Free Essay: Aspects of Disneyland That Were Changed When Disney Paris Was Constructed

Disneyland is an American Company that was designed to acquire a basic layout and structures that were imitative of its home country. However, when the company was expanding to European, they modified various aspects to be suitable for the European market. The re-structuring of Disneyland was particularly to emphasize and attribute the image of America as Wild West, (Aupperle & Karimalis, 2001). Research studies indicate that the Wild West portrays a positive reputation for the Europeans because both the hotels and rides were designed to reflect this image. Although, in the beginning, some of the French politicians were against the construction of Disneyland Paris they, therefore, emphasized on the European heritage of Disney by incorporating Cinderella and Snow White in Europe. Other changes were particularly made on the management systems with additional diversions such as films and entertainment to reduce queues because the French guests were intolerant to long queues.

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Phase 1 of the Euro Disney Park was structured to acquire twenty-nine rides and attractions and six hotels with over 5000 rooms altogether. Moreover, the park incorporated a championship golf course in conjunction with numerous restaurants, parades, live shows, and shops. Although the designs put in place were meant to fit in with Disneys traditional appearance and values, there was a number of changes that were incorporated to accommodate the perspectives of European visitors. For instance, studies conducted state that the European visitors would find Disney attractive if they displayed wild west reputation in America. Therefore, it was vital to design the rides and hotels to accentuate the theme (Bontje & Burdack, 2005).

Further, the changes made were focused on diffusing particularly from the French left-wing intellectuals and politicians; they thought that te design of the park was overly imitating the Americans and thus would result in becoming a path for American culture colonialism. To counter these issues and claims, Disney Parks was thus re-designed in a manner that stressed on the European heritage of many of Disney features, and it was enhanced to enrich its beauty and fantasy in order to compete against Paris's exuberant style and sights, (De Groote, 2009). For example, Disneyland was attributed with storylines from Jules Verne while the Snow White was positioned in a Bavarian village whereas Cinderella was positioned in a French inn. Further, Peter Pan was also changed and made to look more of English Edwardian that the former United States designs.

Disney had to concede to the pressure for the French to have a say on how the park was designed with the Americans partaking the second place. The American actor named Vincent Price was replaced by a French actor in order to meet their demands in making their park resemble European traditions. These changes also affected the staging and production of movies; for example, the movie is known as the Haunted Mansion its interpretations were changed to incorporate some aspects of the Phantom of the Opera and Great Expectations.

Further, due to the popularity of the fast-foods in America society, concerns were raised which led to Euro Disney to introduce a variety of foods into its restaurants and snack bars that featured food-staff from the global world. More so, Paris went on to introduce a substantiated number of well-known Paris chefs to visit and taste the food. Disneyland Company had to change and incorporated eating behaviors that matched with the culture of France (dHauteserre, 2001). Americans preferred to consume snacks and fast food throughout the day while the French literary preferred to lie down and consume traditional meals. Therefore, the Disney Par had to be re-designed in order to facilitate the demand levels on the dining formalities.

Overall, Disneyland was to be designed to bring out a Disney Park based on the concept of the forthcoming future and founded on the French Visionaries. It had to suit the European attraction as well as the Euro Disney castle. The Disney Park had to display features of fantasy and adventure with a more authentic French look than other American parks. On its onset, the Euro Disney was required to recruit and train an approximate of 13,000 permanent workers and 5000 temporary staff members. All staff members had to go through extensive training so as to prepare to accredit them in accordance with the high standards of customer service and be in a position of conducting their job description effectively and by use of safe procedures. Originally, the Company had strategized on hiring 45% of employees from France, 30% from other European nations, and 15% from outside Europe. However, this was challengeable and when the park was opened an approximate percentage of seventy of the workers were from French. Additionally, the Disneyland Company was required to pay most of these employees above the French minimum wage (Karadjova-Stoev & Mujtaba, 2016).

The other aspect that Disney had to incorporate was the problems that they encountered in the hiring process. Disney has a strict requirement when it comes to the grooming; a neat dressing code, no facial hair and a set standard requirement on the fingernails and hair proved to be controversial in France. The French trade unions and the press were strongly opposed to the idea of the grooming requirements with the claims that the requirements were more strict and excessive than the general expectations in France; however, they only made minor adjustments to the requirements. The accommodation also proved to be challenging as there was an influx of the employees who crowded the housing that was available in the area (Kuisel, 2001). This led Disney to build apartments by themselves and rent some more rooms so as to enable the accommodation of their employees. Despite the challenges they faced, Disney still managed to recruit and train their cast members before the commencement on the opening of the park.

