Transvestites Outdraw Mickey

Sunday’s South China Morning Post reported on a phenomenon involving a show featuring transvestites, sex changers and cross dressers mostly from Thailand. The phenomenon was that without advertising, it was selling out 5 shows a day mostly attended by mainland tourists. The store front venue in Wah Fu estates in Aberdeen, well off the beaten track. seats about 700 people per performance and it was estimated that at least 500 of them were mainland Chinese. If true, that comes to 2500 a day which is considerably more than the 1700 mainland tourists visiting Disneyland every day.

Disney recently dropped its entrance fee for Hong Kong residents by HK$50 (US$6.50). This, even though, Hong Kong Disneyland has the lowest entrance fees of all their parks. Disney has been very secretive about attendance figures, announcing only that 1,000,000 people have visited the park since it opened, September 12. They have also cut back on operating hours.

A number of local politicians and others have expressed concern because Hong Kong, which owns 57% of the park, put up about 90% of the funds needed to build it. The tax coffers were to be re-filled with profits from the park, which now appear to be less than expected, though no one knows for sure because Disney will not release figures because of “competitive pressures.”

Meanwhile the “Girly-Boy” show goes happily along drawing huge crowds by word of mouth. Local residents must pay double to get in and cannot make reservations. In a parallel development, the area surrounding Disneyland draws hundreds of families, especially on weekends. These families relax, picnic and play but do not enter the park because they say they can’t afford it.

It’s too early to draw any conclusions but the rosy forecasts for attendance at Disneyland appear to be overstated.