Disney Offers to Buy-Out All of Disneyland Paris Resort

© Disneyland Paris

The Walt Disney Company has made an offer to buy-out the current investors in the Disneyland Paris Resort, with the intention of fixing the property's financial woes once and for all.

The news came after the Disney Company announced that they have agreed to purchase 90% of the resort's shares that are held by Kingdom Holding Company.  That transaction represents 9% of the resort's total shares, and will increase Disney's ownership of the resort to 85.7% from 76.7%.  At the same time Disney announced that they intend to make a cash offer to pick up all of the other outstanding shares, held by various investors, to fully own the property.

The Disneyland Paris Resort has had a long history of financial and profitability issues, which were hurt further by the terror attacks in Paris and economic issues throughout Europe.  Despite pouring more money into the resort in recent years, Disney is also offering to spend up to €1.5 billion when these transactions are complete to fix the resort's finances, including reducing debt, increasing liquidity and o complete improvements in the parks.

Disneyland Paris Resort most recently announced some special attractions for their 25th anniversary, including two Star Wars themed attraction overlays, a new nighttime show and parade.

Disneyland Paris Resort Announces 25th Anniversary Celebration

© Disneyland Paris

Beginning April 12, 2017, the Disneyland Paris Resort will kick off a celebration in honor of their 25th anniversary, offering visitors new attractions, shows and more.  While no major brand new rides were announced, the park will be offering several renovated ones that will provide new experiences to riders.

© Disneyland Paris

Many fans of the park are excited to see Star Tours: The Adventures Continue come to the park after successfully operating at several other Disney properties.  This means that the final version of Star Tours will close, to be replaced with an all new 3-D version of the ride with multiple destinations for riders to experience.  Locations to be visited on the new attraction include the "worlds of Jakku, Hoth, Tatooine," and even the famous Death Star - all picked randomly so as to encourage repeat rides.

© Disneyland Paris

Adding a bit more Star Wars to Disneyland Paris, Space Mountain will be changed into Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain, another retheme already popular at the several parks.  Riders will blast off into the world of Star Wars on a high speed trip through the galaxy.  The concept art above shows trains with no over-the-shoulder restraints (which I believe it currently has), but that might just be artistic liberty.  We shall see.

© Disneyland Paris

Live entertainment offerings will round out the additions for the 25th anniversary celebration.  Disney Illuminations, concept art for which can be seen above, will debut and feature projections, fireworks and other special effects in front of and on Sleeping Beauty Castle.  The show will be conducted by Mickey Mouse, and feature characters from films like Beauty and the Beast, Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Disney Stars on Parade will also open at Disneyland Paris, offering all new floats, music and more.  Other new shows like Mickey Presents "Happy Anniversary Disneyland Paris" and The Starlit Princess Waltz will also open for the celebration.

Euro Disney Bailed out by Walt Disney Co. + New Rides on the Horizon?

© Disneyland Paris

Euro Disney, the company that runs the Disneyland Paris Resort, has been financial bailed out by the Walt Disney Company once again.

Struggling to keep guests coming through the gates (last year saw around 800,000 decrease in attendance) and perpetual losses, the resort certainly needs a punch in the arm.  That punch will come in the form of a $1.25 billion financial reorganization that will see some of the property's debt converted into stock (thus diluting its current value) along with almost $500 million in cash.  The backing of Walt Disney Company, who Euro Disney technically owes all their debt to, is making the refinancing possible.

The Walt Disney Company currently owns 40% of the resort, but that number will probably change after the refinance, and really this refinance is basically a smart way to go bankrupt and lessen their debts.  The hope is that the reduced debt (with repayment forgiven for many years by Disney Co.) along with the cash infusion will allow the parks and resorts to get back into shape.

Does that mean new attractions?  Well... maybe eventually, but it sounds like not too soon.  The problem is that it will also take a great deal of cash to get the parks back to what they once were - there are plenty of stories out there of the parks being neglected to save money.  That means that a lot must be spent just to refurbish the parks - especially with Disneyland Paris' 25th anniversary just around the corner in '17.  This story has good details on the current state of the parks.

Hopefully this plan is the one that really turns the resort around, creating a meaningful future for fans to look forward to.

Toy Story Playland at Disney Studios Paris

While it opened a couple weeks ago, I just finally had time to check out some videos and photos from the new Toy Story Playland at the Disney Studios at the Disneyland Paris Resort.

After a bit of uncomfortable anticipation that the area would contain 'typical' carnival rides that would lack the Disney charm, I'm actually pleasantly surprised. The area does happen to contain three rides that you might find more often at a Six Flags than a Disney Park, but the theming is rather extensive. They even have an Intamin half-pipe coaster that's disguised as an RC Racer. The area is really not anywhere near as bad as many made it out to be.

Disney Studios in Paris really needs more attractions to grow into a nice compliment to the uber-gorgeous Disneyland Paris - but it looks like a high-tech Ratatouille E-Ticket is on the horizon, and that will certainly be a step in the right direction.

For now, check out this video tour of the new land. Be sure to click through to YouTube and watch part 2 as well.

