Fear.
A couple of months ago, on a cool, dreary, and rainy day (before Paris turned into an incinerator during the heatwave), and for the first time ever since moving to Paris six years ago, I went to Disneyland Paris with my partner.
Having visited both Anaheim and Orlando as a child growing up in the States, I went to Disneyland Paris with rather low expectations, (very arrogantly) thinking to myself that it would be a half-rate version of what I grew up with in the USA.
I mean, how can you beat Anaheim?
Of course, I was very wrong, and I would later find out from my American friends who had also gone to the Paris park, that Disneyland Paris had not only been thoroughly enjoyed by them and their children, but that they even consider it superior to Disneyland in California, telling me the Paris theme park was far cleaner, better organized, and had shorter wait times for the rides. For all those who have been to both, whether or not you agree, I will add my voice to the discourse and say that I was genuinely impressed with Disneyland Paris and would recommend going if you are able.
My partner had mapped out our park attractions itinerary with a certain fastidiousness that I appreciate about him, whereas I busied myself with making a shortlist of all the places to eat and what was ranked best for lunch and dinner in the park (big priority for me).
We knew that we were going shortly after the grand opening of Disney Adventure World (formerly Walt Disney Studios Park), which mainly features an expanded Frozen world, with new restaurants and other attractions. I was not terribly interested in the Frozen world as I have never seen the movie (sorry, Disney), and the last time I was at Disneyland Anaheim was as a teenager or very young adult, so for me, the main attractions were all the classic, nostalgic rides I had grown up with.
However, there was one unique Paris ride that I could not miss.
“We have to do the Ratatouille ride,” I told my partner, to which he graciously agreed. He had never been on it, and I warned him that I heard it was “lame,” bearing in mind that the ride was designed to be for all ages, including very young children. It became a “cannot miss” point on our checklist; I was so excited to experience this ride from the movie that caused me to cry on the near-empty COVID plane that took me to Paris.
Thanks to our meticulous joint planning, everything went smoothly. On the train ride from Paris to the park (roughly 40ish minutes of travel), we ate some excellent sandwiches I had made that morning, having insisted the day before that I go to the Italian épicerie for the “nice” mortadella and sun-dried-tomato spread, refusing to let us start our day with soggy and stale boulangerie sandwiches (have I mentioned food is a priority for me?).
We arrived right as the park opened and beelined for the first rides at the classic and original Disneyland Park, where wait times were near zero, quickly knocking out Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain, Star Tours: The Adventure Continues (one of my personal favorite rides, we went back two more times that day), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, Pirates of the Caribbean, Phantom Manor (a beloved ride from my childhood that also promptly caused a young boy next to us in the “elevator” to get scared and begin hysterically crying, poor child), and so many others. I was stunned to find the rides were exactly as I remembered them, taking me back to childhood when I first experienced Disneyland as a fresh European immigrant in America. The nostalgia was hitting hard, and I was also thoroughly tickled by the “Frenglish” of each ride, characters often speaking a mix of French and English to each other.
After we were satisfied with all the classic rides, we meandered over to the new Disney Adventure World park, where we got thoroughly rattled on the Avengers Assemble: Flight Force ride, and I even managed to get a pretty high score from shooting spider webs on the Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure ride. I had told my partner I really wanted to eat lunch at Agrabah Café, but since we were on the other side, in the other park, we settled on the Stark Factory (which I did not love and don’t necessarily recommend, sorry Disney).
But then, finally, we agreed it was time to check out Ratatouille.
My partner had been mildly annoyed; he had organized our route to completely optimize wait times in the lines, having us zoom all over the park as soon as an opportunity arose for a 20-minute wait or less ride (unheard of at Anaheim).
The Ratatouille ride wait time was quite long - a whopping 45 minutes - due to it’s accessability for all ages. But he knew it was important and symbolic to me, and so we waited, slowly shuffling forward through the line, a rather surreal experience seeing the Disney-fied version of “Paris” around us. I think in the end the wait was actually an hour, but we had finally, finally made it to the portion of the line where we were “on” the Paris rooftops, Chef Gusteau’s voice booming out to welcome us.
