[mickey]

Today, Disney's second resort in Europe opened adjacent to Disneyland Paris. Here are several articles about the opening:

Foxnews.com

Orlando Sentinel, copy below

Disney opens cinema park near Paris
By Angela Doland

MARNE-LA-VALLEE, France -- You can watch stunt drivers race through a mock-up of a French Riviera village, or sit down at an easel for a class on animation. And when your tram gets hit by an earthquake, flood and fire, it's a lesson in special effects.

Walt Disney Studios, the newest addition to the Disneyland resort outside Paris, opens Saturday to give visitors a peek behind the scenes at cinema, television and animation.

With palm trees, Spanish Revival-style buildings and a miniature 1940s Hollywood Boulevard, where starlets in veiled hats pose for the cameras and "producers" recruit visitors as actors, the new park goes heavy on the Tinseltown theme that's drawn crowds to Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida.

In a country that's sensitive to the invasion of big U.S. blockbusters, the park also is careful to pay tribute to Europe's filmmaking traditions. Italian street musicians play tunes from Federico Fellini movies on accordion and mandolin, and visitors set off a rain shower when they pose for pictures outside a shop called "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," after the 1964 French musical starring Catherine Deneuve.

Visitors also are reminded that Walt Disney took inspiration from Europe's great storytellers, like the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault.

The idea for adding a cinema-themed park dates back from even before crews began digging up wheat fields east of Paris to build the first park, now called Disneyland Resort Paris, which opened 10 years ago. The park got off to a rocky start but has become one of Europe's top tourist destinations, with more than 12. million visitors a year.