has much place at Disneyland. People who come
here don’t hang around making smart remarks about rampant
commercialisation or relentless cheerfulness. They’re fans, converts,
paid-up believers in the fairies, having bought into the Disney dream –
and how! With two out of every three UK visitors staying at one of the
Disney hotels (�200-�300 per family per night), and with all but the
fast-food restaurants charging �60 for a family meal, it’s not just Donald
Duck who ends up with a big bill.

We felt that our three-day stay was just the right duration. By the time
we boarded the homebound Eurostar, at 7.35 on Sunday evening, we had seen
enough wizards and witches, flown at enough angles to enough distant
galaxies, and drunk our fill of fizzy drinks and enchanted fountains. We
were back home in London by 11pm, with a bedtime cup of cocoa.

So was it worth the �1,500 – or �1,200 if we had stayed at a cheaper
hotel? If you’re a parent who believes that a successful holiday depends
on keeping the children happy at any price, then the answer has to be yes.
Even those mothers and fathers who turn up their noses at the idea, might
find themselves more vulnerable to magic dust than they had imagined. On
our first visit to Disneyland, my wife and I spent the start of the Beauty
and The Beast show sneering at the costumes and make-up, and ended up in
floods of sentimental tears.

Looking at the faces of those Dumbo-riders, as they stoically disregarded
the rain streaming down their faces, you could see that, for the moment
anyway, they were not in the real world of wet pullovers and chest colds –
but were characters appearing in their own private fairy tale. And when
you’re in search of a rainbow, you’re bound to get a little wet.

The Middleton family’s top ten rides

10 Daily Parade
Cavalcade of floats depicting Disney films.

Through a child’s eyes

Would you like to go back again?
Yes, definitely.

Disneyland Paris Basics

Book an all-inclusive package through
Disneyland Paris (08705 030303). The Classic Package, for two adults and
two children, includes return travel by Eurostar, two nights’ b & b
accommodation and three days’ entrance. Prices vary according to grade of
hotel and the time of year and day of the week that you travel. A package
at the Disneyland hotel beginning Monday, August 21, costs �1,080, while
the same package a week later at the less expensive Santa Fe hotel costs
�778.