A brand-new chapter of the Disney Halloween Festival begins this year at Disneyland Paris. From Main Street, U.S.A. to the Théâtre du Château, a completely new set design takes centre stage, telling a brand-new story. Set designer Olivier Dusautoir reveals all the secrets…
Glowing candles, shimmering pumpkins, enchanting lights and music… there’s no doubt about it, the Disney Halloween Festival is well and truly underway at Disneyland Park! But this year, a brand-new festival is kicking off. After the pumpkin men and the pink witches, after the sunflowers and harvest festival, a brand-new story is emerging. As soon as you arrive at the Park, the splendid Tiffany-style stained-glass windows adorning Main Street Station set the tone: the Disney Villains have taken over!
Back to the disney classics
To design this new edition of the Disney Halloween Festival, set designer Olivier Dusautoir began working with the creative team – which included Serge Kypriotti and Matthieu Robin – immediately after last year’s season. Keen to develop the season whilst remaining attuned to guests’ expectations, particularly their enthusiasm for the Disney Villains, the team decided to go back to their roots when devising this new edition.
‘Very quickly, we came up with the idea of going back to basics: the Disney Villains. We took another look at the Classics, picking out all the moments when the Villains take matters into their own hands! Visually speaking, most of these scenes share a very distinctive style, which is both sombre and highly dramatic. That’s what I based my approach on.’
Building on these observations, Olivier began to develop a distinctive visual identity. ‘What matters to me, even before I start drawing, is knowing how I’m going to draw. It’s my way of getting into the spirit of the season. Just like how an actor steps into the shoes of their character by putting on their costume.
So, I gathered my set design tools and started drawing. I work mainly on a tablet, as well as on paper. I don’t do any colouring or 3D work. Just the drawing, in black and white. Drawing on what I’d seen in the Classics, I developed a style that was a little more aggressive, a little darker, with shadows, shading … I started drawing in the style of The Disney Villains, with twisted, shifting shapes that writhe and loom menacingly over the characters. From there, I had a bit of fun reimagining some iconic Halloween elements: the night, the forest, thorns, objects that come to life, trees that turn into monsters …’
Olivier also drew inspiration from the Classics when designing the festival’s new colour scheme: ‘All these scenes featuring The Disney Villains share the same colour palette. Think green, purple, turquoise blues, grey and black. So I decided to take this colour scheme and adapt it to the spirit and traditions of Halloween. Purple meets orange, and sometimes the two even blend together to create a very evocative shade of purple with a hint of orange!
A spooky spot
The décor of Théâtre du Château is emblematic of this artistic approach. Conveniently situated to the side of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and not far from the Enchanted Well, these haunted ruins do not refer to any particular animated film but provide a setting in which villains of all kinds can feel right at home. ‘By drawing on the style of animated films and focusing on the common traits shared by all the villains, we can seamlessly transition from the Evil Queen to Maleficent using the same props and colours, within a consistent aesthetic. Against the backdrop of Théâtre du Château, the dark stones, with their purple and even fluorescent highlights, lend the setting a quirky feel, as if it were night-time. You can almost see claw marks – probably from a dragon… You can even see Diablo, Maleficent’s raven, perched on one of the coats of arms. Meanwhile, the climbing ivy is reminiscent of the shifting vegetation in Snow White’s nightmare and brings a sense of life to the whole scene. The setting is a character in its own right. Our guests will be able to spot Maleficent, or the Evil Queen there, but they’ll enjoy taking photos of it for its own sake just as much.’
Candles… and more!
Other iconic features of this new décor include around forty pumpkins in a unique design and more than 130 candles, around sixty of which are arranged on the roof of Main Street Station alone. ‘It’s a Halloween classic that we hadn’t really made the most of in the past, but which really comes into its own here.’ Designed in collaboration with lighting designer Adrien Mourey, they cast a spellbinding glow over Main Street as night falls.
Some of them clearly resemble our iconic characters. To celebrate Halloween, the residents of Main Street came up with the idea of organising a candle-carving competition featuring characters such as Goofy and Donald – a way of adding a touch of mischief to this joyfully spooky celebration!
