In their first steps in conquering the European market, Disney and its board of management had poor cross-cultural

skills. The ignorance for the significance of cultural adaptation in Disney Paris resulted in their interpretation for preferences and tastes of local people. Managers of Disney then made several assumptions which later led to their wrong design, marketing mix and pricing strategy. Thus, it is apparent that lack of sensitivity played the main role in Disney initial failure in France. One of the significant cultural differences is Europeans have a different eating habits and tastes as opposed to Americans. Without researching about consumers preferences, they failed to realize the European custom of enjoying leisurely meals at particular hours, complete with wine and beer. Hence, they strictly applied the policy of serving no alcohol in the park which was perceived as a place mainly for children. In addition, they downsized restaurant breakfast service due to wrong information that Europeans dont take breakfast. This, consequently, led to an unexpected situation that everyone showed up for breakfast resulting long queues at the restaurants due to unreasonable staffing and lack of space for customers. Also, the assumption that the natives would demand French typical breakfast of croissants and coffee was another mistake of Disney. It is because they want a wide variety of food served such as eggs and bacon. Next, Disney failed to take European vacation customs into consideration. They believed that about 17 million Europeans live less than a two-hour drive from

Paris and another 310 million can fly there in the same time or less, so Paris is an attractive place for European to spend their vacations. However, Walt Disney Company lacked understanding of the culture in Europe. Europeans, with 4-5 weeks of vacation, took destination trips, usually by airplane, on their work vacations. This cultural norm contrasted the easily accessible location Disney chose. Europeans did not consider Euro Disney a vacation spot; only, a place to spend a day. Location failure reduced the revenue generation inside the park, and the destination appeal of the park. Another assumption regarding local travelling customs is that Disney thought Monday would be a light day for visitors and Friday a heavy one and allocated their staffs accordingly. This, in reality, proved the opposite outcome. Not the end of the story, decision makers of Disney decided to transplant an American-style park to Europe resulting in protests from French and staffing problems which they had to dealt with. The successful development of Disneyland Tokyo was used as an evidence that the strictly American philosophy of Disney could be implemented without major change in other cultural environments. They did not aware about French was looking down American culture. The locals did not perceive the US to have a developed culture, so they were concerned that interaction with such inferior culture would deteriorate their own culture. French intellectuals considered the park a threat to future generations, who would lose their cultural identity and start speaking in English. Sensationalizing the cultural failure, some called it a Cultural

Chernobyl, Disney failed to understand the French national character, their insecurities over cultural invasion after having been an occupied nation twice in the last century and their deep commitment to maintaining their identity and liberty. The arrogance of the French is based on insecurity as a global minority and the arrogance of the Americans was based on a wide open optimism and global success. The collision of the two arrogances was formidable as the French say. Thats why the French reject Disney from the bottom of their hearts to avoid American cultural imperialism. However, having realized the issues and revised their marketing strategy to satisfy the European requirements, Disney proved that they not only acknowledged their weaknesses in cross-sectional skills but also knew how to overcome such hardness. In particulars, they improved the variety of menus to cater to the multiple indigenous tastes of different cultures in Europe and also offer customers with the services resemble to the US parks. Furthermore, Disney blended European influence in Disney entertainment and attractions and changed its name to Disneyland Paris to strengthen the parks identity. More importantly, price for hotel rooms and day tickets were cut down by one third. Those attempts worked and indicated that Disney was on their way to adapt local culture. Apart from the previously erroneous assumptions, its assumption here about customers reaction to changes was absolutely true, with 11.7 million of visitors in 1996 comparing to only 8.8 million visitors in 1994.