Walt Disney Productions said adios to Spain and bonjour to France on Wednesday as it chose a Paris suburb for a European Disneyland, the company’s fourth theme park.
The park, to be called Euro Disneyland, will employ 10,000 people — mostly French — when it opens in late 1990 or early 1991, Disney said.
The tentative agreement calls for Euro Disneyland to be built in Marne- la-Vallee, a newly developed suburb about 20 miles east of Paris.
The agreement was signed in Paris on Wednesday by Michael Eisner, Disney’s chairman and chief executive officer, and French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius.
Disney president Frank Wells, speaking from Disney’s California headquarters, said there are “three months of hard negotiations still to come” but added that the agreement signed Wednesday provides the “basic framework” for a French Disneyland.
Disney chose France over several sites on the Spanish Mediterranean because the Paris area has a big population and attracts large numbers of tourists year-round. Disney also cited the city’s airline connections and a highway system that links Paris with other major European cities.
Disney refused to say how much the park is expected to cost, but French officials estimated its cost at about $1 billion and predicted the park would draw about 10 million visitors a year.
Disney’s search for a place to build the park had been under way for about a year. Marne-la-Vallee and two sites on Spain’s eastern Mediterranean coast most often were mentioned in the European press as the top contenders, though Disney said it had looked at more than 200 sites.
It was not clear Wednesday what concessions the French government granted Disney, but a planned extension of the government’s metro rail system, linking Euro Disneyland and Paris, helped Disney choose Marne-la-Vallee, the company said. France also agreed to a Disney demand that highways be built from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports to the park, according to Reuter’s news service.
Euro Disneyland will be “several thousand acres in size — a Walt Disney World on a much smaller scale,” said Disney spokesman Erwin Okun. The park will resemble, and be somewhat larger than, the Magic Kingdom portion of Disney World in Central Florida, he added.
Disney Productions’ first theme park, Disneyland, opened in 1955 in Anaheim, Calif. It was followed by Walt Disney World in 1971 and Tokyo Disneyland in 1983.
Eventually, Disney said, Euro Disneyland will include hotels, campgrounds, shopping, dining and entertainment areas, golf courses and water attractions. Much later, a second theme park, residential developments, business parks and an office complex will be built, but Wells said, “We don’t have a timetable for that — it’s way down the road.”
Wells said he was not worried that Euro Disneyland would draw European tourists away from Walt Disney World, the company’s main attraction and resort. If anything, he said, a visit to Euro Disneyland may pique the curiosity of Europeans who want to see what the larger attraction in Florida is like.
Disney will look to outside investors to help pay for Euro Disneyland. It will seek investors first from France and other European countries, and later from the United States and elsewhere, to form the Euro Disneyland Owner Co.
Wells said Disney will hold a minority share of the Euro company. Disney will operate the park and its resorts under a management contract and will receive royalties based on gross revenue from admission, rides, food, merchandise and contributions from participating companies.
