Disneyland Paris will kick off its 30th anniversary celebration on March 6, 2022, the resort announced today.
Disney's first theme park in Europe opened as Euro Disneyland on April 12, 1992. Renamed Disneyland Paris two years later, the park welcomed a second gate - Walt Disney Studios Park - 10 years later, in 2002. For years, Disneyland Paris has ranked as Europe's most-visited theme park, welcoming 9.7 million visitors in 2019. Walt Disney Studios Park that year was Europe's fourth most popular, drawing more than 5.2 million visitors. (Europa Park and Efteling were second and third, for those who just asked the question.)
As for the anniversary celebration, Disney isn't saying much beyond revealing the kick-off date. The resort is promising "a host of special experiences" in a "once-in-a-lifetime celebration of the resort's enchanting past and exciting future" that "will invite guests to enter a shining new era where they will dream bigger, laugh louder and smile wider."
Disneyland Paris' current expansion projects include Avengers Campus and a new Frozen-themed land at Walt Disney Studios Park, but Disney has not revealed opening dates for those. Last month, the Studio park designated several of its attractions - including the Ratatouille dark ride that's being cloned at Walt Disney World's Epcot - into a "Worlds of Pixar" zone. That will be one of four core themed zones for the park once its current redesign is complete.
For tickets to the Disneyland Paris theme parks, including Walt Disney Studios Park, please visit our international travel partner's Disneyland Paris tickets page.
* * *
We wanted you to read this article before we make our newsletter pitch, unlike so many other websites. If you appreciate that - and our approach to covering theme park, travel, and entertainment news - please sign up for our free, three-times-a-week email newsletter. Thank you.
Yeah, when they realized that they had built Disneyland Paris and not Disney World Paris, that helped everyone at Disney focus better on what the site afforded them. Then it was just a matter of freeing the development from all that accumulated debt.
One of the never things i'll never forget from Michael Eisner's autobiography was the part where he wrote about how everyone in the company wanted to build this in Spain, but he wanted to build it in Paris because he enjoyed visiting there when he was young.
...and how he demanded the train ride be within a certain distance from downtown Paris because when he was a kid if his dentist moved to a further away subway stop from where he lived he would change his dentist. And before he signed the contract he personally went to Paris and rode the train to the last stop to make sure they weren't hustling him.
Eisner has been more up front on his mistakes in later years.
Also the Imagineering series pulls no punches on the mess of Disney Studios Paris and "we built it just to hold onto the land, which was a bad idea" although again doing better.
The worst Disney Resort in the world. Sad that most of new additions in the next few years are just smaller and cheaper clones of existing lands/rides from better Disney resorts.
I really wish this resort gets some better improvements in the near future.
Did it ever made a profit and paid off it's investment money? I see a lot of discounts all the time for the park and it's hotels.
Don't think the park is doing particular great nowadays (that is including the pre Covid nowadays), we just do not see separate numbers any more. Disneyland Paris always had high prices and high attendance numbers compared to any other European park. Or to be more precise, the gap to 2 and 3 has been even bigger in the past. One got to be aware that one could almost build a top 20 European park for the price of some single Disney attraction, so it was never quite enough. On the flip side, it was never as unsuccessful as it looked on the separate balance sheet due to the high fees paid to Walt Disney and the debt load.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
Ah, the sign of my age to remember all the "Disney's Euro Flop" stories.
Even the Disney+ Imagineering series cited mistakes like Eisner talking about building so many resorts expecting folks to stay multiple days and "that was dumb." Yet it bounced back to be a great addition to the parks and some top notch attractions.