I was pretty excited; I felt this was a moment culminating in, I don’t know, something, some big symbolic “I made it, I did it, I built my life in Paris” gratification.
We continued to inch our way forward, at last arriving at the start of the ride, a Disneyland cast member gesturing for us to go to our little rat bench, where we would sit and spin away. I clambered on, excited, and my partner sat next to me. We got the signal to lower the restraint bar and tried to do so, except it felt stuck, and as my partner tried to pull a little harder to move it down, we suddenly saw urgent waving from the workers to stop. There was a sort of a womp womp moment as we heard the ride music shut down, and suddenly the lights flickered on. I stared at my partner in disbelief.
“I swear to god, if this ride is broken now, that would be the biggest joke,” I told him.
A worker came to us at this moment and confirmed: the ride was stopped due to a technical malfunction, and we had to get off (for those wondering, my partner had not broken the ride by pulling the restraint; it was unrelated). I was absolutely stunned but couldn’t help but laugh. If the universe was trying to send me a message about Paris, this was it: as much as you may love France and Paris, as much as you may dream of living here, as much as you might romanticize a life here, this country (and city) will absolutely throw you on your ass and shit all over you.
It really was kind of perfect.
Credit to the kind cast member who gave us a card to jump to the line “if” the ride would be working again. “You can come back tomorrow,” he told us, and I had to laugh again. It would really be hysterical if, for our big planned Disney day, I couldn’t go on the one ride I really wanted to experience.
We left and stood outside in the rain, debating what to do next. My partner pulled out his phone to look at the park’s map, checking ride wait times.
“Tower of Terror is right next to us, and the wait is only ten minutes,” he told me.
I hesitated, nervous.
“I really don’t like big drops; that ride is pretty scary,” I told him, remembering as a child that out of my family, only my brother had dared to go on; I had always been too afraid.
But my partner reassured me, saying children were allowed on it (as long as they are 1,02 meters tall), that it would be fine, that it would be fun. Still hesitating, I agreed, justifying it by the extremely short wait time.
How scary could it be, really?
As we walked over and zoomed through the line area to the “hotel lobby”, I began to feel anxiety build. It won’t be that bad, I told myself, reminding myself I had been on many scary roller coasters in my life and had found them enjoyable.
This will be fun. Right?
The masterfully decorated lobby area of the ride did nothing to calm me; unease continued to build as I looked at all the amazing little details the Imagineers had placed all around to build the “lore.” Honestly, it is very cool and very well done; I felt like I had walked into a haunted Hearst Castle in the 1930s (another popular California site I enjoyed as a child). And of all the attractions at the parks, this is where I have to say the cast members were the most into it, fully embracing their roles and the ride's creepy atmosphere.
The ten-minute wait turned out to be completely inaccurate; we breezed through in something like three minutes, and I suddenly found myself facing the elevator where, far before I was ready, we were shuffled inside and instructed to stand on the carpet by a very in-character Cast Member, who morosely told us what to do, his manner and voice implying impending doom. Then we watched the very creepy video (I have personally never seen The Twilight Zone but was trying to understand everything in French) as my anxiety continued to compound.
Small break from this lovely story to mention that I have struggled with significant anxiety issues since childhood, having also had roughly 4-5 full blown panic attacks in my life (an experience I would not wish on anyone), and after much therapy and much reading about how to calm my vagus nerve and proven breathing exercises blablabla, I have a shortlist of methods in place to “try” and calm myself before things get severe.
Which brings me back to the story and the moment we exited the elevator, being shuffled to another (very short and very fast) section of the line, the real elevators now facing me; it was all moving far too fast for my comfort. I began to feel very cold and clammy, sweat forming on the palms of my hands and in my armpits; my stomach was beginning to clench hard. I wrapped my arms around myself and hugged myself for comfort, noticing that I was beginning to shake, trying to do the breathe in for six counts, exhale for six counts I had been taught by my American therapist.
