After visiting Disneyland Paris during their 25th anniversary, I wanted to find out more about the history of the park. The park was the second Disney theme park to open outside of the United States, the first being a park in Tokyo. There are two parks apart of the complex. Disneyland Park was the first of them to open in 1992, and Walt Disney Studios opened in 2002. After the success of the Tokyo park, plans to make a park in Europe emerged. There was a list of 1,200 European cities to place the potential park in 1984. Within a year, the list was narrowed down to 4 cities, two in France and two in Spain. Both Spanish sites were located near the Mediterranean and offered a subtropical climate similar to Disney’s parks in California and Florida. Disney had also shown interest in a site near Toulon in southern France. However, shallow bedrock was encountered beneath the site, which would have rendered construction too difficult. Finally, a site in the rural town of Marne-la-Vallée was chosen because of its proximity to Paris and its central location in Western Europe. This location was estimated to be no more than a four hour drive for 68 million people and no more than a two hour flight for a further 300 million. During the first few years of the park being opened, attendance was much lower than expected. In 1995, there was a financial turn around with the opening of the park’s new attraction, Space Mountain. In one year the theme park’s attendance had climbed from 8.8 million to 10.7 million. In less than 15 years, Disneyland Paris had become the number one tourist destination for Europe, outselling the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. I’m so glad I got to visit Disneyland Paris, it was one of my favorite days of the whole month and I had so much fun!