Actually, not quite--Beauty and the Beast was released in 1991, and Euro Disney/DLP opened in 1992. Not only was the film out before the park opened, but the long development periods for both would have more or less overlapped. In retrospect, it really is rather surprising that Eisner didn't take the opportunity to tie in that hugely successful movie--which was not only set in France (helloooo) but also represented a revival of Disney's tradition of doing "fairy tale" stories--with the new theme park, which he so desperately wanted to be a triumph. (And aside from all that, of course, there is the point that Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland was given its name four years before that film was released, so even if DLP had opened before BatB there was precedent for that sort of thing.)
Actually, I'm curious. Does anyone know an actual reason why they did not go the BatB route with the Paris castle? Was it perhaps to establish some sort of lineage with the original Disneyland? Otherwise it seems like such a no-brainer.
ETA: while we're all weighing in the FLE castle...am I the only one who is actually surprised at how large it is? I think in the back of my mind I'd been thinking much tinier--like, Storybook Land Canal Boats tiny. Now I realize this scale makes a lot more sense, but still, I was actually pleasantly surprised to see it tower over the construction crew. I think it will be great--maintaining the foliage behind it will be a concern, yes, and certainly there will be points at which the forced perspective is thrown off. But it really can't be much bigger than this, or it will throw off the scale of a land already packed with scaled-down versions of giant things (the seaside kingdom housing Little Mermaid, for instance, or the mountain housing the Snow White mine train).
