Disneyland Paris Announces Additional Disney Music Festival Details

What is the spirit of the Disney Music Festival?

First and foremost, we’re going to be reviving the idea of a festival at Disneyland Paris, with a focus on music. Every Disney experience is linked to it, whether it’s the films, the animations or the experiences you can have in our Disney Parks. Music is part of our DNA.

We also wanted to pay tribute to the French tradition of the Fête de la Musique. It’s a powerful source of inspiration for our festival, with its popular side, in the purest sense of the word, in which music plays the leading role. When it’s the Fête de la musique, everyone, professional and amateur alike, can come and play music. The appeal of this day is that anyone can take to the streets with their instrument or just their voice, and that we can all share unique moments together based on music. Emotion is born from this exchange.

So, we adopted the idea of taking to the streets to make music, with the difference that for us the street is Disneyland Park in its entirety, with no fewer than 12 activations spread across the five Lands that make up the park, all throughout the day. It’s going to be a rich mix of encounters, music and sharing.

Can you give us an idea of the musical journey that awaits us in Disneyland Park?

We’ll start in the morning on Main Street, U.S.A. with a welcome from Mickey who, for the occasion, will be wearing a special look designed in-house by Malika Sif and her team, featuring very bright colours.  He will welcome all our guests from the balcony of Main Street Station to the sound of original music written to mark the occasion. One of the trademarks of Disneyland Paris is that we love to celebrate music by creating our own songs. Mickey will be present every morning, as will Minnie, who will be strolling down Main Street, U.S.A. accompanied by Minnie’s Marching Band.

But it’s not just Mickey and his friends – characters from the Great Classics will also be joining in the fun.

Mary Poppins and Bert will be joining the Pearly Band under the Town Square gazebo. This unique ensemble, taken straight from the film, will bring together five live musicians who will accompany the arrival of our guests by performing a repertoire taken from both the 1964 Classic and The Return of Mary Poppins, released in 2018.

Just like the early days of Disneyland Paris!

It’s a real joy! It’s a wonderful Disney Parks tradition that goes back to Walt Disney himself! For the occasion, Minnie will take on the role of a charismatic leader, heading a one-of-a-kind fanfare composed of 12 live acoustic musicians who will perform multiple times each day. Minnie will also have a new outfit, based on the festival’s theme and closely matching Mickey’s.

Our journey continues to Central Plaza… with Goofy!

Goofy tries to take on the role of an orchestra conductor. The only problem is… there’s no orchestra. He’ll find himself alone in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle, and the orchestra will be represented by the castle’s fountains. In the spirit of Walt Disney’s beloved animated films, he takes to the stage in a ‘comic-symphonic’ performance all of his own!

Donald and Daisy will also be present.

You’ll find them in the Italian section of Fantasyland. Their outfits are therefore inspired by the Commedia dell’arte, rather like Harlequin and Columbine. Just for us, they’ll be performing a sort of sketch accompanied by a live accordionist who’ll be covering some of the greatest Disney themes, such as ‘Bella Notte’.

We’ll also be travelling back in time…

That’s right. We’ll be hosting Rapunzel and Flynn in Fantasyland, behind The Old Mill, accompanied by a 4-piece  folk group, in the spirit of a village fete. The inspiration for this meeting around the themes of composer Alan Menken came from the scene in the film in which Rapunzel, Pascal, Flynn and Maximus arrive in the kingdom of Corona and discover the life of a village in full celebration.

The Disney Music Festival is also a journey through the cultures of the world.

Yes, really. South America will be celebrated with ‘Miguel’s Fiesta Latina’ in Frontierland. A mariachi band will gather around Miguel, the hero of Coco, who will be donning his mariachi outfit for the very first time at Disneyland Paris. We’re really pleased to have him back with his new wardrobe.

Meanwhile, Moana will be welcoming visitors to Adventureland. It will provide a chance for our guests to dance with Moana and learn some of the legendary steps from her island Motunui.

And also in Adventureland, we’ll have the great pleasure of welcoming back Timon’s Matadance, created for The Lion King and The Jungle Festival in 2019. Of course, Timon, Pumbaa and Zazu will be there, but as this is a music festival, we’ll also have live percussionists joining in the show’s soundtrack. This will add a new dimension to an experience that was already a hit with our guests back in 2019, and which we’re delighted to be able to repeat this year.

What’s happening in Discoveryland?

We’ll be having a encounter with Stitch at the Beta Arcade in Videopolis, which, as you can imagine, will surprise us with its personal homage to music!