It was not working.
My darling partner had his face turned away from me and was studying the (again, admittedly very cool) staging in this second line area. He remarked something about the two opposite speakers being slightly off-tempo with each other despite playing the same creepy music, blithely unaware of my state.
“Uh, baby?” I said, my teeth beginning to chatter slightly. “Can you, uh, please hold me or something? I’m a little scared.”
It was only then that my partner saw I was essentially shaking like a leaf and immediately apologized, “Oh, no, I’m so sorry, baby!” And gathered me in his arms, telling me it would be fine, it’s not that scary, look, see there are kids in the line, this isn’t so bad. I was soothed by him and grateful for his comfort, but we were still moving far too fast for my liking, and in the next minute, we were ushered up to stand directly in front of the elevator, our ride soon to begin.
If any Disney marketing employees are trawling the internet to see what’s being said about their Disney parks, let me tell you right now that the female Cast Member in charge of our particular elevator was excellent. She exuded the creepy, haunted hotel worker vibe perfectly, clearly loving every minute of her job. I was actually momentarily snapped out of my fear, taking a moment to admire her for her obvious passion for her role; it cannot be easy dealing with hundreds of people every day and repeating the same lines over and over. Much respect to her; she was genuinely amazing.
Our elevator finally arrived, and I simply thought, well, this is it.
No choice to back out now.
As we shuffled forward to our seats, I tried not to think about all the signs posted around us saying not to ride if you have heart issues, the fact that I have slightly elevated blood pressure, and have had chest pains before (my Parisian cardiologue had told me my chest pains are “anxiety-related”). I tried not to think about what it would mean if I had a heart attack, flopped over, and abruptly died on this ride as I made my way and sat down in the front row with my partner, fastening what felt like a very flimsy seatbelt over my lap. I tried not to think about how scary everything was, how truly creepy this ride was, and that I was in a metal cage about to shoot through an elevator shaft. I tried not to think about how insanely tall the building for this attraction had seemed from the outside, visible from all areas of this park.
This superb female Cast Member came back to give us our safety instructions, but did it with such dramatic gusto and atmospheric flair that I was once again temporarily knocked out of my fear, distracted by how entertaining she was and her dedication to the theatrics.
“You have all made a big mistake,” she told us gleefully, waving a finger over us with a knowing smile for the horrors we were apparently about to experience, and then instructed us to hold on to our children.
"Remember, don't scream," she said with a finger to her lips, her final, chilling words, as she backed away and the doors clamped shut in front of us. I gripped the bar next to me and looked at my boyfriend, terrified, who took my hand and told me it would be fine.
He seemed excited.
And then the ride began, with an animation I would later find out was fairly new (they had revamped the “lore” and adjusted the story to include this creepy little ghost girl. We slowly moved up, and a mirror revealed itself, showing a reflection of all of us in the ride. My heart was beating hard at this point, and I braced myself for what was about to come.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Our ride shot up at breakneck speed, triggering panicked screams from our fellow passengers, stopping abruptly for half a second, before we plummeted all the way down. The fall was so hard and so fast that I lifted completely off my seat, only the seatbelt keeping me tethered, my stomach dropping to my toes; it went on unbearably long; I genuinely thought it would never end and that I may very well die. We were then hit with another creepy animation, then hurtling upwards again at insane speed, before dropping, again and again, an absolutely horrifying experience.
I hated every single second of it.
It was so bad that at one point, after a drop, I turned to my partner and said, “I fucking hate you,” words I have never said before or since, in the history of our relationship.
I gripped his hand for dear life and the handle next to me with my other hand, as we shot upwards and downwards; unable to breathe or even scream, just willing for it to end, for it to be over. Before our final and absolutely terrifying last drop, we shot all the way up to the very top floor, a window opening to the iconic view of the park as a camera flashed in our faces.
