Essay about Euro Disneyland

Similar problems occurred in Disneyland Tokyo, where management didn’t even think about the height difference of Asians and Americans, resulting in too high public phones for Japanese guests. Concluding it is clear that the American company originally tried to implement a standardization strategy, when launching theme parks in other countries, without taking the local culture into consideration. Country specific procedures and regulations, and different local customer preferences forced Disney to adapt features of the US theme park business model to the local markets.

The case “Euro Disney: First 100 days” talks about the issues faced by the Walt Disney Company when expanding to international borders. The case begins with the history of Disneyland and then describes the reasons behind its success and expansion to various states across the country. It then describes the success of Tokyo Disneyland, first Disney theme park outside America and the factors affecting it.

     However, the opportunity should have not been ‘taken for granted’. Other cultural factors should have been analyzed to decide the positioning of Theme Park. Their prevalent mistake has been the failure to recognize the cultural differences between Americans and French people. Locating the Theme Park near Paris and acquiring agricultural land as well as imposing the U.S spirit undeniably negatively affects french citizens. The French peoples’ lifestyle deeply depends on the gratitude to their traditional agriculture. Thus, the land takeover by an American Company mainly does not provide pleasure to them.

When a company enters a foreign market, the company’s management team should work hand in hand with managers from the home country to have a better understanding of what the culture is like. In this case, I feel that Disney did not do that. One telling point is that Disney changed its leadership from American to French some fifteen times. The second point about the leadership of Disney was that the American and French leadership styles were often confronted. Another point is that the company did not have the support of Francois Mitterrand, the French president.

When Walt Disney opened Disneyland July 17th 1955 it was culmanation of ideas he had been formulating for ten years. Walt had a specific vision of what the park should be and how it should look, but also left the park open to the interpretation and ideas that each child who visited left with in thier memories. The idea of a place to welcome all and have no credance on who a person is but of the value of thier imagination and heart is an astounding thought, not only for the mid 1950s, but for today also. Disneyland has never been limited by what people believe are normal limitations but has strived to always shock and inspire with each visit to the park. Walt had been using this same formula of groundbreaking inoventions and a never

Culture difference will influence the number of tourists and the acceptance level of customers. Euro Disney followed the brand policies to the English instructions only, no wine providing in the theme park, high price of ticket, and standardized merchandise and food items，consequently wide spread dissatisfaction among the customers. When a new brand enters different cultures, it is inevitable for customers in new market to repel it or spend much time to accept it，so the new brand should be brought closer to local culture by providing a platform to interact with the brand in customer’s terms. Also culture different will bring different consumption patterns, Europeans are likely to spend reasonable price on entertainment, so the price of Euro-Disney will be too high to accept and decrease the number of tourists in Euro-Disney. Different culture has different drinking and eating habits，Euro-Disney forbad drinking wine in lunch time，but most French like to drink wine when they enjoy their meal. All of these elements deriving from culture difference will influence the revenue of Euro-Disney and even result in the failure of Euro-Disney.

As we know, Disneyland is very success in U.S. when the first Disneyland built in Anaheim, California on 17 July, 1995. After some debate about the site for a European theme park, Michael Eisner and Jacques Chirac signed a contract for the building of s Disney theme park at Marne-la-Vallee, a region of sunflower and sugar-beet farmland and small villages located twenty miles east of Paris (Janis, F., 1998, P.247). However, the European Disneyland was not as such success as they expected. This essay going to regards the main issues in opening the Euro Disneyland and compare the French cultural with American cultural by using Hofstede’s cultural Dimensions and Trompenaars ‘s cultural dimensions. This essay will then end by

Unlike Americans who were known grazers, Parisians were less likely to eat in the same fashion, with most places closing down earlier, leaving many without better food options, and still sans their wine. (Yue, 2009) A good description for Disney Paris was a "cultural Chernobyl” because of its odd blending of American and French pairing, which did not quite work. It was not just about the marketing and cultural issues, finically they were struggling from the beginning, after the first financial bailout and restructuring, another would soon follow. (Grant, 2003) Another park, Walt Disney Studios was opened in hopes of bringing in more guests, however, yet again, failing to utilize any contingency plans or measures in case it was not very lucrative, it was discovered that the cost of running two different attractions was too expensive.

