So, yes, at the end of "Itchy & Scratchy Land" there is that sequence where Frink wonders how Euro Itchy & Scratchy Land is faring with a potential animatronic uprising. We then cut to the park's French counterpart to see that, in their case, nobody actually showed up. The park is completely devoid of visitors, while an exasperated ticket booth operator has the unbearable task of imploring to an indifferent public: "Who are you to resist it, eh?" Who indeed.
This, of course, was a gag at the expense of Euro Disney Resort, which in November 1994 had barely been open for two and a half years and already looked as though it might be headed for an early grave. In real life the situation wasn't quite as dire as nobody showing up at all (I was there in its opening year, so there's that), but despite CEO Michael Eisner's high hopes for the Disney brand's continued expansion and eventual global conquest, attendance numbers during the park's initial years were significantly lower than what was expected. There are multiple factors accounting for Euro Disney's underwhelming debut. The park had the misfortune of opening while a recession was underway, which was always going to be a massive thorn in its side. Another stumbling block was the significant backlash it drew among the French populace, for reasons well encapsulated by David Mirkin on the "Itchy & Scratchy Land" commentary, when he wryly remarks that Disney was eventually able to "force that culture" onto Europe. Many locals weren't wild about the prospect of seeing the beautiful French countryside swallowed up and replaced by this garish celebration of American popular culture, and shunned it accordingly. And the rest of Europe wasn't much keener. Obviously, the park endured and came through its initial brush with impending bankruptcy*, although not without having to jettison
the Euro Disney moniker early in the game and rebranding as Disneyland Paris. It is still going today and can now claim the honor of being Europe's most popular tourist destination, although it has faced a lot of ongoing debt problems across its 28-year history. The park may no longer be the butt of jokes along the lines of Euro Itchy & Scratchy Land, but if the Disney suits could go back in time, I'm not convinced they'd be in such a hurry to do this one over again.
Ah, but everybody knows the story of Euro Disney's teething troubles. For now, I want to focus on a time when, for those of us of a certain age, the park represented hope, optimism and a bold new future. If you owned a copy of The Little Mermaid on VHS back in 1991 then you might recall that announcer who had the audacity to speak over Sebastian's end-credits reprise of "Under The Sea" to advise that we stuck around for "a special sneak preview of the most magical kingdom on Earth". If you obeyed then you were treated to this gem:
The promo (originally in French, although it is the English dub with which I am primarily familiar) could not possibly have been soppier in tone, and my brother and I used to riff on it pretty mercilessly back in the day. Cynical adult me would love to make some crack about Paul's dreams looking suspiciously like the products of corporate banality than any actual child's dream (apart from the detail about being zapped into oblivion by Captain EO, of course) but, truthfully, there are few things as purely, harrowingly nostalgic to me as the random odds and ends you found lurking at the opening or closing of a Disney VHS tape, particularly when they were still dark and spooky and patrolled by Sorcerer Mickey. For as hokey as this promo might be, my childhood hopes and fears are so firmly welded to it that revisiting it after all these years is such a bittersweet experience. It takes me back to another time and place, when the very idea of a Disney park opening up in Europe seemed proof positive that the world was slowly but surely becoming a more magical place. Naturally, nowadays there's a share of sorrow involved too. Not just because of the troubled realities in bringing the park to fruition, and the dream's insistence on becoming a nightmare early on to those who had backed it, but because 1992, the year when the magic was touted to go down, has come and gone and is now almost three decades into the past. It definitely plays like a faded dream, the promise of a brighter tomorrow that, irrespective of whether it actually became reality, inevitably became yesterday too soon.
What always stood out to me as strange about this promo is that Paul, despite ostensibly being the hero of the piece, actually gets a lot less focus throughout than the rest of his family. He mainly just hovers about in the background with that costumed Winnie The Pooh character while his sister gets to meet Snow White and the seven dwarfs and his parents make cuddly observations. Something that I didn't piece together as a child is that the Winnie The Pooh character is presumably supposed to be Paul's own Pooh plush come to "life" into the fantasy - look closely and you'll notice that the plush itself disappears after the first balloon ride and doesn't reappear until we return to Paul's reality. Actually, it strikes me as just as curious that something like that would be regulated to background detail and not be part of the narrative focus.
Also noteworthy is that, as Euro Disney Resort was still under construction at the time this promo was being put together, most of what you see here was actually filmed at Walt Disney World in Florida. The plot may get thicker still, however. I have no way of verifying this, but the YouTube user who uploaded this promo, thingsandtings, speculates in their description that the "real" portions of the advert were filmed at the site of the park's future lakeside hotels...which, if true, would make for a pretty bleak twist in my opinion. For all of the ad's efforts to paint Euro Disney as a mystical paradise - a manifestation of childhood wonder at its most untainted and sincere - those lakeside bookends have a quiet, idyllic charm that stands in direct contrast to the busyness of the park vignettes. Viewed from that perspective, then it's not hard to reinterpret that final line as a threat; the family's days of peaceful picnicking amid the glory of nature are now firmly numbered, as seen in Paul's premonition of impending destruction. Even if it's not the same location, there is still an unintentional subtext to be had in the polarity - the natural splendor of the lake versus the overbearing artificiality of the park, the real ducks seen splashing about the waters at the start of the promo versus the caricatured Disney representations, etc. It seems to me that the family are already have their haven right where they are - one way or another, the arrival of that ominous tourist attraction can only be a disturbance.
*The idea of an amusement park going bankrupt strikes me as particularly grim, because it instantly calls to mind the game over sequence from the 1994 game Theme Park. I should touch on that some time.
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