What about Spain, Portugal or Belgium?
Yes, if directly from the UK, but for those already on holiday, if it was somewhere on the route between Madrid and Barcelona, there is a high-speed train there as well, and on the north side of Zaragoza it would just be a hop from their beach holiday destinations (less than 3 hours on the AVE train either direction.) With the usual UK holiday-maker style, I can see more people adding a theme park to a longer holiday than taking a short holiday just to visit a theme park.
I didn't have any issues when my family went to France. My parents had someone be rude to them when they were buying Metro cards. Another Parisian though saw what happened, and proceeded to yell at the rude person in French. She then offered in English to help my parents and insisted on buying the cards for them.
That was really very nice, shouldn't have been necessary but nice someone intervened, this is the reputation the place has though & many other countries have this same reputation for oozing disdain, won't catch me or my money at any of them.
Most of the people you meet in France (even Paris) are perfectly lovely. The French don't hate Americans, there's actually some camaraderie since they helped us in the Revolution and then we helped them in WWII (this is from an actual conversation with a French colleague). You run into the occasional rude person, as you do in any large city, but my experiences there have been overwhelmingly positive. Greet any shopkeepers or restaurant workers with "Bonjour" when you come in, to be polite, and they're very friendly. I'm leaving for Paris tomorrow, actually.
While I agree for the weather, it really was an economic choice to not chose Spain. Look at average monthly or annual income of Spain vs France, Germany or UK... Airport capacity was also a concern. Disney want to attract tourists that have money and will spend it. In Europe, this is definitely not Spain or Portugal. Italy could have been considered though. I always wonder what made them chose Paris over Milan for instance (if Milan ever was interested to host a Disney park).
