04/11/1992

DISNEY MAKES A $5B BET ON EUROPE

ERIC ELLIS, Paris

Q: Who's the most famous figure in Europe these days? Jacques Delors? Francois Mitterrand? Helmut Kohl?

If you answered any of the above, you'd be wrong. A more realistic answer is an American in Paris, not one called Bush but a diminutive French-Californian, Monsieur Michel Souris, who this weekend will be crowned King of Euro-Disney.

Better known as Monsieur Mouse, M. Souris rides the latest wave of US cultural imperialism to sweep Europe.

With an expected population of 11 million in its first year, Euro-Disney is effectively Europe's newest city.

It is also a big new city, a vast $5 billion domaine of 12,000 employees, four of Europe's six biggest hotels and 29 "experiences" to shatter the idyll of 2,000 hectares of French farmland. When complete, it will be one-fifth the size of Paris, 32 kilometres to its east.

Disney says its figures are not the stuff of Fantasy Land but will rather make Euro-Disney the world's third most popular tourist attraction behind, as it happens, Florida's Disney World (27 million annual visitors) and the original Disneyland outside Los Angeles (15 million).

Euro-Disney will rank alongside the Japanese Disneyland, which opened in 1983. But Disney is confident Mickey and friends will quickly propel Euro-Disney into second place and probably first by the new millennium.

Sounding like an official from the water supply department, Disney cites the key marketing term in theme park-speak - "catchment areas" - the reason why extravaganzas like Euro-Disney are not viable in low population centres like Australia.

Situated in if not the geographical heart of Europe, then certainly its affluent heart, Euro-Disney boasts a catchment area of about 400 million and 450 million people; Europeans from Athens to Oslo to Seville, foreign tourists and the millions of eastern Europeans who see the enjoyment of cultural icons like Mickey Mouse almost as exercising a democratic right.

Euro-Disney's catchment area is almost double that of the two US Disney parks combined and more than twice that of Japan.

Paris is probably the easiest of European cities to get to and it's the most visited. Nowhere in Europe is more than two to three hours away by air, the US is just six and the millions annually seeking the natural attractions of the City of Light make the journey relatively cheap.

(The 45-minute shuttle from London is Pound 40 ($100). Paris's main Charles de Gaulle airport is 20 minutes from Euro-Disney.)

Euro-Disney also exploits France's pitch as the transport hub of the New Europe and the Government has almost fallen over itself to service Euro-Disney.

A new station is being built at the Magic Kingdom to link with travellers using the world's fastest rail service, the Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV). The Paris Metro has been extended to the site and purpose-built autoroutes have been constructed. The bill for the French taxpayer has been $US50,000($65,000) for each of the 12,000 jobs created.

According to Disney, the park will not offend Euro-chauvinism with its"have-a-nice-day" Americanness. There are two official languages, French and English, and legions of interpreters.

"We are giving back to Europe something of what America has taken from it,"explains a Disney spokesman. "The US is a country which has been influenced very much by Europe. What you see in the US is a redefining, in many ways, of our European-ness."

On the French Bourse, Euro-Disney has been Adventure Land for investors, with its $US1 billion 1989 float rocketing onto the French CAC index as a constituent stock, displacing, to the horror of les patriotes francaises their beloved Perrier.

The share price performance has offered some compensation, shooting from 70 francs on listing to a high of about 155 francs, 50 times projected 1997 earnings.

The avalanche of publicity doesn't hurt either, like the spectacular this weekend when Tina Turner, Cher and Gloria Estefan will host le grande opening of the complex in a two-hour show beamed live across the Continent on prime-time television.

Europe is new Frontier Land for the Disney Organisation.

Euro-Disney is its first continental investment, and chief executive Mike Eisner has virtually staked the company on it with a $US5 billion investment that will take up to 18 years to pay off.

Whether the 11 million people expected, and needed, in the first year will turn up is the subject of some speculation. Many in France, the main market, have been offended by the US cultural invasion and vow never to visit.

The weather is a big potential problem. Disneyland and Disney World are in sun belts and function vigorously pretty much all year round as fun parks.

The northern European summer is at best six months long and Disney hopes to offset the low period by attracting the convention market to fill the 5,000 hotel rooms and a purpose-built convention centre.

If Euro-Disney is half the success Disney expects it will be, M. Souris and friends will have secured the famous company's future well into Tomorrow Land.