Background into the site selection and infrastructure improvements.

The Euro Disney project came to be in the 1980s, after the success of Tokyo Disneyland showed the recently renamed Walt Disney Company that an overseas Disney resort could be successful. Michael Eisner and Frank Wells pushed the project ahead, surveying many locations, eventually coming down to two countries in 1985: France and Spain.

Spain was promising, as the resort climate would be similar to the existing sites in California and Florida, leading to a much more straightforward design and construction process. Alas, the site near Pego, Alicante was not feasible environmentally, with the other sites in Spain also dropping out of consideration. When the French government offered significant tax breaks and massive infrastructure and transportation incentives, the attention of the Disney company moved there.

The site in Toulon, France (southern France near the Mediterranean Sea) was amazing weather-wise wise with a natural tourist market. Unfortunately, the site survey showed shallow bedrock that would have required costly excavation and dynamiting to transform into a vacation resort. Where else, then?

It was a period of excitation and change for Paris, with the creation of the RER (Reseau Express Regional or Regional Express Network) heavy commuter rail service in 1977. The line extended east into Noisy-Le-Grand by consolidating various regional train lines into a fast high-speed network with excellent connectivity and service to Paris and the surrounding area. Noisy-Le-Grand is the center of Marne-La-Vallee, a development project that brought a unified vision to the location immediately east of Paris into “new cities.” 

Divided into three sectors originally, there was still land east for a 4^th sector, where the French government offered the Walt Disney Company a massive site to build a resort. With the RER extended further east to Torcy in 1980, 2200 acres of farmland was available, split among a few villages: Serris, Bailly-Romainvilliers, Magny-Le-Hongre, Coupvray, and where the park would technically be situated, Chessy. 

The first financial agreements were signed in 1985, with design work starting. This required a massive hiring at Walt Disney Imagineering, since staff there had been massively laid off after the completion of EPCOT Center in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland. As a result of the agreement, the French government started an extension project of the RER A past Torcy, 6.8 miles long, with two new stations. Bussy-Saint-Georges and Chessy were selected for those stations, with the Chessy station serving as the terminus and located near the entrance of the theme park and shopping village. This opened on April 1^st, 1992.

The second critical transportation improvement came from a TGV (Train Grande Vitesse or High Speed Train) station attached to the Chessy RER station. This opened on May 29^th, 1994.

Financial Structure:

Midas SA (Societe Anonyme or Anonymous Society, equivalent of a corporation in the USA) was formed in 1988 to build the resort and operate it while satisfying all the requirements of the agreement with the French government. Midas SA became Euro Disneyland SCA (Societe en Commandite par actions or sponsored stock-owned company) on January 24^th, 1989, transforming the corporate structure into a company where the stockholders are the company’s sponsors. They invest their money into the company where their debt responsibility is limited to what they invested, which shelters them if the company faces financial troubles. The sponsored company, which is the legal entity, is fully exposed to its debts. 

EDL Holding Company (branch of the Walt Disney Company), Indosuez, BNP (Banque Nationale de Paris), Credit Agricole, and SG Warburg and Co were the initial SCA sponsors. After all the stock offerings in the various countries of the European Union, EDL Holding Company was left with 49% of the capital, with a total of 250,000 sponsors or stockholders.

A total of 4 billion USD was raised to build the park out of the stockholders and bond sales, which was enough to fund the construction of the first theme park, six hotels, a vacation home resort, and a shopping district.