this new attraction is likely to liven up the summer, but not as you imagine

With its Avengers campus and the post-Covid-19 era, Disneyland Paris was a hit in 2022. And as the park prepares to build on this success this summer, a new animation may well pose a problem.

The boost for Disneyland Paris in 2022

A record. In 2022 Disneyland Paris revealed to have made an operating profit of 51 million dollars (47 million euros) for a turnover of 2.6 billion of dollars. Gains relating to the lifting of restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, but not only.

These enormous profits were made possible thanks to the opening of the ambitious Avengers Campus area last summer, featuring attractions like a roller coaster titled Avengers Assemble: Flight Force, as well as Spider-Man WEB: Adventure. A brand new space likely to generate a significant financial windfall integrated into a major fleet expansion plan costing 2.5 billion euros that the chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger, announced in 2018 before President Emmanuel Macron. Added to this is another extension of the Walt Disney Studios area, which currently includes two large gardens: the Lake Promenade area, as well as a new area called Arendelle: World of Frozen based on the theme of Snow Queen also under construction. In short, Disneyland Paris sees things very big.

The park’s new summer attraction

However, if all the lights seem to be green for the next summers of the French park, the summer period of 2023 could well be tainted by a completely different attraction: a series of demonstrations by nearly 1,000 park employees.

In effect, between 1,000 and 1,500 employees went on strike on Tuesday May 30 to demand an improvement in their working conditions and an increase in their income. Concretely, the employees and strikers are asking for an increase of 200 euros net monthly, the doubling of pay on Sundays and the revaluation of mileage allowances. On the other hand, the employees protest against the hyperflexibility put in place by the park. Launched in 2020, this system allows park management to organize and modify employee schedules as needed. “It’s a real suffering. We sometimes travel for a few hours, often at different times, with different schedules from one day to the next.”said Ahmed Masrour, a UNSA shop steward. “A disaster for health and family life”adds Fabien Beiersdorff, general secretary of the CGT Disney.

Inter-union action this morning at Disneyland \u2935\ufe0fpic.twitter.com/7n5UiQnNeB

May 30, 2023

Proposals rejected by the park management: “All they offer us is a bonus of 125 euros and an advance on our 13th month. It’s completely above ground. On the one hand they just offer us to sell our holidays on the other, they advance the inflation that they refuse to compensate us.

If the management of Disneyland ensures to maintain the dialogue, the strikers demand the opening of new negotiations as a matter of urgency. Otherwise what ? “Then they will have new mobilizations. As long as the general management remains deaf and insensitive to the daily lives of families and to the private and professional lives of employees”. Any further, it is the whole image of the park which risks tarnishing, in particular with the approach of the sumptuous summer period. Because on the side of the union action, the mobilizations could well continue during the next months of June, July and August. Remember that the movement began a month and a half ago with a first rather discreet mobilization, but which swells as the negotiations do not progress.