by MG Siegler on May 26, 2009
In 1992, Disney decided to build upon the huge success of its Disneyland and Disney World theme parks by opening Euro Disney in a suburb of Paris. The company had previously licensed its name for a resort abroad just outside Tokyo, but the European version was a more ambitious project being handled by the company. It started out as a nightmare. Simply put, people didn’t go to it. And now you can avoid going to it from the comfort of your own home thanks to the magic of Google Earth.
Just as it did last year with Disney World, Google Earth now has Disneyland Paris (as it was rebranded to in 1995 following its thud of an opening) rendered in 3D. Disney has provided the program with some 85,000 photos — a huge 450GB worth — to make the renderings as realistic as possible. All the rides are there, the castle and even over 500 landscape elements.
Following its rebranding, and the opening of some new rides, Disneyland Paris was able to somewhat turn things around, but it remains far in debt. Having a virtual representation of your theme park in Google Earth isn’t going to help that. Is it going to convince more people to go visit the park? Unlikely. But it’s a cute distraction for me for about 15 minutes. And it shows how good some of these 3D renderings are getting.
Following its rebranding, and the opening of some new rides, Disneyland Paris was able to somewhat turn things around, but it remains far in debt. Having a virtual representation of your theme park in Google Earth isn’t going to help that. Is it going to convince more people to go visit the park? Unlikely. But it’s a cute distraction for me for about 15 minutes. And it shows how good some of these 3D renderings are getting.
The Disneyland Paris layer can be found in the “Gallery” folder of Google Earth 5.0.
