Disneyland Paris

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 12^th 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 14^th 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.