“We must make dreams come true”

Disneyland Paris has several official Disney hotels. You have the very luxurious Disneyland Hotel, which is the entrance to the park, but there is also a lake with a few hotels around: Hotel New York, Newport Bay Club and Sequoia Lodge, with Cheyenne, Santa Fe and further on Davy Crockett Ranch . .

The New York hotel has been called Hotel New York – The Art of Marvel since it reopened in June. And this innovation did not only concern the hanging paintings. We spoke to Walt Disney Imagineering Paris Chief Art Designer Sylvie Massara, who oversaw the entire design portion of the project.

Sylvie Massara

Sylvie Massara has worked for Disney since 1988. “I worked on Fantasyland at Disneyland in California, including the castle. Very important. I love that at Disney there is so much room for detail and that guests can fully immerse themselves in a theme. I ended up working for Disney hotels in 1996. ”

“I’m proud to call myself an Imagineer. After all, it revolves around two words: imagine (imagine something) and engineer (engineer). So you shouldn’t just be dreaming – although dreaming is very important. -, you should also make customers’ dreams come true.

Imaginaries do it by using, among other things, new technologies. One of the Imagineers’ most famous inventions is animatronics, mobile robots that sometimes appear real and are used in attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean. Sylvie: “This is also what I appreciate at Walt Disney, pushing new technologies to make dreams come true.”

“It’s important that everything is built into a theme. Not only does it have to look good and tell an interesting story, but it also has to make guests and actors (Disney employees) proud of the space. Imagineer’s role in making people dream and making those dreams come true.

Hotel Renovatie New York – The Art of Marvel

If Sylvie is leading a large-scale project such as the renovation of the Hotel New York – The Art of Marvel, she does not go from meeting to meeting. “I design a lot and do almost everything by hand. I love to draw, so I do it all the time. Also for the new project I’m working on, which is the renovation of the Disneyland Hotel. This renovation is less important than that of the New York hotel. ”

“Here we rebuilt the whole hotel, we dismantled everything down to the concrete walls. Then you have to look at what has a link: Marvel and New York have indeed been brought together quickly, the heroes of the comics , movies and series, art, an art gallery in New York, and I also wanted to make it elegant, because it’s a four star hotel.

When you now enter the hotel lobby, you will immediately notice that it is quite high up. You almost automatically throw your head back to take a good look at what you are actually seeing. This is exactly what Sylvie and her team were looking for.

“New York is a very vertical city: you look up. I tried to translate that verticality here inside the hotel with the tall, square windows, with the comics on them and the light coming in from behind at the same time: it’s all Marvel and all of New York. In addition, many typical New York materials were used, such as certain types of stone and wood.

The soul of the work

Sylvie herself is not necessarily an avid comic book reader. “I have a lot of information to work with and work with the team in the US including Scot Drake and Caroline May (both Imagineers). My role was to honor the artists and we had so much exclusive art that we were happy to bring this diversity together at this hotel. So I worked closely with the team in America to make sure that art and architecture went well together: right down to the colors.

Sylvie thinks it worked well. “The diversity in art is very pleasant to see. For example, look at the story in the lobby: we used the art of comics with the design of the movies. It is important to always find the soul of a work of art and what a work of art conveys, in order to make them fit together so well.

It’s not that everything went so well, as Sylvie faced considerable challenges. “It seems easier to build something in an existing building, but you can’t do everything you want. I can’t push the walls aside. In the Skyline Bar, for example, it was very narrow at the back at first, so someone from the cast would have a hard time functioning properly. We then found a solution to make everything run smoothly from rear to front.

There are also elements of which Sylvie is very proud, in part because they came with the necessary challenges. “I love the lighting in the Manhattan Restaurant, this large sculpture was cool to build. It was not easy to fit the whole 1,100 kilos in the ceiling, but the atmosphere it gives is great. ”

Want to know more about Hotel New York – The Art of Marvel? Then read: How Disney’s Hotel New York is now Marvel’s Mecca.