QUEL FRACAS! ON SUNDAY, APRIL 12, striking rail workers shut down a train line, unnamed saboteurs set off a bomb that disrupted power outside Paris, and Left Bank intellectuals worked themselves into a philosophical lather. All to protest the coming of Monsieur Mickay to Marne-la-Vallée, 20 miles east of the City of Light. Yet despite such distractions, the opening of Euro Disneyland's $4 billion theme park was still très amusant: Cher sported skintight black leather, and Angela Lansbury warbled the theme from Beauty and the Beast.
On Saturday, Candice Bergen, Eddie Murphy and Rick Moranis treated their kids to Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty's Castle) and plied them with sugared popcorn (the preferred French style). In Frontierland, visitors were greeted with a hearty Bon-jour, Cowboy. Writer Jean Cau dismissed the 136-acre park as "a horror made of cardboard, plastic and appalling colors...taken straight out of comic books written for obese Americans." Nevertheless, a healthy opening day attendance gave Disney executives confidence that their first-year goal of 11 million visitors would be met—without undue damage to the national character. Noted Euro Disneyland president Robert Fitzpatrick: "France has dealt with more dangerous invasions than the arrival of a mouse."
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