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Disneyland Paris Unveils Spectacular Nighttime Show Using Paris Games Laser Technology

A firework display lights up the castle of Sleeping Beauty in Disneyland, in Marne-la-Vallee, east of Paris, Friday Jan. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
A firework display lights up the castle of Sleeping Beauty in Disneyland, in Marne-la-Vallee, east of Paris, Friday Jan. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
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Disneyland Paris Unveils Spectacular Nighttime Show Using Paris Games Laser Technology

A firework display lights up the castle of Sleeping Beauty in Disneyland, in Marne-la-Vallee, east of Paris, Friday Jan. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
A firework display lights up the castle of Sleeping Beauty in Disneyland, in Marne-la-Vallee, east of Paris, Friday Jan. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

A cutting-edge nighttime show at Disneyland Paris is heralding a bold new chapter for Europe’s most-visited theme park, as a raft of ambitious developments comes to fruition under a 2 billion euro ($2.05 billion) expansion plan.
The overhaul includes the completed revamp of the luxury Disneyland Hotel, the upcoming renaming and doubling in size of Walt Disney Studios Park, and the much-anticipated arrival of The World of Frozen and a first-of-its-kind The Lion King land — cementing the resort’s gains after the wilderness years for theme parks during the pandemic, The Associated Press said.
Disney Tales of Magic Disney Tales of Magic was unveiled this month. It's a dazzling 20-minute spectacle blending drones, synchronized fountains, high-definition projections and ultra-bright lasers.
“For the very first time, not only will we be projecting onto Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, but also Main Street USA,” said Tim Lutkin, artistic director of the production, referring to the park’s main commercial artery lined with boutiques and merchandise.
The show’s standout feature — ultra-bright lasers — has been used only once before, at the Paris 2024 Olympics at the Eiffel Tower during the iconic opening ceremony that featured a performance with Celine Dion. The lasers, which travel 23 miles (37 kilometers), deliver extraordinary power while remaining safe near crowds.
“The Paris Olympics used it first. But we saw it first,” said Dana Harrel, executive entertainment director at Disneyland Paris.
Featuring Disney and Pixar tales brought to life by drone-made 3D figures, synchronized fountains and a 100-piece orchestra, the show is elevated further by the original anthem “Live in Magic.”
Audiences have been awestruck. “It’s marvelous. We’ve never seen such a beautiful light show,” said Sacha Tellier, a 33-year-old mother visiting with her family. “It gave me goosebumps,” added Nathan Ruiz, a graphic designer from Madrid. “The combination of music, lights, and the drones felt like pure magic. I’ve been to Disney before, but this show is on another level.”
The spectacle also reflects Disney’s storytelling evolution. Lutkin noted the shift from classic ballgown tales to modern narratives like “Encanto” and “Inside Out 2,” which delves into deeper themes such as anxiety and depression. The latter’s unexpected box office success, Lutkin said, proved that “the world and its relationship with Disney are ready to embrace more complex stories.” This shift is mirrored in the show’s selection of movies, spanning Disney’s timeless classics and emotionally resonant modern hits.
Disney Adventure World At the heart of Disneyland Paris’ expansion is the transformation of Walt Disney Studios Park, doubling in size and reimagined as Disney Adventure World. Opening in spring 2025, a new park entrance, World Premiere, will greet visitors with the glamour of a Hollywood film premiere, leading them into immersive themed areas.
“These projects reflect our commitment to innovation and storytelling,” said Natacha Rafalski, head of Disneyland Paris, adding that they will further strengthen it as Europe’s top tourist destination.
Already Europe’s most-visited theme park and France’s top tourist attraction outdrawing the Louvre, Disneyland Paris welcomed over 10 million visitors in 2023.
The expansion includes two eagerly awaited themed lands. The World of Frozen, debuting in 2026, will transport guests to Arendelle with a central lake hosting water performances and the Frozen Ever After boat ride, alongside themed dining, shopping, and accommodations. Meanwhile, The Lion King land will bring the Pride Lands to life with a log flume cascading from Pride Rock and encounters with beloved characters like Simba and Timon.
Life after the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic delivered one the toughest challenges to Disneyland Paris, as with all resort parks around the world, forcing an eight-month closure in 2020 and another in 2021.
But Disney doubled down.
The ongoing €2 billion expansion is part of a $60 billion global investment announced in September 2023, aiming to redefine Disney parks, cruises and attractions over the next decade.
A centerpiece of the Paris overhaul is the revamped Disneyland Hotel, with suites themed around classic Disney royalty.
Birth and evolution Disneyland Paris opened in 1992 under its original name, Euro Disney Resort. Situated just outside Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, it marked Disney’s first foray into Europe. However, the park’s early years were fraught with challenges, including cultural missteps, financial struggles and lower-than-expected visitor numbers. Critics in France derided it as an American cultural invasion, dubbing it a “cultural Chernobyl.”
To reverse its fortunes, the park underwent significant rebranding, changing its name to Disneyland Paris in 1994 to emphasize its French location and connection to the capital. Over time, strategic changes, including the addition of new attractions and a shift in marketing, helped the resort recover. It is now a cornerstone of Disney’s global operations.

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Ari Aster Made a Movie About Polarized America. ‘Eddington’ Has Been Polarizing

Pedro Pascal, from left, director Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix pose for photographers at the photo call for the film "Eddington" at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP)
Pedro Pascal, from left, director Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix pose for photographers at the photo call for the film "Eddington" at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP)
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Ari Aster Made a Movie About Polarized America. ‘Eddington’ Has Been Polarizing

Pedro Pascal, from left, director Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix pose for photographers at the photo call for the film "Eddington" at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP)
Pedro Pascal, from left, director Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix pose for photographers at the photo call for the film "Eddington" at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP)

A Post-it note sat near Ari Aster while he wrote “Eddington”: “Remember the phones.”

