Euro Disney? Never Heard Of It, But I Do Know Disneyland Paris!
Its the place everyone dreams of going: Disneyland Paris covers over 138 acres and
is built in keeping with the other Disney parks, making the layout familiar to people who have been to the other parks in Orlando, Tokyo and Anaheim. Disneyland Paris consists of two theme parks, retail, dining, entertainment districts and seven Disney-owned hotels. It is the second resort to open outside of the United States the first being the Tokyo based one - but is the first that is owned and operated by Disney. Disneyland Paris is situated in a perfect location its nearby the Capital but lies just on the outskirts of it, but with that said the options of where to stay are endless you could choose to stay at Disney but a more cheaper option is to stay outside of it. Being near to Paris you could find various places some would say the best villas in France.Disneyland in Anaheim was successful so plans to build a European extension were afoot. These first started around 1975, coincidently nine years after Walt Disney died. The countries Britain, Italy, Spain and France were all considered as possible locations, but Britain and Italy were quickly dropped from the list as potential sites because they lacked the necessary large expanse of flat land. It was thought that the mostly likely site would be the Alicante area of Spain because it had a climate that was similar to that of Florida's for most of the year, however it was ruled out as well because of the Mistral winds. After much though, Marne-la-Vallee in France won the location, due to its close proximity to Paris (the capital of France) and because of its central positioning within Western Europe. They thought this would be crucial to the park's future success if it was to attract sufficient visitors. It was calculated that the location puts the park within 4 hours (driving) for around 68 million people and 2 hours (flying) for a further 200 million.
The chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company at the time, Michael Eisner, signed the first letter of agreement with the French government in December 1985 and Robert Fitzpatrick, a key organiser of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was appointed as the Euro Disney President, this was the when the park finally started to take shape, with the construction on the 2,000 hectare site in August 1988.
In Disney 1990 Espace Euro Disney (an information centre) was opened to the public to show what Disney were constructing. This was followed by the opening of the casting centre on 1st September 1991 in order to start recruiting the hundreds of Cast Members that would ultimately operate the park's many attractions. In March 1992 Euro Disney opened to employees for testing also main sponsors and their families were invited. The park finally opened on April 12th 1992 but the expected prediction of 500,000 visitors was wrong as barely 50,000 people turned up - this was partly due to protests from French locals who thought that it would harm the French culture. Overall this was a disappointing start for the Disney Company.
The misery continued as the parks first phase of development went over Budget and cost 22 billion French Francs to complete, and the next few months attendance figures didnt improve much. By the time of May the park only attracted around 25,000 visitors a day instead of the 60,000 that they predicted. Over the next year things were getting worse, which wasnt helped by a European Recession that hit property prices in 1992 and that the dollar was cheap so most would forego Europe in favour for Floridas Park. There were other problems and by the start of 1994 the company had serious financial difficulties, which lead to a meeting with banks and backers and the banks agreed to help them keep them stable for a few years.
By August of 1994 things started to change for the better as the entire parks hotels were fully booked during the peak season. The park rode on this resurgence by changing the name from Euro Disney to Disneyland Paris. They say the new name connects more with the romantic city of Paris and to not associate it with Poor reputation that comes with the phrase Euro Disney. The end of the year figures showed promising signs as they the previous years 650 million loss was reduced to around 200 million. By the end of March 1995 the company predicted that the resort may break-even by the end of the year, this was helped by the fact that a new attraction and one of the most popular rides (still today) space mountain was opened. In August 1995 Disneyland Paris and the Euro Disney resort complex announce a 22m profit, followed by the first annual operating profit announced in November 1995 and since then its been smooth sailing.
Many of the attractions of the park are refined (some would say superior) versions of those that appear in the parks that were made before it. For example the Space Mountain in Orlando is slower and in fact is the fastest of all the five versions of the ride plus features a launch cannon start to the ride.
Disney Land Paris is Frances and Europe's Biggest tourist spot, over 15 million people visited the resort in 2009. It just goes to show that sometimes you really do need to wish upon a star.
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