After a rocky childhood, Disneyland Paris prepares to celebrate two decades
Disneyland Paris will have been open for 20 years on April 12, 2012, and as it finally exits its teenage years after a somewhat turbulent childhood, its parents over in America will be breathing a sigh of relief.
The park, situated on the outskirts of Paris, is one of France's most popular tourist attractions and plans to celebrate its anniversary in typical Disney style, with a host of new attractions, parades and extended hours.
The celebrations, which begin April 1, mark the end of a tumultuous two decades for the attraction, which opened well over budget with the less elegant name 'EuroDisney' back in 1992.
For the first two years, EuroDisney struggled with low visitors and by 1994, headlines were questioning its future, wondering whether the brash American world of Disney would ever prove as popular in Europe.
It took the opening of Paris's Space Mountain, a ride far faster and more complex than the other versions in Disneyland Tokyo, Disneyland California and Magic Kingdom in Florida, to turn things around, the adrenaline-boosting attendance at the newly-renamed Disneyland Paris (it was one of four name changes).
By 1995, Disneyland Paris was attracting over 10 million visitors a year and in 2002, to mark the park's first decade, the new Walt Disney Studios Park was opened alongside Disneyland Park, with more rides and attractions based on the movie business.
Numbers, if not profits, have been consistently healthy since then, although the park hasn't been without its fair share of controversies, including a series of allegations of mistreatment of workers and a recent slew of headlines regarding the 'overcharging' of some nationalities.
Figures from Disneyland Paris and the Themed Entertainment Association suggest that Disneyland Paris pulled in 15 million visitors in 2010, down slightly on previous years but still enough to make the attraction one of the five most-visited amusement parks in the world.
Last September, Disneyland Paris revealed it had welcomed 15.6 million visitors for the 2011 financial year (October to September), a rise from 15 million in the previous period.
That said, a boom in the numbers of outbound Chinese tourists helped Disney's Asian parks to prosper last year, with 800,000 more visitors to Japan and 600,000 to Hong Kong.
When the numbers are tallied for all parks combined, Disneyland Paris is the fourth most-visited Disney destination, trailing Disneyland Resort in California significantly but still drawing many more guests than the relatively small Hong Kong Disneyland Resort.
By 2016 though, it could find itself closer to the bottom of the list, thanks to the opening of a new resort in Shanghai and Hong Kong Disneyland reported to be mulling further expansion in a bid to boost visitor numbers.
How popular is Disneyland Paris?
1. Walt Disney World (Florida) 47.07m visitors
2. Tokyo Disney Resort 27.115m visitors
3. Disneyland Resort (California) 22.1m visitors
4. Disneyland Paris 15m visitors
5. Hong Kong Disneyland Resort 5.2m visitors
Figures - Themed Entertainment Association, 2010 amusement parks report
(An earlier version of this article stated that Disney didn't release figures for its parks. However, it does report attendance for Disneyland Paris on a financial year basis, which has been clarified in paragraph 8. 2011 visitor numbers have been added in paragraph 9.)