“Eddington” may be set during the pandemic, but the onset of COVID-19 isn't its inciting incident. Outside the fictional New Mexico town, a data center is being built. Inside Eddington, its residents — their brains increasingly addled by the internet, social media, smartphones and whatever is ominously emanating from that data center — are growing increasingly detached from one another, and from each other’s sense of reality.

“We’re living in such a weird time and we forget how weird it is,” Aster says. “Things have been weird ever since we were able to carry the internet on our person. Ever since we began living in the internet, things have gotten weirder and weirder.”

“It’s important to keep reminding ourselves: This is weird.”

Moviegoers have grown accustomed to expecting a lack of normalcy in Aster's movies. His first three films — “Hereditary,” “Midsommar,” “Beau Is Afraid” — have vividly charted strange new pathways of dread and deep-rooted anxiety. Those fixations make Aster, a master of nightmare and farce, uniquely suited to capturing the current American moment.

“Eddington,” which A24 releases in theaters Friday, may be the most prominent American movie yet to explicitly wrestle with social and political division in the US. In a showdown between Joaquin Phoenix’s bumbling right-wing sheriff and Pedro Pascal’s elitist liberal mayor, arguments over mask mandates, Black Lives Matter protests and elections spiral into a demented Western fever dream.

At a time when our movie screens are filled with escapism and nostalgia, “Eddington” dares to diagnose something frightfully contemporary. Aster, in a recent interview at an East Village coffee shop he frequents, said he couldn’t imagine avoiding it. “To not be talking about it is insane,” he said.

“I’m desperate for work that’s wrestling with this moment because I don’t know where we are. I’ve never been here before,” says Aster. “I have projects that I’ve been planning for a long time. They make less sense to me right now. I don’t know why I would make those right now.”

Predictably polarizing

“Eddington,” appropriately enough, has been divisive. Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Aster’s film has had one of the most polarizing receptions of the year among critics. Even in Cannes, Aster seemed to grasp its mixed response. “I don’t know what you think,” he told the crowd.

Some critics have suggested Aster's film is too satirical of the left. “Despite a pose of satirical neutrality, he mainly seems to want to score points off mask-wearers, young progressives, anti-racists and other targets beloved of reactionaries,” wrote The New Yorker’s Justin Chang. For The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote: “Aster knows how to grab your attention, but if he thinks he’s saying something about America, the joke is on him.”

Aster was expecting a divisive reaction. But he disputes some of the discourse around “Eddington.”

“I heard one person say it was harder on the left than the right, and I think that’s pretty disingenuous,” he says. “In the film, one side is kind of annoying and frustrating and hypocritical, and the other side is killing people and destroying lives.”

For Aster, satirizing the left doesn’t mean he doesn’t share their beliefs. “If there’s no self-reflection,” he says, “how are we ever going to get out of this?”

Capturing ‘what was in the air’

Aster began writing “Eddington” in June 2020. He set it in New Mexico, where his family moved when he was 10. Aster wanted to try to capture the disconnect that didn’t start with the pandemic but then reached a surreal crescendo. He styled “Eddington” as a Western with smartphones in place of guns — though there are definitely guns, too.

“The dread I was living with suddenly intensified. And to be honest, I’ve been living with that level of dread ever since,” Aster says. “I just wanted to see if I could capture what was in the air.”

Scripts that dive headlong into politics are far from regular in today’s corporate Hollywood. Most studios would be unlikely to distribute a film like “Eddington,” though A24, the indie powerhouse, has stood behind Aster even after 2023's $35 million-budgeted “Beau Is Afraid” struggled at the box office. A24 has shown a willingness to engage with political discord, backing last year’s speculative war drama, “Civil War.”

And Aster's screenplay resonated with Phoenix, who had starred in “Beau Is Afraid,” and with Pascal. In Cannes, Pascal noted that “it’s very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this.” For Phoenix, “Eddington” offered clarity and empathy for the pandemic experience.

“We were all terrified and we didn’t fully understand it. And instead of reaching out to each other in those moments, we kind of became antagonistic toward each other and self-righteous and certain of our position,” Phoenix earlier told The AP. “And in some ways it’s so obvious: Well, that’s not going to be helpful.”

‘A time of total obscenity’

Since Aster made “Eddington” — it was shot in 2024 — the second administration of President Donald Trump has ushered in a new political reality that Aster acknowledges would have reshaped his film.

“I would have made the movie more obscene,” he says. “And I would have made it angrier. I think the film is angry. But I think we’re living in a time of total obscenity, beyond anything I’ve seen.”

“Eddington” is designed to be argued over. Even those who find its first half well-observed may recoil at the violent absurdism of its second half. The movie, Aster says, pivots midway and, itself, becomes paranoid and gripped by differing world views. You can almost feel Aster struggling to bring any coherence to his, and our, modern-day Western.

But whatever you make of “Eddington,” you might grant it’s vitally important that we have more films like it — movies that don’t tiptoe around today in period-film metaphor or avoid it like the plague. Aster, at least, doesn’t sound finished with what he started.

“I’m feeling very heartbroken about where we are, and totally lost, so I’m looking for ways to go into those feelings but also to challenge them. What can be done?” Aster says. “Because this is a movie about people who are unreachable to each other and completely siloed off, or fortressed off, a question that kept coming to me was: What would an olive branch look like? How do we find a way to reengage with each other?”