A First Look at the Walt Disney Studios Paris
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A Map of Disneyland Paris and the Studios
(c) Disney
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The Wait Was Over
However, 1997 came and went. There was no announcement of a second park and the management team in charge at EuroDisney never uttered a single word about the next phase. We had to wait until 1999 for the first indicator of the new timetable for construction. The company began to shop for new loans and request reinvestment from their pool of members. The plan had always been to build a Studios modelled on the successful television, movie and animation theme park in Florida, but the imagineers were keen to emphasise the importance of Europe in the creation of the cinema and trace the history of European cinema rather than produce a carbon copy of the Hollywood depicted in Walt Disney World. The name “MGM” will be ominously missing from the name of the theme park to distance the park from Hollywood at a time when European leaders are encouraging investment in domestic entertainment product to prevent the dilution of the overall product by the Hollywood studios. This is of great irony when The Walt Disney Company is the highest grossing global entertainment giant at the multiplex.

In addition, the company did not have a blank check to build a second theme park. The management team knew from Day One that it was the key to sending guest spending through the roof and extending guests visits to the resort, encouraging them to stay in the company-owned hotels. The original park had added minor new attractions and parades in an attempt to persuade visitors that the park needed more than just a day visit - even during off-peak - over the timeframe of a decade, but the Studios was essential for the long term viability of the resort as a whole. The Company set aside around $500 million to build the park, a far cry from the reputed $1.6 billion assigned by the Oriental Land Company to achieve the same objective at their Tokyo Disney Resort. However, as Tokyo Disney Sea will open with more than 20 major attractions, the Walt Disney Studios Paris will open with just 9 and, once again, the emphasis is on shows. As any observer of Disney theme parks will note, guests will often wait an hour plus to enter a theatre for a show lasting around 30 minutes. This ties up significantly more of the guests’ time within the park than a 3 minute attraction. With the FastPass innovation reducing wait times across Disney theme parks, the EuroDisney team knew the key to making guests spend an extra day at the complex was shows.

Main Entrance
The huge gates welcoming guests to the park are reminiscent of the grand entrances to the Hollywood Studios of the twenties and thirties. The turnstiles are not yet in place but will be in the smaller archways on either side of the logo title arch. Once through the gates, guests will encounter a picturesque courtyard with the Studio Store on their left, a smaller version of Disneyland’s Emporium store with Guest Services and another store on the right. Off to the left is a reproduction of Disney-MGM Studios famous landmark, the Earffel Tower which here displays the name of the Paris park. However, it is the covered stoundstage looming directly in front of the courtyard that signals the real beginning of guests’ adventure at the Studios. Perhaps reeling from the decision not to copy Tokyo Disneyland’s covered World Bazaar, built under a huge glass and iron canopy due to the monsoonal autumns and cold winters in Japan and cover DLP’s Main Street U.S.A., this building is the Main Street of the Studios. Inside “Lights, Camera, Hollywood”, guests will experience a series of restaurants and boutiques under the lights of a soundstage designed after Walt Disney’s first studio. Expect a great deal of infamous “Streetmosphere” inside this attraction. The interior is themed after the Golden Age of the movies, so expect Art Deco design throughout.