Disneyland Park (Paris)

Disneyland Park
Location	Disneyland Paris, Marne-la-Vallée, France
Opened	April 12, 1992
Area	57 hectares (140 acres)
Theme	Fairy tales, adventure and classic Disney storytelling
Owner	The Walt Disney Company
Operator	Disney Experiences
Status	Operating

Disneyland Park (French: Parc Disneyland), originally opened as Euro Disneyland, is the original theme park at Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, France. It opened on April 12, 1992, as the first park built at the resort, and it follows the castle-park pattern established by Disneyland in California and the Magic Kingdom in Florida, enlarged in scale and unusually elaborate in detail. Its centrepiece is Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant, and its five lands are Main Street, U.S.A., Frontierland, Adventureland, Fantasyland and Discoveryland.

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History

Disney signed its agreement with the French public authorities for a European resort on March 24, 1987, after sites in France and Spain had reached the final stage of a long search. Construction began in August 1988 on former farmland covering parts of five villages in the Brie countryside east of Paris. The park opened to the public on April 12, 1992, under the name Euro Disneyland, following employee previews and testing in March.

The early years were financially difficult for the whole resort. Attendance, hotel occupancy and spending all ran below forecast, and the operating company carried a heavy debt burden. A restructuring followed, and on October 1, 1994, the resort and the park were renamed Disneyland Paris, a change intended to associate the destination with Paris itself and to move away from the associations of the word "Euro". The park's own name settled as Disneyland Park in English and Parc Disneyland in French from 2002, when the second park opened next door.

Later additions reshaped individual lands without changing the park's basic layout. Space Mountain opened in Discoveryland in 1995 with a launch and a theme drawn from Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, a version unlike any other Disney mountain at the time. Major refurbishments in the 2010s renewed much of the park ahead of its 25th anniversary in 2017, and the castle was extensively restored for the 30th anniversary in 2022.

Lands and attractions

Main Street, U.S.A. is the entrance street, built with covered arcades on either side — the Liberty Arcade and the Discovery Arcade — so guests can reach the hub in shelter during poor weather, a practical response to the northern French climate found at no other castle park. From Central Plaza, the lands radiate outward.

Frontierland is built around the fictional mining town of Thunder Mesa. Its Big Thunder Mountain sits on an island in the Rivers of the Far West, reached by tunnels passing under the water, and is widely regarded by enthusiasts as the strongest version of the ride. On a hill above the town stands Phantom Manor, the Paris counterpart of the Haunted Mansion, with a storyline tied directly to Thunder Mesa and to the family that founded its mine. The manor's narrative, involving a bride, a phantom and a doomed household, is darker and more continuous than its American equivalents, and it was substantially refreshed in a 2019 refurbishment.

Adventureland mixes a Middle Eastern bazaar entrance with Adventure Isle, Skull Rock and a Swiss Family Treehouse, alongside Pirates of the Caribbean and the Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril roller coaster. Fantasyland holds many of the classic dark rides, plus Alice's Curious Labyrinth and It's a Small World. Discoveryland replaces Tomorrowland with a retro-future world inspired by Verne, H. G. Wells and other European visionaries, expressed in brass, rivets and observatory domes rather than white plastic futurism.

Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant

Because real castles are common in France, Imagineers deliberately avoided a realistic fortress and instead designed a storybook castle drawn from illuminated manuscripts and from the visual style of the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. The pink castle rises about 51 metres (167 feet), and its upper gallery, La Galerie de la Belle au Bois Dormant, tells Aurora's story in stained glass and tapestries. Beneath it, in La Tanière du Dragon, a chained Audio-Animatronic dragon — at 27 metres from head to tail, the largest figure of its kind when the park opened — sleeps in a flooded cavern and periodically stirs, growling and breathing smoke. No other Disney castle contains a dragon.

See also

• Disneyland Paris
• Walt Disney Studios Park
• Phantom Manor
• Sleeping Beauty Castle
• Hong Kong Disneyland Resort
• Shanghai Disney Resort
• Le Passage Enchanté d'Aladdin
• Alice's Curious Labyrinth
• Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains
• Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril