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There are places that carry within them the entire history of French theme parks. The site at Courdimanche, in the Val-d’Oise just north-west of Paris, is one of them. Some thirty kilometres from the capital, on this vast wasteland that nature has slowly reclaimed, once stood Mirapolis \u2014 billed at its opening as “France’s first major theme park.” Today, a persistent rumour is stirring the theme-park world, and us first of all: the world of Dragon Ball could be reborn here, backed by Saudi investors. The story, <\/span>broken by Politico and then confirmed by several sources close to the matter<\/span><\/a>, remains for now a negotiation conducted in the utmost discretion by the \u00c9lys\u00e9e \u2014 with no official announcement. Nothing is signed. But the opportunity is too good not to look closely at what this site really tells us, and at the questions such a project raises. Let’s take the time to look at the facts.<\/span><\/p>\n Mirapolis opened its doors in May 1987, inaugurated with great fanfare by Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister. The park sprang from the imagination of architect Anne Fourcade, with an ambitious idea: to build a “French Disneyland” devoted not to mice or superheroes, but to our own tales and legends. The giant Gargantua, drawn from Rabelais, presided over it as a statue some 35 metres tall, visible from the A15 motorway, and even housed a ride. A detail history loves: the financing already rested, back then, on Saudi capital, through businessman Gaith Pharaon. Yesterday’s backers foreshadow today’s.<\/span><\/p>\n The story, alas, was brief. The park aimed for 2 to 2.5 million visitors a year; it drew barely 800,000 in its first season. Facing competition from the newly opened Parc Ast\u00e9rix in 1989, weakened by troubled management and repeated disputes, Mirapolis closed for good in October 1991 \u2014 after just four and a half seasons, and six months before the opening of Disneyland Paris, which would go on to redefine the entire sector. Little remains today: a concrete block at the entrance, a few vestiges swallowed by the trees. Mirapolis is no isolated case: it belongs to that generation of 1980s French parks \u2014 like Zygofolis in Nice or Big Bang Schtroumpf in Lorraine \u2014 swept away by the same wave of miscalibrated ambition.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=”4.27.7″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]A French pioneer born too soon<\/span><\/h2>\n