Category — Hong Kong Disneyland

Disney’s second theme park in Asia, Hong Kong Disneyland, is still struggling to gain traction in its market. They’ve just revealed the latest negative numbers in a string of years of negative numbers.

Disney’s troubled Hong Kong Disneyland theme park made a net loss of HK$1.315 billion last year while attracting 4.6 million visitors, in its first major admission of its financial performance since opening in 2005. (.via)

The park is the smallest in Disney’s collection, but those numbers are mighty pathetic. Hong Kong’s other theme park, Ocean Park, had 500,000 more visitors in 2008. The one good sign is that this represents a narrowing of the numbers by 16%. But 85% percent of a billion and a half is still a huge loss.

When the Walt Disney Company set out to build a theme park in Hong Kong there were a lot of questions. Would the Chinese take to the American style theme park? Would the Disney characters resonate with a population that had previously had little exposure to them? Just who was the audience for the park?

Fortune Magazine looks at some of the lessons Disney can take away from their experience in Hong Kong that might serve them well in future expansion into Asia markets.

[Disney] failed to gauge local tastes, opened with a park that was too small to meet the grandiose expectations of its clientele, made some public relations mistakes early on, and took too long to adapt to local food, culture, and tastes, according to Allan Zeman, the chairman of the rival Ocean Park theme park in Hong Kong.

“Disney, on the other hand, came in very American,” Zeman says. “Disney was a big brand, not really understanding the culture at the beginning. They had everything run out of the U.S. At the beginning there was a sense of arrogance: ‘We’re Disney, and don’t tell us how to run a theme park.’”

Hong Kong Disneyland also earned the wrath of the Hong Kong press corps by taking a long time to respond to queries with answers that had to be approved through U.S. headquarters

In hindsight it’s obvious Disney didn’t know what they were getting into when they built Hong Kong Disneyland. Let’s hope they’ve done their homework for Shanghai?

The on again off again expansion to Hong Kong Disneyland is now on and on for good. The Hong Kong Government has approved the deal that will have Disney spending almost $500 million to add three mini lands to the Magic Kingdom style theme park.

Financial Secretary John Tsang said the park already “has brought substantial economic benefits to Hong Kong.”

With its new features, the park “will rise up to the keen competition in the region on the tourism front, attracting more family visitors from around the world,” Tsang said.

That’s a very different goal than The Walt Disney Company originally set out to meet with HKDL. Disney was just looking for a foothold in the Asia market. They didn’t expect the park to need enough attractions to have an international draw, not did they layer in enough story telling that the locals could appreciate (not having been exposed to Disney’s western based stories yet).

These issues were all discussed but then discarded by Disney higherups in the initial HKDL planning stages. Hopefully having to correct mistakes with large outputs of cash (see also California Adventure) will put an end to the idea that you can build a small park and hope people will come.

“I want to be a real park” said Hong Kong Disneyland after seeing the poor imitation theme park puppet it had been constructed as. Alas until recently, HKDL was caught between it’s Stromboli (Eisner’ fear of infrastructure investment) and Fowlfellow (a rotten government only looking out for itself) and the Blue Fairy was no where in sight.

Finally a deal has been struck that will fix some of the mistakes in the concept and construction of Hong Kong Disneyland. But it will take at least $450 million to do so. This move is important because Disney will shortly start construction on another theme park in Shanghai, which is on mainland China. Not to mention the competition Ocean Park is giving Disney right there in Hong Kong.

After the expansion the beautiful but small Disneyland model park will have three new lands that are uniquely its own and a list of attractions that is nearing respectability.

Below the cut are descriptions of the new lands that will be built. One thing that irks me is that while the Adventurers Club sits unloved and abandoned over here in Florida, they’re planning on building one in China. Of course, I was an advocate for building an Adventurers Club west out in Disneyland, the more the merrier. Just reopen this one too.

[Read more →]

ChinaKnowledge.com is reporting that Disney has cleared all the regulatory and government approvals to go ahead with its theme park to be located outside of Shanghai.

sources said a press conference would be held soon in Geneva to announce the approval.

Earlier media reports said that a joint venture will be established to manage the Shanghai Disney Park, with 43% of its shares held by the U.S. company and 57% held by the Chinese side.

This comes as Disney and the Hong Kong Government fight over where additional funds to expand that park will come from and as Disney announces off-stage role layoffs across its parks and resorts division.

I had seen pictures of the Disney themed Harbin Ice Lantern Festival in China. But I didn’t realize that it was part of a legitimate licensing effort of the Walt Disney Company.

What is perhaps the world’s most famous ice festival has become another of the world’s Disney theme parks, with a Disney licensing company taking over operations from the local Communist government. It is the first time a private company has run the ice festival.

Snow White has replaced snow dragons. Children wander through the frozen hallways of Aladdin’s Castle instead of a Qing dynasty palace. “It’s a Small World” plays in one corner of the park. (What better theme music for globalization?)

Although this does not appear to be an official Disney effort, it was approved by Disney and fits into Disney’s plans to grow its Asian presence under CEO Bob Iger. With a Disney Shanghai theme park almost a reality, that’s an important thing.

(via NY Times)

With Disney entering into a deal with the Hong Kong government to expand Hong Kong Disneyland and the reveal of the Shanghai Disney Theme park plan, one of the worst kept secrets of the last five years, The Walt Disney Company continues to gain traction in the world’s largest and fastest growing market of consumers–China.

The Shanghai thing is still waiting for approval from Beijing, Disney hasn’t even submitted it yet, which means it could face some modification from the current plan. But some analysts are predicting it could be bigger than HKDL. That certainly wouldn’t surprise me.

One of the reasons is that Shanghai will not be a Magic Kingdom model theme park. A little bird tells me it will be closely aligned with existing Chinese culture and myths bringing in Disney characters only around the edges (think Disney’s Animal Kingdom). The question is now, will they go in whole hog, or start small and ride out a possible rough start (as they did with HKDL). With a budget in the $3.2 billion  range, they certainly have the money to go big.

Update: Disney officials continue to deny an agreement has been reached. But with all this positive press, you have to wonder if something is up.

Wow. After Shanghai’s government approved the project last month, Disney officials were still denying that they were even involved in talks. But now a formal announcement of a Disney theme park development to be built in Shanghai and open by 2013 is expected in the next few days.

If true, this is good news for Glendale. Many WDI Imagineers were expecting to be laid off if the Shanghai project was not built. But a new theme park or other development should be enough to keep many of them on Mickey’s payroll.

A Shanghai theme park or other Disney themed development furthers Bob Iger’s vision to expand Disney’s franchises into Asian markets. The farm and industrial heavy Huanglou district is likely to be the location for the Shanghai Disney development. It’s east of downtown Shanghai about half way to the ocean. Also the airport is about 10 minutes away and their is freeway access.

Shanghai is about 764 miles away from Hong Kong, where Disney opened its most recent Disneyland branded theme park. That’s less than the distance between Portland, Or and Anaheim, Ca. Tokyo Disneyland Resort is about 1154 miles away. But that park is owned by the Oriental Land Company and you have to wonder what they think about a new Disney development so near.

Culturally all three cities are quite different, so I don’t expect there to be much canibalization. If anything, they should build a theme park with a unique theme in Shanghai to encourage Disney fans newly created and existing to visit all three locations.

(see Reuters and Forbes)

Previously: Shanghai Disney Park Rumor Persists.