There’ll also be Disney Music Hits Concert* at Videopolis Theatre, a rock concert for all the family! There will be 11 artists on stage, 6 instrumentalists and 5 singers, all performing live, for a real revue, a real tribute to timeless Disney classics, but that’s not all. It will be a journey through the history of Disney music, from the early years to the very latest hits like ‘Nobody Like U’ from Turning Red or ‘Try Everything’, Gazelle’s song in Zootopia, via the golden age of animated musicals in the 1990s, all revisited in pop-rock style. So there’ll be something for every age, every generation and every taste in this incredible Disney musical heritage…

How will all these events be linked?

As you can imagine, this festival is a tribute to the diversity of music, which will be celebrated in all its forms. The link between all these activations will be the original song we’re currently creating. It won’t be a one-off single broadcast uniformly across the park – Instead, there will be 12 different versions, 12 arrangements, each with its own orchestration, for each of the activations guests can take part in. It’ll be like a common theme, a mantra that we’ll find across all these cultural variations, covering every kind of music.

Another surprise awaits our visitors, young and old, at the end of the day. We look forward to seeing everyone in Central Plaza for ‘The Grand Orchestra Finale’. It will be the link to all the day’s activities in a unique moment. All the artists will gather together in the same place to celebrate the richness of music and the idea of sharing. Everyone, in symbiosis, will turn our song into a real anthem. There will be a kind of alliance, a blend of all the energies and universes that have gone before, to create a spectacular finale, the high point of a day already rich in musical experiences.

And after our new night-time show, Disney Tales of Magic, Mickey will be back on the first floor of Main Street station for a last goodbye to our guests, to the sound of a brand-new arrangement of our original song. A perfect way to end the day!

This programme seems very interactive?

It’s very important to us that guests are involved in the festival. We’ve designed all these activities so that our guests can feel part of the action, following in the footsteps of the Fête de la Musique, which was our inspiration. Musicians and Disney Characters will be on hand to share their world with our guests. They’ll be able to dance, sing and have fun together.

With its rich variety of activities, the Disney Music Festival strikes the perfect balance between engaging entertainment and a sense of intimacy.

We all remember the moments that impressed us, but also the little details that touched us. We took great care in organising our activations so as to really ‘shape’ the day, by moving from one energy level to another. In a Disney Park, it’s very important to have strong connections with our guests, and that primarily involves our Cast Members. There are always large-scale shows like Disney Tales of Magic, but at the same time we take great care to preserve the more personal moments that are also part of the Disney experience.

It’s also a happy encounter between authenticity and creation.

We wanted to be sincere and authentic in our approach. The idea is to preserve the identity and personality of each style to better immerse our guests in the heart of the different cultures celebrated in our films and parks. When we see Miguel alongside real mariachis next to the Casa de Coco restaurant, it makes sense. The same is true for Rapunzel and her folkloric musicians in Fantasyland. We are extending in music what was created architecturally by the Imagineers in 1992. And at the same time, more than 30 years later, we’re still managing to reinvent and create something new.

That’s the message of our grand finale, and that’s what our music teams are working towards – Roger Butterley and Tim Heintz, who created the music for The Jungle Book Jive. We’re all working together at the moment to ensure that the identity of each musical universe is respected while complementing the others, so as to create something totally original. It’s like merging distinct bubbles that eventually burst into a harmonious whole. It’s a metaphor for the world, through music.

Imagining and staging such a programme requires real teamwork!

As you can see, the defining theme of this festival is profusion. It’s an extremely rich programme, with all kinds of activations: little surprise moments, unexpected animations or real meetings on a larger scale like our big event at the end of the day with nearly 80 participants!

Disney Music Festival isn’t just about encounters – the celebrations also extend to a range of special merchandise and even culinary experiences.

To provide a visual framework for the whole festival, Disneyland Paris Set Designer Thomas Gallou developed a superb graphic charter that uses the bright colours and shading found on Mickey and Minnie’s costumes and, of course, the event logo. It was a great collaboration with all the teams involved. This graphic charter, created by the Entertainment department, has been infused in all our marketing and communications. We also worked hard with our colleagues from the merchandising department to create 100% festival-related products, plush toys and other objects. It’s a way of extending the experience and paying tribute to music in all its forms, including through the catering, with all kinds of souvenir products in the festival’s colours. We’ve been very lucky to establish these collaborations. We can really say we worked all in concert on this one!