Disney Permanently Changed This Park After Only 24 Years. Here's What Took Its Place

Disneyland Paris opened its doors in 1992, under the name Euro Disney Resort, and it has been one of Europe's most popular and most visited tourist attractions ever since. Starting off with one main area, Disneyland Park, it opened a second gate in 2002 called Walt Disney Studios Park, similar to Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. This new attraction focused on film and animation, and promised to take Disneyland Paris to a new level.

However, after just 24 years in operation, Walt Disney Studios Park closed its gates for the final time on March 28, 2026. Luckily for European Disney fans, Disney opened a brand-new attraction in its place, ensuring that there is still plenty of mouse magic to be found in France! Disney Adventure World promises to be a transformation of the original site, and a new park that more than lives up to the expectations of visitors.

Developed at a cost of nearly €2 billion, the new park will offer a selection of new rides and immersive experiences, new restaurants, and a new lake, which will serve as the heart of the park. Some of the most popular original rides and lands will remain alongside the new offerings.

Disney Adventure World is nearly twice the size of its predecessor, so there are plenty of new attractions for guests to sink their teeth into, with a lot more planned to open in the future. The main attractions at the moment include World of Frozen, the second version of an attraction first launched at Hong Kong Disneyland in 2023. World of Frozen brings visitors face-to-face with Anna, Elsa, and Olaf, as well as offering an extraordinarily high-tech animatronics experience, Frozen Ever After.

Adventure Way, the park's central avenue, has been completely redeveloped, with new technology, new lights, new rides, and new food concessions. Adventure Way also features Raiponce Tangled Spin, Disney's first-ever "Tangled"-themed attraction. The new park is designed to be more immersive and more engaging than the original Walt Disney Studios Park. "The transition from Walt Disney Studios Park to Disney Adventure World reflects a major evolution in guest expectations," Natacha Rafalski, president of Disneyland Paris, told Forbes. "Originally focused on behind-the-scenes storytelling, the park has been reimagined to offer fully immersive experiences, as today's visitors want to step into their favorite stories rather than observe how they are made."

The new park also delivers a particularly French take on Disney, with avenues and parks echoing classic destinations in Paris like the Tuileries Gardens, and Art Nouveau design style featured prominently. New attractions, rides, and experiences, like Lion King Land, are also expected.

For many people, this redevelopment is long overdue. Walt Disney Studios Park has had a reputation since its opening as one of Disney's most disappointing parks, and was often described as Disney's worst attraction. Visitors felt that it did not live up to the grandeur and excitement that people expected from a Disney destination, and that it compared unfavorably with Disneyland Paris next door.

Guests described Walt Disney Studios Park as sparse and limited, with an unsatisfactory selection of rides, and too much focus on shows and demonstrations, rather than an experience that drew them in and made them feel part of the magic. Over the years, Disney made several attempts to address these criticisms, launching new areas and attractions like Ratatouille: L'Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy and the Avengers Campus. However, concerns remained, which is why a more comprehensive redevelopment was felt to be necessary.

Even as one of Disney's least-popular parks, Walt Disney Studios Park was the 20th most-visited theme park in the world, and the fourth most-visited in Europe in 2024 (per the Themed Entertainment Association), so the new offering has big shoes to fill. With huge crowds at previews and during the first few weeks of opening, it certainly seems like Disney Adventure World is well on its way.