We question whether it is possible for the author to be objective given his past relationship with Disneyland, described in Note 3. Also, the general tone of the article appears to be negative because of his past experiences at Disneyland.

The vision of Walt Disney’s America in the 1950’s was revolutionary then as it is today as he created an impossibly high standard of service, ambience and entertainment into an inelastic good. His rendering of America into a transactional commodity is not only a testament to our values but how deeply rooted capitalism is engrained in our nation’s core. Walt Disney created the world of Disneyland not only to escape the negative and furic energy of the real world, but to pay homage to the country that allowed his dreams to come true- the United States. Disneyland, through architecture, atmosphere and aesthetic, stamps the American masses with a yearning to attend “the most magical place on earth” and in doing so created an industry on it’s own- but does this fantasy world come with a price to pay? The Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California was the beginning of the Disney Empire and is a testament of its economic effects both on a regional scale and a microeconomic one, but from it all, Disneyland serves as the perfect business model in the age of computers and service.

Euro Disney could not modify the main theme of other Disney parks to create something unique for Europeans. Restaurants were not prepared according to the European eating habits and one of the biggest mistakes was not selling alcoholic beverages in the park which has very close connection with French culture. Customers had to leave the park to buy those from outside.

When a business decides to venture internationally into different countries with its products, services, and operations, it is very important that the company gains an understanding of how the culture of the different societies affects the values found in those societies. Geert Hofstede conducted one of the most famous and most used studies on how culture relates to values. Hofstede study enabled him to compare dimensions of culture across 40 countries. He originally isolated four dimensions of what he claimed summarized different cultures — power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity (Hill, 2013, p.110). To cover aspects of values not discussed in the original paradigm Hofstede has since added two more dimensions — Confucianism or long-term orientation and indulgence versus self-restraint (Hofstede, n.d.). Because of the way Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are given an index score from 0-100, it is easy for a company to get a general comparison between the cultures they are expanding into and the culture they are already in.

Mickey, a major promotion tool of Disney management did not create reason or attraction enough for the European community, unlike at the sister theme park Tokyo Disneyland. European families found EuroDisney to be an “over-rated” promotion of American culture and lifestyle, contrary to what

As a conclusion, all of these factors are foreseeable by Disney. Lack of knowledge of the local culture and the American ethnocentric tendency make the foreseeable things covered with the mist. Global recession, wrong pre-assumption, and Unknowledgeable of local culture are controllable things that can be managed well. For example, during the global recession, Disney can introduce affordable packages which may attract people on visiting Euro Disney. The wrong pre-assumption that affect the construction design can be overcome by building a fast and temporary facilities while waiting for the permanent building is being built. Hiring local French advisor is one of the solutions to the lack of local culture knowledge. Yet, The intense competition that came from the Olympics, world fair, and landmark’s event are foreseeable but it’s hard to be controlled as such Olympics is just happening once in 4years and other events might happens once a year. People are more interested to visit those events rather than Euro Disney that can be visited anytime.

The main problem of the Euro Disney was that all calculations made by Walt Disney Company were based on parks in the USA and Japan considering Europe as a mass of people rather than many countries with different languages and cultures. Americans see theme parks as a destination where you can stay between 4 and 6 days. In Europe, Euro Disney was seen as a part of the experience when traveling to Paris. The cost was also a problem for the park. A night in a hotel inside the park costs as much as a high quality hotel in the French capital. So, given that the park was located 40 minutes by car from Paris, visitors preferred to spend a night in the romantic city of Paris.