Interview Didier Ghez, Author of Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality
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Lee MacDonald: Can you describe Disneyland Paris - From Sketch to Reality and its content?

Didier Ghez: Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality is a beautiful large format art-book (9 x 12 inches) - hardbound with dust jacket - all-color, 320 pages and 750 illustrations including 250 concept paintings coming directly from Walt Disney Imagineering.

Double-page detailing the whole creation process of Space Mountain.
The reader will discover the first concepts of "Discovery Mountain",
the rare rendering of the "Blue Moon Mining Co.",
and one of the Imagineers working on the model of the attraction

From Sketch to Reality also features all the famous and breathtaking attraction posters that one can see below Main Street railroad station, all the futuristic posters from Discovery Arcade, all of Marc Davis' drawings created for "Pirates of the Caribbean", etc, as well as dozens of unheard before stories about the creation of the park and its hidden details.

There are two different editions of the book: a regular one and a collector’s edition. The collector’s edition includes a printing of the whole book on very luxurious paper, a limited print run of 2 000 copies and special prints reproducing four splendid concept paintings created by the artists of Walt Disney Imagineering for the new attractions of the Walt Disney Studios!

LM: How long did it take you to publish this book?

DG: It took five years from the start of the project to the publication date, as long as it took to create and build Disneyland Paris. It was a very complex project!

LM: Did you get much cooperation from Disney?

DG: We had access to all of Imagineering’s art library and have been able to look at all of the artwork from Walt Disney Imagineering and choose from it (there are 250 concept drawings in the book). I was also authorized to interview all of the Imagineers that I wanted. I actually interviewed 75 of them in 2 weeks!

LM: How did you get the idea of making a book about the creation of Disneyland Paris?

DG: Well, I happen to be a Disney enthusiast and have been a Disney enthusiast for many, many years. I am 29 and my passion for Disney started when I was around 7. In fact, I often say that if someone were to look at my red cells, they would probably see that they have Mickey ears (laughs). When I was 7 I collected "Le Journal de Mickey" (the French Mickey Magazine), a few years later, when I was 15, I discovered the Disney fan clubs in the US: the National Fantasy Fan Club and the Mouse Club. It was a complete revelation: there were others like me!

An other example of the creation process with this double-page
coming from the long section dedicated to Phantom Manor.
Rare rendering, picture of the first version of the model,
picture of Imagineer Jeff Burke, and a picture of Phantom Manor today.

Around that same time, I started to want to know a lot more about the people who created the magic. So I managed to get a trainee work at Disney France to understand better the Walt Disney Company and I also suggested to some US magazines like Storyboard, Persistence of Vision and Animation Magazine to become their European contributor. That was when I started writing for them about the Disney park that was about to open in Paris. That was also when I started meeting Disney artists like the Brizzi brothers at Walt Disney Feature Animation in Paris.

One year before Disneyland Paris (EuroDisneyland still at the time) opened, I had the chance to tour the construction site with Disney employees. Then when the castle was unveiled, 6 months before the Grand Opening, I was also there to cover the event for Storyboard. I spent most of Grand Opening night discussing with Dave Smith, Disney’s archivist and in 1995, when Space Mountain was launched, I spent 3 hours interviewing Tony Baxter (DLP’s head creator), which was one of the best moments in my life.

So, when Alain Littaye, a French journalist and publisher asked me if I was interested in working with him on a book about the creation of Disneyland Paris, in which he would do the art direction and I would be in charge of the research and of writing the text, the decision was not difficult to take. It was the project I had waited all my life to work on.