News / Environment

Spotting blown bulbs along Main Street, U.S.A. should become a thing of a past, as Disneyland Paris completes a major upgrade of its trademark “rim lighting”. Read More…

Soundbites about “challenging tourism climates” and “investing in growth strategies” aren’t all you’ll find the Euro Disney S.C.A. Annual Review. Published by the Disneyland Paris operating group each year, the splashy document is also filled with a host of fascinating and intriguing facts and figures about the resort, its parks, its Cast Members and its visitors.

You can browse the 2013 Annual Review now online. Surprisingly, this year breaks with tradition and abandons the usual overblown website dedicated to the report (last year complete with Philippe Gas video intro) and presents it just as a standard e-brochure. We’d love to know the figure for how much cash that decision wisely saved. But instead, here’s our quick pick of the key figures and fun facts of 2013 at Disneyland Paris…

• Disneyland Paris has now been visited more than 275 million times
• Between 2009 and 2013, around €510 million has been invested in the maintenance and development of the destination
• There are over 14,000 Cast Members working over 500 different professions; 6,454 employees were hired in 2013
• Inclusivity: Over 581 workers are disabled, an increase of over 50% since 2007, whilst 53 “seniors” aged over 50 were hired in 2013
• Climbing the ladder: 80% of Managers and Senior Managers present in 2013 had been promoted internally, while the group hired 458 local residents who had experienced long-term unemployment
• Val d’Europe now has 30,000 residents and provides 28,000 jobs
• Hotel refurbishment programme is on-going, covering all 5,800 rooms, with all 1,100 rooms of Disney’s Newport Bay Club to be completed in 2014
• 14.9 million visitors in 2013 (down from 16 million in 2012 and 15.6 in 2011)
• Hotel occupancy down to 79.3% in 2013, from 84% in 2012 and 87.1% in 2011
• Guest spending continues to grow: the average guest spends €48.14 in the parks and €235.01 per room in the Disney Hotels
• Interest charges on the group’s debt were reduced by €20.4 million in 2013 thanks to the €1.3 billion refinancing by The Walt Disney Company in 2012
• According to questionnaires, 63% of guests were “extremely” and “very” satisfied with their visits; 89% of guests would “definitely” and “probably” come back
• Disney Dreams! scored a 92% guest satisfaction rating for fiscal year 2013
• 4 million items have been sold at World of Disney since its opening in 2012
• Staffed 24 hours a day by 200 Cast Members, the “Hercules” warehouse complex is more than 15 times the size of an Olympic swimming pool; in 2013 it was refitted with dimming, sensing, low-energy lighting by partner Osram
• Scheduled for completion in late 2015, the fifth Val de France hotel, to be operated by B&B Hotels, will add 400 rooms to the resort
• 90% of the land at Villages Nature will not be built on; the Center Parcs joint project will be developed in several phases over the next 20 years
• 87 milion gallons of drinking water are expected to be saved each year once the new backstage water treatment and recycling plant becomes fully operational
• Ratatouille: l’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy will be “by far the most advanced and sophisticated thing we’ve ever done from a ride integration standpoint. It will offer guests a totally immersive experience into a Disney•Pixar adventure” — Joe Schott, Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
• “This never-before-seen family attraction will magically shrink guests to the size of the movie’s adorable star, Rémy. They will then be whisked off for a multi-sensory spin around the kitchens of Chef Gusteau”

Last, but not least, the geographical split of theme park visits, where France has broken 51% leaving all other feeder nations languishing. It’s fascinating to look back ten years to the results from the 2003 Annual Review and see how dramatically the breakdown has shifted.

Where once 22% of visitors were from the United Kingdom, now that percentage is a tiny 14%. Worse for Germany; its percentage share has halved from 6% to 3% in 2013. Italy and Spain meanwhile used to make up 9% together and have now increased to 11%, mainly thanks to a boom in visitors from Spain begun a few years ago, but which now appears to have ebbed away, in line with the country’s economy, to 8%.

Attendance figures in 2003 were 12.4 million, so 22% would give an estimated 2,728,000 British guests for the year. The same calculation for 14% of the 14.9 million guests in 2013 gives 2,086,000 guests crossing the channel. Far from a scientific, watertight calculation, obviously, but you could see it suggesting that roughly 654,720 fewer visitors from the UK went to Disneyland Paris in 2013 compared to ten years ago, a 24% drop.

Overall, with 49% of visitors now coming from outside France in 2013 versus 61% in 2003, you could estimate the resort’s entire non-domestic park attendance has actually fallen by over a quarter of a million guests in the past ten years, from 7.6 million in 2003 to 7.3 million in 2013. In the same period, meanwhile, you could estimate attendance from within France has grown by a huge 2.8 million guests, from 4.8 million to a strong 7.6 million visitors.

Clearly it is time Disneyland Paris took a few of its œufs out of its panier and worked on growing visitor numbers from other countries too, if only back to the levels they were ten years ago.

That’s not something even Rémy can do alone, or is it?

SOURCE Euro Disney S.C.A. Annual Review 2013, Full PDF (7.9MB download)

After a 5-year relationship between 2002 and 2007, during which time the company sponsored Moteurs… Action! Stunt Show Spectacular, German car manufacturer Opel has returned to Disneyland Paris as its official vehicle partner. There’s no comment yet whether the General Motors subsidiary could return to sponsor the Backlot stunt show, but it will certainly make its presence known across the resort — if only for backstage Cast Members. As part of the two-year agreement announced on 7th November, Opel France will replace the resort’s entire fleet of cars with brand new, more environmentally-friendly models such as the Opel Movano, Opel Vivaro and Opel Combo. One vehicle whose presence won’t be felt quite so much is the striking all-electric Opel Ampera (the European version of the Chevrolet Volt), a fleet of which Disneyland Paris will take delivery of for backstage duties in January 2012 — one of the first companies in Europe to do so. The entire fleet will also be fitted with Opel’s latest CO² reduction technologies “ecoFLEX”and “Start/Stop”.

