Euro Disney warns investors of several additional years of loss

What "labor laws" are the main problem? The 35-hour work week, or is it something else? I used to work for a French company (in their North America headquarters), and senior management (who were mostly all French) hated the economic impact of that law.

Joel

Reading the article in detail, it seems that the real problem is low attendance. They even mentioned the weather as a protential future problem. Where have I heard that before?

If no one is coming to the park you can not pay the bills. I know they market Disneyland Paris alot.

They should have thought about the weather in the early 90's when they settled on a location. Spain may have been the better alternative and in Europe so many people drive by rail that I don't think people would have cared.

Also, the Spanish would have been easier to work with than the French. I remember reading a book and I think Eisner was really the force behind deciding on France when many in the company would have preferred Spain.

How successful are the Spanish parks? (Thinking along the lines of Port Aventura and Movie World in Madrid...) I know that Movie World wasn't pleased with their performance under the management of Six Flags, and that Port Aventura's performance was the reason GE dumped it almost immediately after the NBC/Universal deal closed.

I visited Port Aventura a few years ago on opening day. It's a beautiful park (I see some design aspects of IOA that I suspect were inspired by it), but was absolutely dead that day. We had a five minute wait for Dragon Khan--not a wait in line, but a five minute wait sitting on the train waiting for enough passengers before they would dispatch it!

The book "Keys to the Kingdom" spends a lot of time talking about the decision making process when planning Euro Disney. According to that author, ego was the main reason Eisner wanted a park in Paris.

Joel