Disneyland Paris: General Discussion

[Llama]

It really is incredible how powerful the Disney Brand is. The last new ride at the main park was Buzz Lightyear in 2006 and before that the last new ride worth actually booking a holiday for was Space Mountain in 1995. 31 years without a new E-ticket and still consistently the most-visited park in Europe by several million guests. Number two in annual visitors is our beloved Europa Park and all but two of EP's big coasters opened after Space Mountain

 

[Benjsh]

It really is incredible how powerful the Disney Brand is. The last new ride at the main park was Buzz Lightyear in 2006 and before that the last new ride worth actually booking a holiday for was Space Mountain in 1995. 31 years without a new E-ticket and still consistently the most-visited park in Europe by several million guests. Number two in annual visitors is our beloved Europa Park and all but two of EP's big coasters opened after Space Mountain

Too powerful though you might argue. Its made them complacent and lazy.

They know that the magic of the brand / characters will bring people through the gates. The numbers Paris get is not a reflection on the quality of the rides compared to other European parks but more so the parades, shows, meet and greets and all the other stuff that comes with the Disney experience.

For me Europa Park wipes the floor with DLP but it will never get 12/13m visitors in a single year

 

[Bowser]

Too powerful though you might argue. Its made them complacent and lazy.

They know that the magic of the brand / characters will bring people through the gates. The numbers Paris get is not a reflection on the quality of the rides compared to other European parks but more so the parades, shows, meet and greets and all the other stuff that comes with the Disney experience.

For me Europa Park wipes the floor with DLP but it will never get 12/13m visitors in a single year

It does show that you don’t need to rely on frequently building new attractions if your theme park is that good in the first place.

 

[Benjsh]

It does show that you don’t need to rely on frequently building new attractions if your theme park is that good in the first place.

Europa Park is a far superior theme park in almost every single way to DLP. The difference is it doesnt have 80 years of magical family movies that everyone knows propping up its brand. Its a completely different beast essentially.

I wouldn't describe DLP as 'that good' myself. As a theme park only when you strip away all the shows and cast members etc its got a lot of very basic and also outdated attractions. The brand is the key not the rides.

 

[flyingguitar]

I would say that DLP main park is by far my favorite disney park, mainly because the theming is so good, Big thunder mountain didn't have to be in the middle of a lake but it is and it is really fun to just watch, the only bad thing is the "starwars" ride that they turned space mountain into, and the indiana jones ride

 

[JakeDLP]

Europa Park is a far superior theme park in almost every single way to DLP. The difference is it doesnt have 80 years of magical family movies that everyone knows propping up its brand. Its a completely different beast essentially.

I wouldn't describe DLP as 'that good' myself. As a theme park only when you strip away all the shows and cast members etc its got a lot of very basic and also outdated attractions. The brand is the key not the rides.

The gag being that the majority of rides in Disneyland Park don't rely on that IP at all, they're all original spaces that are much better presented and themed than Europa, having been disappointed with my recent visit to Europa. it has some excellent coasters but nothing made me want to go back anytime soon

 

[Matt N]

I don’t think the quality of the park is how DLP (the main park at least) gets away with building nothing for years.

As @Benjsh said, I think it’s branding power. There are many high-quality parks across Europe, such as Europa Park, Phantasialand, Efteling, PortAventura et al, and these have not been able to rest on their laurels as the main Disney park in Paris has. And the main thing that Disney has in its favour over these is branding power.

The sheer power of Disney’s brand is unlike any other in the industry, and that will naturally always pull people in regardless of how much they invest into new attractions. People will always want to visit Disneyland and see Disney characters, and that remains true regardless of whether they invest or not. There are very few parks that have the kind of branding power to be able to say that, and whether you like them or not, it is quite remarkable how Disney have pulled this off.

 

[JamesA]

From a theming and design perspective, Disneyland Paris is arguably second best park in the world, behind Tokyo DisneySea. The level of detail, depth, sightlines, and overall attraction quality is near perfect.

That said, the park does have a couple of notable weaknesses.

First, it simply doesn't have enough rides. Even adding one more major E-ticket attraction, like Indy Adventure, would make a huge difference for capacity and overall balance.

Second, most of the later “upgrades” to existing attractions haven’t been improvements:

Space Mountain
Phantom Manor
The Nautilus walkthrough
Discoveryland more broadly
Many of the parks shops and restaurants

All were very strong in their original forms, but the later changes reduced what made them unique.