Why Did Euro Disney Lose Money for Years?

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal say Euro Disney cost $4 billion to develop and lost money for years. The line they like is that it took Disney a decade to figure out that European parents want to drink wine while their kids run around. Someone who lives in Paris thinks of themselves as French or Parisian, not Euro, so Disney renamed the park Disneyland Paris.

A string of changes, plus the end of the recession the park had opened into, eventually righted the ship. The rest of the Eisner, Wells, and Katzenberg years were the opposite of that miss. Operating profit went from well under $300 million when they took over in 1984 to just under $2 billion a decade later.