Three New Rides And One Gigantic Buzz Lightyear

It feels as though we've been awaiting the opening of Toy Story Playland at the Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris forever. The official opening will be in the middle of next month, but the new area looks to be pretty finished.

The three new rides located in Toy Story Playland have been testing regularly. These include the Parachute Drop, RC Racer, and Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin. The land is filled with over-sized toys and other figures, making humans feel as though they are the size of a toy themselves. The entrance to the land features a gigantic Buzz Lightyear that guests pass directly under.

There are some nice shots of the rides testing, as well as some video, located here on the Disney Central Plaza forums.

Weekly Rewind 11.14.09

Lots of drama going on with Kings Island's Son of Beast wooden roller coaster, but I wanted to point out that the Dayton Daily News has some interesting photos up of the ride through the years. They range from construction, before loop era, after loop era, and more.

The quest to reopen Six Flags New Orleans continues to get more twisted. Nickelodeon ended their licensing agreement with Southern Star Amusements, and then SSA offered to outright buy the park on their own.

Paulton's Park attempts to gain permission to keep their Cobra roller coaster open after being told they didn't have permission to build that ride, along with another one named the Edge.

Getting closer to finishing their financial reorganization, Six Flags has agreed to a new plan put forth by Avenue Capital Management. It's more favorable to creditors than what was previously proposed, and hopefully it will help hasten the company's reemergence from chapter 11.

Despite excessively soggy conditions, Kings Dominion has continued to work on Intimidator 305 as best they can. The delicate process of building the ride's lift hill is now underway. New photos posted to the ride's official website.

Cedar Point has also continued work on their new water ride, Shoot the Rapids. Pieces of the steel track used for the rides lifts and drops have started to arrive on site as well.

The Disneyland Paris Resort had one of its best financial years ever in 2008, sadly 2009 is not shaping up to be quite as good. Even though the resort had a small increase in attendance, revenues were down significantly. The results are putting future expansions at the resort in jeopardy.

After being closed for a lengthy renovation, Space Mountain at the Magic Kingdom is just about ready to reopen for guests. The Disney Parks Blog has photos and details of what passengers will encounter on their journey to space.

Sentosa Theme Park has some nice videos of rides and attractions at Universal Studios Singapore, including the red side of the Battlestar Galactica coaster testing. That launch up the lift looks great!

What was the mysterious second half of the Gravity Group's new add for IAAPA? Why timberliner images of course! Check it out on their website.

Disneyland Paris Resort Strong Again

Disneyland Paris Resort has announced their first quarter fiscal year 2008 results - and they are looking good again!

The resort with such a troubled history posted a 20% increase in revenues for the quarter on strong park attendance and hotel occupancy.

This streak of growth is going to do great things for the resort. This continues and I'm sure we'll see some more amazing attractions get built in the fields outside Paris.

Here's the article.

Paris Tower of Terror Photos

The Disney and More Blog has a fantastic photo tour of the Tower of Terror at Disney Studios Paris, which is already having pass holder previews.

The ride is a clone of the California version, and honestly from these pics you can't easily tell that it's not photos of that ride. Still, it's worth checking out; the photos are really high quality and very well done.

Disney Studios Paris Extreme Makeover

© 2007 Scrooge

Talk about an amazing transformation. User Scrooge over at Disney Magic Interactive has posted a large set of photos of the new area at Disney Studios Paris.

This is the result of the placemaking project around the park entrance/Tower of Terror area. Speaking for Tower, I believe it starts previews this month.

The area looks fantastic, and this only gives me more hope as to how California Adventure will turn out!

See all the photos.

Tower of Terror Paris + Placemaking

© 2007 Disneytheque

The picture above speaks for itself, I think. The 2nd little Disney Park in France is finally starting to shape up. Those are new buildings that went up as part of the placemaking project going on at the park in the front of the photo.

Disneytheque has a whole slew of Tower photos as well as placemaking photos.

Good Year for Disneyland Paris Resort

Euro Disney S.C.A. announced their fiscal year 2007 results today, and they were a nice improvement over the last few years.

Overall revenues were up 12% on what you *want* them to be up on, growth in attendance at the resort. The resort saw a staggering 1.7 million increase in attendance for the year.

That, in turn, increased revenues from the parks, their downtown Disney area, the hotels (which saw 5.8 percentage points higher occupancy rates this year), and everything else they offer.

The company finally had a positive operating profit for the year, and while they still had a loss over all, it's a step in the right direction.

Add this new strength to Tower of Terror opening soon and we may see even more expansion at the resort in coming years.

Disney Studios Paris Placemaking

Ever since I heard that Disney Studios Paris was doing some large scale placemaking to turn the area around their soon-to-open Tower of Terror into a 1950s Hollywood street, I've wanted to get a better idea of how it would play out.

Well, now thanks to WDSFans.com, I have just that. They have created a nice map of the area and listed all the buildings that are going in. Apparently they are snatching up designs from California Adventure and Disney-MGM Studios for use in this area.

If you are curious like I was, click here to check out WDSFans.com's page.