On April 12, 1992, the Walt Disney Company officially opened the first Disney-owned theme park outside of the United States. The ill-titled Euro Disney Resort opened with the Euro Disneyland Park, the Disney Village shopping center, and six resort hotels with nearly 6000 rooms ready for guests. The Walt Disney Imagineers had, for the first time, crafted a park from scratch after having learned necessary lessons from four different parks in the United States. Euro Disney was the culmination of nearly forty years of design development. And it was a colossal failure.
It all began in 1985, when Disney CEO Michael Eisner signed a deal with the French government, committing to build a brand new Disney resort in the Parisian suburb of Marne-la-Vallée (shown below). Almost immediately, the concept was attacked. The French were convinced that the resort would cheapen French culture and lead to an unhealthy American brand of consumerism in the country. Others feared it would disturb the local community in the rural suburb of Paris. The warning signs of failure were there, and, yet, Eisner and the company went forward with the project, leading to the aforementioned grand opening in 1992.
Meanwhile, in 1990, Eisner declared that the 1990s would be the “Disney Decade”. He instructed the Imagineers to design their wildest ideas. This led to many unique greenlit projects, including the transformation of Disneyland Park into a resort (below), the addition of a second huge studio park in Paris, numerous new rides and attractions, and even new parks in Asia and the United States. However, in 1992, Euro Disneyland seemed to have other ideas. On opening day itself, the park barely reached 50% capacity. From thereon out it barely grew. Critics loved the park, but feared it did not mesh with European standards. The final straw was the European recession which struck the continent in August of that year. The turnstiles stopped spinning, and the 6000 guest rooms sat empty. The resort lost millions in its first three years. As a result, the “Disney Decade” was all but erased from potential plans. One failed resort resulted in thousands getting laid off and perhaps millions would lose the opportunity to enjoy one of the hundreds of new experiences planned by Disney the world over in the 1990s. This goes to show how the theme park industry is a business at its core, and each attraction or park must be carefully considered beforehand.
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