experience at best. Many visitors arrived early in the morning, rushed to the park staying late at night. then checked out of the hotel the next morning before heading to oration The problems of Euro Disney were not public acceptance (despite the earlier critics), Europeans loved the place. Since the opening it attracted just under lion visitors a month, thus easily achieving the original projections. Such patronage made it Europe's biggest paid tourist attraction. But large numbers of frugal patrons did not come close to enabling Disney to meet revenue and profit projections and cover a bloated overhead. Other operational errors and miscalculations, most of these cultural, hurt the enterprise. A policy of serving no alcohol in the park caused consternation in a country where wine is customary for lunch and dinner. (This policy was soon reversed.) Disney thought Monday would be a light day and Friday a heavy one and allocated staff accordingly, but the reverse was true. It found great peaks and valley in attendance: The number of visitors per day in the high season could be ten times the number in slack times. The need to lay off employees during quiet periods came up against France's inflexible labor schedules One unpleasant surprise concerned breakfast. "We were told that Europeans don't take breakfast, so we downsized the restaurants recalled one executive And guess what? Everybody showed up for breakfast. We were trying to serve 2,500 breakfasts at 350-seat restaurants. The lines were horrendous Disney failed to anticipate another demand, this time from tour bus drivers Restrooms were built for 50 drivers, but on peak days 2,000 drivers were seeking the facilities. From impatient drivers to grumbling bankers, Disney stepped on toe after European toe For the fiscal year ending September 30, 1993, the amusement park had lost $960 million in U s. dollars, and the future of the park was in doubt. (As of December 31, 1993, the cumulative loss was 6.04 billion francs, or $1.03 billion The Walt Disney corporation made $175 million available to tide Euro Disney over until the next spring. Adding to the problems of the struggling park were heavy interest costs. As depicted in Table 15.3, against a total cost of $4.4 billion, only 39 percent of the project was financed by equity investment some borrowed primarily from 60 creditor banks, interest running as high as percent. Thus, the enterprise began heavily and the Serious charges greatly increased the overhead to be covered from negotiations began with the banks to restructure and refinance.