The resort’s previous vehicle partner, Ford, ended its three-year partnership in early 2010. During that time it was the official sponsor of Autopia, helping some new investment at the Discoveryland attraction with a new marquee and photo location. Since Opel has only signed for two years, a sponsorship of either motor-based attraction seems unlikely. Now, Disneyland Paris will ironically be replacing its fleet of backstage support vehicles with electric cars while this “highway of the future” continues to belch out petrol fumes. Only Hong Kong Disneyland currently operates electric cars on the attraction.

VIA Disneyland Paris Corporate (PDF)

There are suggestions that Euro Disney SCA, operating group of Disneyland Paris, could be about to sign a landmark agreement with French energy partner EDF.

Currently, as visitors arrive at the resort by car or coach, they’re greeted by a pleasant — but exceptionally large — parking space. A huge expanse of tarmac poured nonchalantly over the former fields of Marne-la-Vallée, this has perhaps never been the best of first impressions for the French to become enamoured with Disney’s controversial arrival.

However, according to rumours now doing the message board rounds, the flat, single-level parking lot serving the two Disney Parks — with more than 11,000 car parking spaces — would be covered end to end in so-called “Ombrières”, a patented type of solar power canopy covered in photovoltaic cells.

An unfortunate necessity becomes a publicity coup?

Creating electricity which can then be used on-site or sold back into the grid, the futuristic canopies also collect rainwater to reduce piped water usage as well as protecting people — and their cars — from the elements, be they a rainstorm or a scorching hot day.

Rather than your car burning up in the full heat of the Summer sun, that energy would be transformed into real power — possibly even to power your ride on Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster or Phantom Manor!

The idea is not entirely new, already being in use at locations such as the E-Leclerc shopping centre near Montpellier seen in these photos. These canopies are manufactured by French company SunVie. Should the enormous parking surface at Disneyland Paris be covered by “solar panels” like these, it would apparently become the largest such energy plant in France and almost certainly one of the largest in Europe.

Naturally, after the initial excitement at such a prospect, thoughts are now turning to the visual impact of the “Ombrières” which, whilst actually functionally good-looking, would probably contrast a bit too much with the more whimsical structures already dotted around the parking lot, such as the canopies of the moving walkways.

To redesign them with a little more Disney spark certainly wouldn’t be hard, but multiplied over several hundred rows could amount to a restrictively large rise in construction costs.

Indeed, details so far are rather sketchy as to how such a project would be managed between Euro Disney and EDF — who would pay for the set-up, who would get the power generated? Nevertheless, this would be a sure-fire publicity winner for the resort, and hopefully more than just blue sky (solar) thinking…

• See more details, photos and a video here.

Images: DLRP Today; SunVie. News via Parcs et Companie, thanks to lil-shawn (magicforum).

And no, not the kind of guest who writes graffiti in the Crush’s Coaster queue, stands in front of you on the parade route or climbs on the flower beds of Central Plaza.

For all the masses of people and sickly sweet foods, what’s the one thing mostly — and surprisingly — missing from Disneyland? The wasps.

Unfortunately, when you’ve got a bin with four wide open holes and a collection of sticky drinks bottles, that seems to be what you get:

Being “tested” across Walt Disney Studios Park since August, the new bins seemed to attract rather a lot of the unpopular insects on a warm day, far more than your average (closed) park trash can. These photos were taken in the Toon Plaza area at the back of Toon Studio within just a few minutes.

Open holes also seem to be used for the better-themed bins we provided as examples from other Disney parks around the world, but only one or two per bin. Seeing the wasps, let’s hope there’s a rethink of the design if these are to be rolled out “resort-wide” — if only for those few fleeting months of hot weather Paris enjoys each year.

The chaos caused by a single wasp in a Disney queue line cannot be overstated.

Pictures: DLRP Today.com

We can all admit that Disneyland, whilst responsible, is by its nature hardly the “Greenest Place on Earth”. Between the energy-guzzling attractions, seas of merchandise and fast food disposables, it’s hard to feel very eco-friendly as you enjoy the parks.

Surprisingly, the other international parks are already well-ahead on this one. Despite Europe — and especially the countries which feed into Disneyland Paris — probably being rather more keen on recycling, it’s the parks in California and Hong Kong which have double bins in most locations, with clever themed designs indicating the bin for recycling bottles and cans.

Photo source.

Take a look at a few nice examples here, here, here and here.

And now, they’ve finally arrived in Paris:

The new bins to have arrived in Walt Disney Studios Park for this test aren’t quite so special, but they’re certainly a positive step forward. Even if Euro Disney S.C.A. already claims to recycle 39% of its total waste, these make it clear to guests that the parks are taking responsibility for their waste, as well as allowing bottles and cans to be separated from the start.

With only Disney Studio 1 and Toon Studio having slightly different designs for their bins, the Studios would never be the first to lead with a clever themed design, but if the “test” is successful enough for these bins to show up everywhere (and why wouldn’t it be?), hopefully our new green conscience can come with a little more Disney magic, like above.

Picture (Paris): Photos Magiques.