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.

Butlin's Holiday Camp

Butlin’s Holidays

A

British institution

History of Billy Butlin

Billy Butlin was born William Heygate Colbourne Butlin in Cape Town, South Africa on the 29^th September 1899. Butlin’s father was the son of a clergyman who had been sent to South Africa as a sort of punishment for being the black sheep of the family. Billy’s mother, Bertha Hill was the daughter of a baker turned fairground, traveling showmen. The marriage between his parents did not last very long and Billy’s mother soon found herself, young Billy and his brother living back in Bristol England with Bertha’s sister Jessie. Soon after arriving in Bristol Bertha decided to spend the summer traveling around different fairgrounds running a gingerbread stall for her brother, whilst her sister look after the two young boys. Unfortunately soon after they arrive back in England, Billy’s brother sadly died of infantile paralysis. This prompted Bertha to take Billy with her on her travels. During his younger years Billy Butlin travelled to many different places around the world. Whilst in Canada the First World War broke out so Billy went and signed up for the Canadian army against his mother’s wishes.

After the war ended Billy stayed in Canada to 1921, then Billy decided to return to England. Shortly after arriving back in Bristol, he started to look for work. It wasn’t long before he found work at Dorney’s Yard, which was a winter’s retreat for a travelling fairground. He started work on fixing and painting the rides for the summer fair. After settling in and working hard his uncle helped Billy to set up a small stall. The stall was a hoopla hoop type stall, the sort you throw the hoop over the little wooden blocks to win a prize. His first fair was held at Axebridge and it was a big success giving Billy a £10 clear profit a lot of money in those days. This amount was much better than the other stallholders. Instead of making it hard to win a prize Billy thought that it would be a good idea to let people win more offend by making the block smaller so the hoop would go over the block easier. This was so that people would tell their friends and return to spent more money. It was like they were almost guaranteed a prize at Billy’s stall and people love it. It wasn’t long before Billy started to think about expanding his business and came up with the idea of having a goldfish stall as well as the hula hoop stall. To make it look professional he kitted out his team with uniforms, made by Wildman’s a local business near Skegness. This consisted of a Red Blazer, White shirt, Red stripe tie and white trousers. The famous B on the pocket was added a bit later on. This made Billy’s workers the first workers to wear a uniform at an amusement park in the British Isles. Also he used the colours blue and yellow to paint he's stall. The same colour scheme he would use in the first Butlin's Holiday camp at Skegness.

The first camp did not come along that easy. Billy had all the plans, ideas and the backing for the camp but he did not have a location. One morning as the story goes Billy was being driven from his home in Skegness to an amusement park in Mablethrope. As the driver drove along they came very close to a village called Ingoldmells. At that point something in Billy’s head switch on and he told the driver to stop and he got out of the car and said, “I’m going to build my camp right here”. The site didn’t look much just turnip fields and bad farming land but it was on the main road to Skegness and something inside Billy just clicked. Work started on the first camp in October 1935 and the camp was opened on Easter Sunday 1936 by Amy Johnson who was the first woman to fly from England to Australia.

Butlin’s launched a big advertising campaign in the Daily Mail to promote the holiday camp. Billy Butlin was offering three meals a day all for 35 shillings or £3.00 a week according to the time of year. This had never been done before and the English holiday camp was born. Mr Butlin thought that the holidaymakers had settled in well and were enjoying them self’s, but he thought that something was missing they were lacking enthusiasm. So Billy came up with one of he’s best ideas and The Redcoat was born and Butlin’s would become a household name.

Bognor Regis Camp

The Bognor Regis camp was opened in 1960 and covered 60 acres being located a short distance from the town. The camp could hold 5,000 campers and had space to accommodate up to 5,000-day visitors. As the camp was being built heavy rain caused flooding that hampered the building. This made it hard for the workers to build on and the building programme fell behind. When the first holidaymakers arrived, the camp was not finished and the campers were offered alternative accommodation at the Clapton on Sea site. Some people decided to go but a lot of the holidaymakers stayed and they helped to finish the camp. Billy was so happy with these campers that he brought each one of them a bottle of champagne to say thank you for their help.

In the early eighties a lot of Butlin’s camps closed as cheap overseas holidays became more popular with the public. The Bognor Southcoast World. There was a newly built indoor water complex and all the holidays’ chalets were refurbished and updated. In 1998 there was another refit to the Bognor Regis site costing around £45 million this time. The refit was to bring Bognor into line with the other two sites Minehead and Skegness, which are the only other two surviving camps. The site was totally redesigned and was to have a centrepiece like Skegness and Minehead; this was a large under cover, structure called The Skyline Pavilion. This enables all the entrainment and other facilities to be undercover and accessible all year round. There also upgraded the chalets and the uniform was redesign for the Redcoats. In 2005 the Shoreline Hotel and surrounding landscaping was added costing £10 million the hotel has 160 rooms with all the normal hotel comforts as well as all the use of the Butlin facilities. The hotel was a big success and in 2009 a second hotel called The Ocean Hotel was opened. These hotels are very popular and Butlin’s are building a third hotel on the site called The Wave Hotel which will be opened later on this year.

Butlin's is a great place to visit and is geared up for young family's and young children. It has everything a young child could wish for and more. Butlin's still has its charm that it had all those years ago went I went there as a kid.