A terribly victorian Halloween
Another decorative feature much loved by the residents of Main Street are the buntings – those banners and other hanging decorations typical of the Victorian tradition – which can be found behind Main Street Station and on the streetlamps along the street. The streetlamps also feature Mickey Mouse heads made from acanthus leaves. ‘Once widely used in ancient architecture, acanthus leaves are just as common in the Victorian style. The difference is that ours are highly stylised and painted with blue, green and turquoise highlights.’
But above all, guests will certainly notice the elegant, paper-cut-style silhouettes of Villains on these very lampposts, in the style of the silhouette artists one sometimes finds near Main Street Motors. Ten Disney villains have been highlighted in this way and incorporated into the town’s décor in the form of medallions. It has to be said that the dandyish air of Dr. Facilier or the Queen of Hearts fits in perfectly with the spirit of the place!
Teamwork
Creating all these decorations was an adventure in itself, bringing together the expertise of the artisans at Disneyland Paris with that of external companies. Around a quarter of the decorations were produced by the workshops at Disneyland Paris, notably the show decoration workshop and the drapery workshop. The rest was produced by workshops based in the Paris region.
for example, a true centrepiece of all these new decorations, the imposing medallion at Main Street U.S.A. station was crafted by Paradis Expansion, based in Crécy-la-Chapelle and a long-standing supplier of the resort – to whom we owe other iconic features of the resort, such as those in Ratatouille: The Adventure and Cars ROAD TRIP.
‘As well as the design, my role also involves coordinating the production of the decorations,’ explains Olivier. We worked in collaboration with three external workshops. Given that each of them has its own expertise and its own artists, the link between them all is essential to ensure they are all in sync with one another. This is particularly true when working with light. When an object is backlit, its colour changes. We must therefore paint each decorative element, whether it is lit or unlit, and ensure that the colour is consistent across all the designs.’
And once the components were created, it was time to move on to the installation – always at night! Approximately 15 days of set-up were needed to get everything ready for 26 September, the festival’s opening day!
Feel the thrill
Having given free rein to his sense of wonder during the Christmas season – particularly with Mickey’s Dazzling Christmas Parade – Olivier Dusautoir makes no secret of his delight at returning to Halloween. ‘When I joined the Set Design department at Disneyland Paris in the early 2000s, I assisted all the set designers working there at the time. I had no idea that, a few years later, I would be the one in charge of the festival’s set design! I’m really delighted to have been entrusted with this season and to have had the opportunity to create something new. It’s a truly exciting challenge!’
And it’s not over yet! This year is merely the prelude to a wider transformation of the festival. ‘I can’t reveal everything just yet, but the story we’ve come up with is a sort of multi-layered tale featuring both our VIPs and the Disney Villains. We have identified a very interesting direction which will enable us to develop the Disney Halloween Festival in a completely new way as the seasons progress. Every detail we see today has therefore been designed to form part of an even broader narrative that will grow and expand year on year. It’s definitely going to be a very different Halloween indeed!’
The Unlucky Nugget Saloon, more bewitching than ever
In Frontierland, The Lucky Nugget Saloon is once again transformed into The Unlucky Nugget Saloon, inspired by the world of Phantom Manor. The venue invites food lovers to revisit the site of Melanie Ravenswood’s wedding reception, which was never celebrated.
After the strong enthusiasm sparked by The Unlucky Nugget Saloon — a temporary Phantom Manor-inspired reimagining of The Lucky Nugget Saloon — Imagineers have chosen to expand the experience for this year’s Halloween season to include the restaurant’s first floor and surrounding area. A portrait gallery has been installed in the mezzanine, featuring some particularly familiar faces that are sure to delight Phantom Manor fans.
“With these new sets, we want to keep enriching the story for guests who already enjoyed The Unlucky Nugget Saloon last year. We’ve also added new lighting and sound effects, as well as an abandoned guestbook containing messages from mysterious people, perhaps recognisable ones, addressed to the bride-to-be!” said Thomas Levert, Show Designer at Walt Disney Imagineering Paris.
Just a few steps from The Unlucky Nugget Saloon, Last Chance Cafe has also joined in Melanie Ravenswood’s wedding celebration, complete with decorations and bunting proclaiming “Celebrating the Ravenswoods” — now weathered and worn, since the wedding ultimately never took place. The popcorn kiosk and the surrounding areas of Thunder Mesa have also received new themed decorations, including a flower-covered wedding arch, reflecting the initial excitement over the wedding of the town’s most influential family.
