Disneyland
Paris
Disneyland Paris has
been open for twenty years now and is still going strong. There was a
plan to build a European Disneyland park as far back has1975. That
was only nine years after Walt Disney died. It was considered that
Britain, Spain, Italy and France would be the most likely place to
build the park. Eventually France was chosen to be the best place to
have the park built. This was because France had expansive flat land
that would make it suitable for the park. The site in question was Mar-la-Valli it was close to Paris and very central within western
Europe. This meant that the location was only four hours drive from
an estimated 68 million visitors and only two hours flight from
another potential 300 million visitors.
It would take another
tens years before anything really started to move on. Then an
agreement was draw up and signed by Mr Michael Eisner and the French
government in 1985. Then a Mr Robert Fitzpatrick was appointed as the
President of Euro Disney and the park started to take shape has the
first 2,000 hectares started to be constructed in August 1988. Then
in 1990 Espace Euro Disney was opened to provide the public with
information on the park and a year later a casting centre was open to
start recruiting the staff for the park.
Disneyland Paris opened
its doors to the public on April 12th 1992. The opening
day was not a big success failing to reach the expected half million
visitors. Instead only 50,000 visitors actually turned up on the
first day. The company where very disappointed with these figures.
The first part of the park complex had over run its budget massively,
with the final bill being a whopping 22 million French Francs. The
fact that over the next six to eight months the park failed to reach
its targets for visitors. The park was receiving 25,000 visitors a
day which was far short of its predicted figures of 60,000 visitors a
day. This lead to the stock price of Euro Disney falling sharply
almost wiping a third of its value. The European recession of 1992
did not help matters. This lead the company into some serious
financial troubles. The fact at the time the very cheap dollar meant
that people were being persuading to go to the Florida to see the
original Walt Disney World. The park carried on losing money over
the next couple of years.
The company's money problems kept on growing and by the beginning of 1994 EuroDisney was on the verge of bankruptcy and a series of crisis talks took place between the banks and shareholders. The Disneyland team had to try and convince the banks to restructure the loans or risk lose all the money they had invested in the park. The banks would be left with a bankrupt theme park and worthless real estate. This carried on until the banks finally agreed to Disney’s terms on March 14th 1994. The banks wrote off the next two years of interest payments and the Walt Disney Company wrote off 210 million dollars of services bills. In the summer of 1994 the park started to turn its self around and from August onwards the parks hotels started to become fully booked. In October that year the park change its name from EuroDisney to Disneyland Paris. The park then went on to open new rides and in 1995 the park made its first profit of 22 million GBP. Disneyland Paris is now celebrating its twenty year and all those money worries are far behind them.
I went there earlier
this year and thou it was cold and damp the place has a very magical
feel about it. The place is great to take your kids, grandchildren or
your love ones. Go there and relive your childhood has you walk
around the park. The enchanted castle is a must see for anyone you
have seen this castle on everything that is Disney, but to see it in
real life is something else. I would recommend to anyone to visit
Disneyland Paris it is a wonderful place.
