Hong Kong Disneyland Performs well

Despite the bad title of this Business Week article, they actually discuss how well Disney’s newest themepark is doing and is expected to do in the future. The reader comments on the story are pretty funny too. It’s amazing how many people have pure hatred for the Disney product. If you’re been reading this blog for any length of time you know I’m not all sunshine and morning glory, but I do it out of love for the product.

In the blog world it’s a little different:

Most of the tourists are going to come from Mainland China and they are
people who would have come here anyway. European, North American and
Japanese tourists are NOT going to come to Hong Kong
to visit Disneyland. When the Shanghai Disney Park opens, as it will
inevitably, the Hong Kong version will become peripheral. While the
government is investing in Disney, a very Western oriented venue, it is
allowing developers to destroy the old neighborhoods and tear down
historical buildings which is what, I think, non-Chinese tourists want
to see. I know I would. I really don’t believe the investment is going
to pay off in the long run. (Maybe in my heart of hearts, I hope it
won’t.)

That’s from the Hong Kong Blog.

Here’s an amazing Flickr set from the Hong Kong Opening.

An American Professor in China has some interesting comments:

There are two things you virtually cannot do to a Guandong native:
force one to get less than their money’s worth of fun or have them pay
one Yuan more than they have to for anything! They will stay in a park
(2% the size of Disney world in Florida) for an average hour longer
than an American in Florida and then ride the bus home to save on hotel
fees. A hotel at Disney in Hong Kong, for one night, costs an average
one to two month’s salary in the mainland.

His comment about the 2% is apples to oranges, however. Disney World encompasses 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, a ton of hotels and other ammenities. HKDL has 1 theme park and two hotels. It’s total acreage is about 340 acres. That’s nearly twice the size of the property Disneyland, USA sites on in California. So they have room to expand quite a bit.

Finally, I loved this little post about Guerrilla Tourism:

Miao Keming and his family travelled from Shanghai to be among the first visitors to Disneyland, queued for an hour in the hot sun to get in – and left after just 50 minutes. The reason: their camera battery ran out so they couldn’t take any more photos.

In closing, Doobie from LaughingPlace has informed me he extended the sale of Hong Kong Merchandise at the LP Store through the end of today. Plus he’s added 63 more items just this morning. Don’t miss some of the extra cute stuff he’s added. (Like that T-shirt!)

[ttags:disney, disneyland, hong, kong, hong+kong, hong+kong+disneyland, themepark, theme+park, shopping, disneyana, hkdl, bob+iger  ]