Hong Kong Disneyland is continuing to struggle and word has leaked that it will fail to meet its attendance goals for the year.
The park has seen an average daily turnout of around 18,000, only half
the theme park’s capacity, the newspaper said, quoting company insiders.
I’m sure Disney’s not giving up anytime soon. However, they have to be careful not to cut capacity via fewer labor hours in restaurants or attractions. That will be noticed by guests when they encounter long lines despite a relatively empty park. Word gets out and then people don’t want to come. Oh wait.. that’s what already happened.
The goal of any new Disney park has to be to wow them with Disney magic and imagineering. If you’re not going to commit to that you might as well not build it.
That post is a little misleading. You offer two facts:
1.) HK Disneyland is going to miss attendance projections.
2.) Daily attendance is only half the capacity of the park.
Most people would assume that the park is likely going to miss its annual attendance goal by 50%. However, if you read the article, you can see that Disney only missed their goal by 9%.
It’s not my post that’s misleading. It’s the article. I’m a little confused how HKDL can be that short on daily attendance and only miss it’s yearly goal by 9%. I suspect that’s because the yearly goal has been reduced based on the daily figures. That’s what happened with California Adventure.
“The goal of any new Disney park has to be to wow them with Disney magic and imagineering. If you’re not going to commit to that you might as well not build it. ”
I’m not sure I see how this statement relates to the attendance projections article. The article makes no mention that the Imagineering or magic is substandard. It mentions that the park “has been criticised for not having enough attractions…” but more are surely coming. Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom both opened with a limited attraction selection and added more in the first few years. This is a mitigated risk approach, right or wrong.
Disney has not released any official numbers, so these numbers are still approximate. To reach 5.6 million guests, the park only needs 15432 daily. To reach 5.1 million it needs 13973 daily.
18000 daily would equal over 6.5 million guests. One could assume that daily attendance is trending up.
I see this as good news.
I doubt that Disney would design a park such that to meet attendence goals, the park has to operate at or near capacity. For anyone that has been to ANY theme park during a holiday period, that’s not always the best experience.
My guess is that the park can handle over 35,000 guests a day, but Disney only ever expected that during a few peak days each year (no clue as to what days those are in Hong Kong). Yes, daily attendance is half the CAPACITY of the park, but probably only off a little for the GOAL.
I agree that the original article isn’t extremely well written, but the post here on this website presents a situation that is far more dire than reality.
Comments are closed.