Paris Disneyland Reworks Deal with French Govt for Third Park

Part of the original deal Euro Disney SCA, the operating company for Disneyland Paris Resort, made with the French Government was that a certain percentage of the property would be developed over time. This is likely to ensure proper level of tax revenues for the governments investment in infrastructure for the park.

However, as the old saying goes, you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, and Euro Disney has spent much of its existence being a dept encumbered turnip. With some extra investment recently the turnip has begun to evolve into a cash crop, but it’s still not enough to allow the resort to meet its original goals for expansion.

A new deal will allow Euro Disney SCA an extra 13 years to expand the resort including more resorts and a third park. Assuming this deal is not extended again, that means we’ll likely know by 2020, if not sooner, what the third park will be.

The current skinny is that it would be a Marvel Superhero themed adventure park. This strikes me as a bit of a long shot as France has their own genre of comics and it’s not closely related to Marvel, so I’m not sure what familiarity the audience has with the Marvel stable of characters. That’s not to say that Disney/Marvel couldn’t get busy over the next few years laying in an awareness campaign like they’ve had to do for Hong Kong Disneyland and Disney characters on mainland China.

From what I hear the two Disneyland Paris Resort parks have a lot of problems. Some of these are a result of budget cut backs in operations, others with them overcoming some of the structural problems with the Studios park. Then there are the labor woes as well. But the general trend appears to be positive and recent management changes have the parks on the right track. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

(more at the Telegraph)