At this point, I was experiencing genuine palpitations, my heart thudding hard and very fast in my chest; I squeezed my eyes shut and held on to my partner’s hand with all my strength, bracing myself for what was about to come and wondering if I was actually going to die, and then boom, we dropped back down for what seemed like an eternity, lifting off our seats for multiple seconds.
“Oh my god,” my partner said, laughing, as the ride finally ended, slowly lurching us back forward to the elevator door, but I was unable to speak, feeling like I wouldn’t even be able to stand up; I couldn't feel my legs. Our fabulous cast member met us as the doors reopened, and I shakily managed to stand. I gave her a grateful and breathless merci as we exited, because no matter how scary that ride was, she was doing a phenomenal job and deserves all the thanks.
“I-I c-can b-barely w-walk,” I told my partner as we exited, my teeth chattering hard, my whole body shaking violently. It felt like my legs were jelly.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” he kept repeating to me, putting his arms around me and rubbing me to try and calm me, very aware that that had been a singularly horrible experience for me.
“I-I a-am n-not okay,” I chattered, as I hobbled with him to the gift shop portion. It was there that I saw a young girl in absolute hysterics, bawling, her tear-streaked face lifted to her father in despair.
I mean, same, girl. I get it.
It had begun to rain again at that point, and we stayed briefly in the shop, as I tried to get myself to stop shaking and regain some composure, my partner continuing to apologize profusely to me because even he had not anticipated how intense that would be (of course, I do not blame him).
That ride is truly beyond terrifying.
But standing there, in that gift shop with my knees shaking so hard as I tried to calm myself, I felt a true sense of awe for this ride.
I mean, it is kind of perfection if you think about it: The creepy lobby and elevator video, the foreboding atmosphere that keeps building and building as you make your way through, the super talented Cast Members giving it their all, but most of all, the design of that ride. I was deeply impressed, and putting my terror aside, I told my boyfriend: “That ride is an engineering marvel.”
It was also then, just as I was beginning to feel normal again and the rain was subsiding, that my partner saw, to our great surprise and delight, that Ratatouille had reopened.
We didn’t have to think twice; we immediately speed-walked over to the ride, showing our jump-the-line-pass and were ushered to the fast lane; within minutes, we were finally seated in our little rat vehicle, the restraint bar this time clamping down successfully.
I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful to be on a totally non-scary ride this time, and then we were off, spinning through Remy’s world of food and kitchens, avoiding giant, sweeping brooms and the flames of the oven. It was adorable, didn’t raise my heart rate, and was the perfect cherry on top of the day.
Was it my big aha Paris moment, culminating that I had achieved (most of) my dreams by moving to Paris?
No. But it was very cute and enjoyable.
At this point, the day was winding down, we had done just about every ride we had planned, and we decided to call it, stopping for a last little crêpe at a Disney park stand right before the exit. My partner had been asking me all day if I wanted any sweet treats, and I had continuously declined. But at this moment, I decided a crêpe would be the perfect way to end the day.
“It’s impossible to mess up a crêpe,” I said to my partner confidently as we walked up to order one Nutella (for him) and one sugar (for me). I was decidedly wrong. Sorry, Disneyland Paris, those were the worst crêpes I have had in my six years of living in Paris, but I did appreciate the cute little Mickey Mouse sugar design they sprinkled on top, even though it meant every mouthful was just granulated sugar.
When we got on the RER train to zoom back to Paris, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Tower of Terror, the ride still fresh in my mind due to the sheer horror it had given me. Therefore, logically, I decided to do a deep dive while the train rattled through the suburbs, pulling out my phone to scroll through the ride’s history and development.
I was fascinated to learn that the earliest origins of the ride had actually been a blueprint for Disneyland Paris first, in the eighties, well before the park opened in 1992. The idea was scrapped for the Paris park, but instead was brought over to the California park and debuted in July 1994, after years of the Imagineering team debating various ideas of a haunted attraction to bring to the park.
Hilariously, Disney hired Otis Elevator Company to manage the vertical part of the design; for my non-American readers, this is the de facto and most famous elevator company in the U.S., and anecdotal reports on the internet quip that the elevator company had famously commented that their entire job is to make sure elevators don’t fall, so this was decidedly a first for them.
