Disney Moves West or Is It East?

If you you had been reading the Hong Kong English language newspapers over the last week or so, you might have thought you were reading an entertaiment newspaper - pages and pages of stories about the opening of the new Disneyland park in Hong Kong.

Some quick background: Disney put up their expertise and about 10% of the cost for 43% ownership. The Hong Kong Government put up the rest of the money and the land for 57% ownership. The park is built on landfill near the new airport, Chek Lap Kok, on Lantau Island about 30 minutes from Hong Kong Island on the MTR. It’s approximately the size of the original Anaheim park.

Some people think Hong Kong got screwed. Others think this will be the greatest thing to happen to Hong Kong tourism since the invention of the VCR and the digital camera.

Over the last month Disney has been running rehearsals before the Grand Opening Monday, Sept. 12. One of the rehearsal days was for Charity and 30,000 people, the capacity of the park, bought tickets. It was a disaster and was reported in excruciating detail in the South China Morning Post. Disney’s response was, “Hey, it’s a rehearsal. It won’t happen in the future.”

Lot’s of cross-cultural learning going on. Customers get off the rides before take-off to snap pictures of each other which triggers the fail-safe mechanism and stops the ride for 60 seconds before it re-cycles, thereby slowing everything down. Customers stake out tables in the restaurants and use them as a base of operations all day, preventing later arrivals from having a place to eat. Disney takes photos of guests and posts them for sale. Customers are taking photos of the photos rather than buying the Disney version. Everybody wants to eat at the same time and in large groups. Customers stay in the park for 1 1/2 to 2 hours longer than customers in other Disney parks. Etc., etc., etc.

Here’s my thoughts on the whole phenomenon. 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.)

Lastly with Iraq, Katrina, oil prices, Japanese and German elections, and other newsworthy events, I find it hard to get excited in the “breaking news” sense about a new theme park. I don’t care about Disneyland but unless I’m reading things wrong many other people do, my wife, Pam, included.