Starting on 6 March 2022, Disneyland Paris will begin its 30th Anniversary celebration. According to the Disney Parks Blog, the park, which officially opened on 12 April 1992, will celebrate “the resort’s enchanting past and exciting future [as well as] … invite guests to enter a shining new era where they will dream bigger, laugh louder and smile wider.”
Creating a festive atmosphere, Disneyland Paris’ 30th Anniversary will feature a host of special experiences across Disneyland Park, Walt Disney Studios Park and the entire resort.
Disneyland Paris cast members will be at the heart of the celebration, delivering the resort’s signature service and exceeding guests’ expectations each day by going above and beyond to make every visit special.
More details on Disneyland Paris’ 30th Anniversary will be coming in the near future.
Following the success of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Disney had been exploring building a similar theme park in Europe since 1966. At the time Frankfurt, Paris, London, and Milan were under consideration.
After Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983, the following year Dick Nunis and Jim Cora, presented a list of approximately 1,200 possible European locations for the park. Britain, France, Italy, and Spain were all considered. However, both Britain and Italy were dropped from the list due to a lack of a suitable expanse of flat land. By March 1985, the number of possible locations for the park had been narrowed down to four; two in France and two in Spain. Both nations saw the potential economic advantages of a Disney theme park and offered competing financing deals to Disney.
Both sites in Spain were preferred as they both had similar climates to Disneyland in Anaheim and Walt Disney World in Florida. At the time, Disney had asked both cities to provide average temperatures per month for the past 50 years. However that proved to be difficult as nothing was computerized and everything had to be complied by hand.
In an interview Segundo Bru, then the Minister of Defense said, “”[Disney was] very conscientious in the information they demanded of us. For example, they asked us for information about the daily temperatures of the last 50 years in the areas that were being considered… That cost us a fortune! Thank goodness the Meteorological Institute helped us… But since there were no computers, all the information was collected on paper. We sent Disney 20 or 30 kilos of documentation!”
The other Spanish site, in Pego, Alicante became the front-runner, but the location was controversial because it would have meant the destruction of the Marjal de Pego-Oliva marshlands, a site of natural beauty and one of the last homes of the almost extinct Samaruc or Valencia Toothcarp. After an outcry among local environmentalists, that site was also abandoned.
Disney then were looking at two site in France. One in a site near Toulon in southern France, not far from Marseille, was under consideration because of the pleasing landscape and its climate, made the location a top competitor for what would be called Euro Disneyland. However, shallow bedrock was encountered beneath the site, which would have rendered construction too difficult. Finally, Disney decided on a site in the rural town of Marne-la-Vallée. This farm town was chosen because of its proximity to Paris and its central location in Western Europe. This location was estimated to be no more than a four-hour drive for 68 million people and no more than a two-hour flight for a further 300 million.
During its first decade, the park has a rough going including recruiting Cast Members, cultural pushback, and problems with the French labour unions who mounted protests against the appearance code, which they saw as “an attack on individual liberty.”
In 1992, about 25% of Euro Disney’s workforce – approximately 3,000 people – had resigned from their jobs because of unacceptable working conditions. It was also reported that the park’s attendance was far behind expectations. According to some reports, in 1994, the company was still having financial difficulties and there were rumors that Euro Disney was getting close to having to file for bankruptcy. The banks and the backers had meetings to work out some of the financial problems facing Euro Disney. In March 1994 Team Disney went into negotiations with the banks so that they could get some help for their debt. As a last resort, the Walt Disney Company threatened to close the Disneyland Paris park, leaving the banks with the land.
Disneyland Paris’s two parks continued to expand and on 19 June 2017, the resort’s operating company, Euro Disney S.C.A, was acquired by The Walt Disney Company, in the process, giving them full control of the resort.