The Paris version of the ride opened in 2007, built with concrete rather than steel (as in America) due to French construction guidelines, and cost over € 180 million to construct. It features a forty-meter drop (that’s 130ft.), and I was horrified to learn that the ride is engineered to drop you at a speed faster than if you were naturally falling.
I mean, really, who wants to feel that?!
In addition to all this, a computer chooses the sequence at random, meaning the ride will also be different every time. The Paris version of the ride has now also been “re-imagined,” the version I experienced being fairly new, having debuted in 2019, with a bit of a story re-design and new drop sequences. The ride was originally built in the Paris location in an effort to attract more people to the then-struggling theme park; apparently, this strategy worked very well, and the park became significantly more popular after a serious slump.
I was rattling these facts off to my partner as I was reading them, who began to laugh.
“I think you secretly liked this ride,” he said, visibly amused.
“I definitely did not,” I responded, still remembering all too well the horrible lurch in my stomach as I fell through the air.
But I continued reading about it, and then, when we got home, I watched videos on the ingenious engineering behind it, as I was incredibly curious as to how it actually worked. The engineering is really something to be marveled at and is well-explained by this video (for all you curious engineering nerds); I felt truly validated that I am not alone in being fascinated by how this ride was designed and how it functions. It is a seriously impressive design.
I texted my girlfriends and family about our day, expressing how frightening the Tower of Terror had been for me.
“Tower of Terror is my favorite ride and always has been and always will be,” one of my best friends texted me.
“Haha, the Tower of Terror is my favorite!” My sister-in-law chimed in on a separate thread.
I was amazed by my loved one's bravery. Am I just a big baby?
The ride stayed in my head for several weeks. I looked at YouTube shorts of people enjoying it. I found a website with some of the computer drop sequences shared. I was fascinated, in a morbid way, by something that had truly rattled me (no pun intended). Even before leaving the park that day, I had requested my partner to stop with me so I could take a last look at the Tower itself (an impressive structure), watching the top floor window open to the elevator cars for the quick split-second view, before shooting to the ground, the screams of the passengers audible all through the park.
Maybe I’m drawn to the morbidity of it, or maybe I was just amazed at how much the terror of the ride had affected me, but I genuinely wanted to understand the mechanics behind it, to quasi-repeat the feeling of horror I had by watching others enjoying the ride, to wrap my brain around the whole thing so that I could minimize my own fear.
I think there is no more perfect analogy than that during a day at Disneyland Paris, my beloved Ratatouille ride had completely broken down on me after an hour of waiting in line, and the Tower of Terror - with only a few minutes of waiting - shocked me to my core and inspired weeks of ride engineering research.
If there is one thing I have done over and over in my life, it is to run towards the scariest thing and then obsessively deconstruct the experience afterwards to understand it. I try to intellectualize it, analyze it, and certainly to overcome it, but I consistently, again and again, do the single most terrifying (and often the least easy) thing.
I’ve often wondered why. Do I crave adrenaline? Change?
Maybe, but I also think that I crave knowing. I want to see the other side. I want to know what it feels like.
For most of my life, I have been afraid. I can be a high-strung, anxious mess, rarely able to truly relax, constantly self-critical and self-doubting. I am afraid of everything: mere airplane turbulence will skyrocket my anxiety, spiders will send me into panicked spirals, social events can cause me to shut down, and, of course, the persistent and lingering fear of abject failure of everything I do and try. You know, all the normal fears.
For spiders, I watch “cute” spider videos on the internet and educate myself on how they are so amazing and good for the environment. Honestly, fascinating little creatures. For turbulence, I read about the different types of air flow, airplane engineering, and crash statistics (to reinforce that the chance of crashing is statistically negligible because remember, I truly hate the feeling of falling through the air). I learned those wings can be bent to an insane degree and will still not fail.
