Disneyland Paris

The idea of a European Disney park emerged in 1966, after the success of Disneyland in California, and gained momentum after Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983. In 1984 Disney drew up a list of about 1,200 possible European sites; by 1985 four remained, two in Spain and two in France. A Mediterranean site at Pego, near Alicante, was the front-runner and Toulon was considered, but Marne-la-Vallée won for its closeness to Paris and its central place in Western Europe. Michael Eisner signed the first agreement with the French government in December 1985, the final contract followed in March 1987, and construction began in August 1988.

Euro Disney opened on 12 April 1992, with its RER station opening the same month. Its arrival was fiercely debated: French intellectuals denounced it as cultural imperialism, and the stage director Ariane Mnouchkine called it a "cultural Chernobyl". Attendance fell short of forecasts during a recession, and the company struggled with debt; alcohol was allowed with meals from 1993, and in 1995 attendance rose by 21 per cent. The TGV station opened in 1994 and the second park, Walt Disney Studios, in 2002.

Disney took full control of the resort in 2017 and launched a multi-year expansion. A record 16.1 million visitors came in the 2023 financial year. On 29 March 2026 the second park was renamed Disney Adventure World as its World of Frozen land opened, and a Lion King area has been under construction since autumn 2025.

The resort is American by design — the original hotels were themed on regions of the United States, and menus kept "an American flavour" — but it has adapted to Europe: Disney expected visitors to prefer eating outdoors, installing thousands of patio seats, and staff were recruited in Paris, London and Amsterdam to speak French and at least one other European language. Roughly half of all visitors are French and half come from abroad.

The parks themselves follow the Disney tradition of themed lands, parades, character meetings and night-time shows, with seasonal programmes through the year and limited-time festivals. Disneyland Park's Sleeping Beauty Castle is a version of the castle from the 1959 film, and the second park's Earffel Tower, a water tower with Mickey Mouse ears, is its emblem. The resort has also hosted events from music festivals to the 2012 Minecraft convention.

The early controversy has not stopped the resort becoming a fixture: by 2023 more than 375 million visits had been made, and it remains Europe's leading theme park resort.

The resort covers about 2,100 hectares, about half of it developed so far, including the planned community of Val d'Europe, built by Disney and the French state as the easternmost sector of the new town of Marne-la-Vallée. Disneyland Paris is the largest single-site employer in France, with 17,000 employees, and was still Seine-et-Marne's largest employer in 2022. Unlike Disney's American parks, it set out to rely on permanent staff rather than seasonal workers, and it trains them at its own Disney University.

Much of the resort lies in the commune of Chessy, on the left bank of the Marne about 30 km from Paris, in a former farming village transformed since the resort arrived. Around the parks, farmland has given way to housing estates, offices and the Val d'Europe shopping centre, and the RER A, which starts here, links the new towns with Paris.

Life in the surrounding communes follows the parks, whose visitors fill the trains and the station through the day.

Food inside the resort was planned on a vast scale: Euro Disney opened with 29 restaurants inside Disneyland Park alone, with an American flavour predominant and recipes adapted for European tastes in test kitchens in Florida. Menus range from quick-service burgers and snacks to themed table-service restaurants, and alcohol, at first banned, has been served with meals inside the parks since June 1993. Disney Village adds restaurants and bars outside the gates.

The countryside around the resort is the Brie region, and Brie de Meaux — named after the town of Meaux a short way north-east on the Marne — has been a protected AOC cheese since 1980. It is, with the local mustard, what Meaux is mainly known for, and cheese shops and markets in the nearby towns sell it alongside Brie de Melun.

For everyday eating, Val d'Europe's shopping centre and the surrounding new towns have the usual French bakeries, supermarkets and brasseries, which visitors staying outside the resort use for cheaper meals.