Disneyland Organizes Its Own Pride Event in Paris

While events like Gay Days have been welcomed in Disney's theme parks for years, Disneyland Paris has announced that it will host Magical Pride, the first in-house event celebrating LGBTQ park-goers.

"Dress like a dream, feel fabulous and experience Walt Disney Studios Park like never before," reads the Disneyland Paris website. "Loud, proud and alive with all the colours of the rainbow!"

The event marks another step in Disney's decades-long evolution on acceptance: From discouraging outward displays of affection by gay couples to endorsing events like Gay Days to cooperating with outside organizers on promotion and now to actually creating its own programming.

The Magical Pride event features performances from such out performers as Years & Years lead singer Olly Alexander and Boy George, and acts with huge LGBTQ fan bases like Corine and Sindykatz

The move comes four years after British travel agent Nathan Tunnah founded an unofficial Pride event at the parks. He worked with Disney on the Magical Pride event, he told theLos Angeles Times.

"This will help the general population see LGBTQ people as they see everyone else -- normal," he told the newspaper.

Disney's camp theme park environments, billed as the happiest places on earth, have long enjoyed huge LGBTQ fan bases. The Gay Days weeklong celebration in Orlando, which this year will take place over a week in August, bills itself as the No. 1 LGBTQ vacation experience in the world.

But it began as a rogue event, started in 1991 as a single-day event when individuals in Orlando's gay and lesbian community gathered in the park for Red Shirt Day. Not long before that point, parks would discourage hand-holding and dancing by same-sex couples in the parks.

Today, the Gay Days event gets marketing in the community with billboards and with international advertising campaigns. Disney itself sells Rainbow-themed merchandise during Pride month and for Gay Days.

It's unclear whether a complete embrace of Pride as seen in Paris will lead to similar in-house events in U.S. parks.