And before moving to Paris, a dream since childhood, I spent many years looking at salaries, jobs available in my sector, apartment costs and overall general cost of living, moving logistics, even the price of Ibuprofen compared to the USA. For years, I watched videos and followed people who had moved to Paris to absorb their own experiences, practiced French daily, networked as much as I could with my French colleagues, and placed a heavy professional focus on the products from France in my career (I worked for an American company with ties to France). I would even go so far as to start my mornings with coffee and the 24-hour French news YouTube channel on blast, educating myself on the daily life and issues happening in the French world (which doubled as language learning).
But of course, none of that will truly prepare you. Just like the Ratatouille ride, when you move to a new country and start your life over, despite your best efforts, there will come a moment when everything blows up in your face. Or you don’t understand something. Or the system completely fails you because you don't have the exact knowledge on how to manage the exact part of this system correctly (despite all your years of careful research).
But having run towards that which scares me since I was quite young, having a propensity for always choosing the hardest choice (I often joke with my friends that "I like to live life on hard-mode"), I have managed, over the years, to build a quiet, innate confidence that I will survive.
I will overcome it all, and not only that, I will master the ins and outs of where I live and become an expert on all the systems (or at least, very knowledgeable, because the French tax system alone is a whopper).
I’ve done it before. Multiple times.
But permanently rebuilding your life without any local support in another country is absolutely not for the weak. And it is brutal.
After I finished school, I also had to leave where I grew up and begin again, with no support, in a very large, very expensive, and very competitive American city. I remember the first time I was in a late-night taxi with some new friends I had made, speeding towards an afterparty at someone’s apartment after a really fun night out, seeing all the beautiful buildings and expensive apartments, and yearning to feel like this city was truly my home and that I belonged there.
A few short years later, I had achieved exactly that. I had a wonderful community of friends, an apartment to myself, a fabulous job I loved, and all the local restaurants and bars knew me and greeted me like a local. I had truly found my place. There was no question I belonged. The community I formed then remains as some of the most important, beloved, and treasured people in my life today.
When I first moved to Paris, I had made a quiet promise to myself: I am going to make Paris my bitch.
I had sworn this to myself as an affectionate term, that I would one day “master” Paris as I had done with America when I first moved there, not knowing any English or having any friends, and subsequently, with all the other American cities I had started over in and lived in since that first, initial move.
While I was admittedly terrified and filled with self-doubt (and needed much encouragement from my sister and friends), deep down I had a feeling I could do it because I had the evidence of all my previous successes. The data was there. I had had the courage before. But Paris, being in a completely foreign country, is just a little bit more challenging, shall we say.
So now, I can definitely say the most apt analogy for Paris is not placidly spinning through the Ratatouille ride in your cute rat vehicle, enjoying a mild and non-threatening little show. It is not predictable, and it is absolutely not for everyone.
Rather, and much more accurately, it is the sheer terror of being yanked at crazy high speeds that defy physics, 40 meters to the ground, your stomach dropping out from under you, with barely any restraints, trying not to die of a heart attack while your heart is going crazy with palpitations, holding on to anything around you but finding you don't actually have any real, concrete support to anchor you. And when it's all over, you are shaking and want to cry, but you have to move on to the next thing, so there really is no time to process it at all.
Yes, I would say that feeling is much more on par with the feeling of restarting your life in Paris.
Of course, now the question is: Would I rather ride the Tower of Terror again or restart my life in Paris again? Which one is more difficult? Which one is more terrifying?
Easy choice.
I would repeat the experience of moving and restarting my life in Paris again and again, no hesitation, one thousand times over. I regret nothing, and it continues to be the best decision I ever made.
And as for riding Tower of Terror again?
I mean, maybe. But I would probably clear it first with my cardiologue, an excellent, top-of-the-line doctor in the field, hand-picked by me with all my expert, local knowledge and ease of navigating the French system.
The forever life/moving to Paris tip:
1. Lean into the fear and run towards that which scares you the most. Force yourself to go there before you are ready. No amount of preparation will ever be enough. It will probably work out, and you will gain immense confidence in yourself.
Or you might die.