Aspects that Disney did not change in the construction of Disneyland Paris

Disney has strong core values that have played a major part in their success that can be greatly attributed to the founders personality and view. Therefore the core value of Disney was not interfered with which was derived from the creation of images, experiences and products that bring about the image of Disney. The touch of the fairy tales and the characters featured can be experienced from a real life perspective. The themes of Disneyland are another concept that is deemed to be constant for the company, and thus some of the areas have to be uniformly reflected across all areas, for instance, the Frontierland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland and Adventureland. The lands have attractions and rides that are designed to accommodate a wide range of ages, and only a few of them have a scary theme. Disney has the tendency to use architectural designs on the decor, styles, souvenirs, food and the cast members that reflect the lands theme as the shows and the movies reflected. All these were aspects of Disneyland that remained constant in Disneyland Paris (Kocsis, 2014).

Despite the differences in the regional setups, the theme parks were all retained to reflect a similar appearance as it is a necessary basis for the theme parks to observe while reflecting on the values of Disney. The company has built a reputation of imaginative rides over the years, with their engineers and the imaginers utilizing many years to develop the themes that currently help in the identity of Disney, this means that the themes incorporated into Disneys parks cannot be compromised upon by either regional measures nor location of the Disneyland. The recreation and the reinforcement of the themes help in strengthening and reinforcing the philosophy of Disney in the consistency of entertainment (Rohac, 2006). Disneyland Paris also held on to the tradition of Disney of regarding the employees as cast members even the ones operating from the backstage, the employees also did not wear uniforms but instead dressed in costumes while being assigned a role instead of a job.

Disney retained their aspect of employing young employees mostly those of college and school age. The employees were paid on the basis of hours worked despite the fact that the employees may remain in constant contact with the customers. The cast members were also required to observe the usual Disneys requirement of strict dressing code and grooming standards. The applicants to the cast membership were reviewed for their respective qualities on how they can comprehensively respond to the questions, their body language, how they would respond and be attentive to their peers as well as the nature of their attitude (Yue, 2009). The Disney World across all the outlets globally have received a reputable nature on the way they focus on delivering high-quality services and the experience by paying undue attention to the operations.

Disneyland Paris had to ensure that the required standards regarding Disneys operations were met. The parks had to employ a queue management platform for instance provision of entertainment and information to the visitors. The visitors in all the Disney parks are considered to part of the parks and not just as visitors having a fun time but as participants in a play and in that manner they can feel as if they are part of the fantasy. This is an essential fact to observe in all the Disney parks and was never changed. All the essential aspects that Disney observes as part of their identity were never changed in the construction of Disneyland Paris.

References

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Bontje, M. and Burdack, J., 2005. Edge cities, European-style: examples from Paris and the Randstad. Cities, 22(4), pp.317-330.

dHauteserre, A.M., 2001. Destination branding in a hostile environment. Journal of Travel Research, 39(3), pp.300-307.

d'Hauteserre, A.M., 2001. The role of the French state: Shifting from supporting large tourism projects like Disneyland Paris to a diffusely forceful presence. Current Issues in Tourism, 4(2-4), pp.121-150.

De Groote, P., 2009. Globalisation of commercial theme parks. Case: The Walt Disney Company, 4th Aspects and Visions of Applied Economics and Informatics, Debrecen.

Karadjova-Stoev, G. and Mujtaba, B.G., 2016. Strategic human resource management and global expansion lessons from the Euro disney challenges in France. The International Business & Economics Research Journal (Online), 15(3), p.79.

Kocsis, K., 2014. Franchising Theme Parks: Disneyland Paris inFocus.

Kuisel, R., 2001. The Gallic rooster crows again: the paradox of French anti-Americanism. French Politics, Culture & Society, 19(3), pp.1-16.

Rohac, S., 2006. Euro Disney Paris as the largest single foreign direct investment in France: The location decision of the Walt Disney Company and its impact on regional infrastructures.

Yue, W., 2009. The Fretful Euro Disneyland. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 1(2), p.87.