“I am emotional, I want to cry, but I control myself,” Clara Mazzoni documents, after opening the gates, all dressed in white, bag “pins” and a bow with ears in the portrait of Mary from “Aristogatos.”
“I left Reims (northeast France) at 6:15 in the morning, so I wouldn’t have to queue at the entrance,” says this diligent visitor, who used to visit the park once a week.
Beginning at 8:50 a.m., the first visitors, mostly in costumes, were greeted at Town Square and then Main Street by a staff honor guard and a ball featuring iconic Disney characters.
Some visitors were able to visit the park on the two days before the reopening, June 15 and 16, reserved for annual subscribers.
“I couldn’t wait,” said Maxim, 9-and-a-half, who said he had been unable to “sleep for three days” due to worries about returning to the park.
“I missed the park for a long time,” says 6-year-old Snow White Joanna Dukes. “Because of COVID, I couldn’t come,” the little boy grieved.
Disneyland Paris has been closed since October 30, 2020, and reopened to the public, but at reduced capacity.
Today, it can accommodate “28,000 people, limiting entrances” to the park, which has the capacity to receive “up to 50,000 visitors per day,” says Jamila Aouaz, CFDT union delegate.
Disneyland Paris said in a press release that all attractions and stores are open, but visitors six and older, as well as employees, must wear a mask “all day.”
“We have imposed stronger sanitary measures throughout the ‘resort’, at our attractions, shops, hotels and restaurants,” the park chief insisted.
2000 gel alcohol dispenser
To limit the spread of the coronavirus, posters resembling mandatory physical distancing have been placed on the floor and acrylic panels have been placed in front of and sometimes inside attractions.
Approximately 2,000 drops are also fitted with an alcohol gel “dispenser”.
Of the seven hotels, only the Newport Bay Club is open. The new New York hotel, with 561 rooms dedicated to the Marvel universe, will open on June 21.
After the first closure between March 13 and July 15, 2020, the park, the main tourist destination in Europe, closed its doors again twice.
According to CFDT, the park received 3.5 million visitors in 2020. Disneyland Paris does not reveal the number of annual visitors since 2015, when it reached 14.8 million.
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