Asian Times: Shanghai Wishing on a Fading Disney Star

[EPCOT Explorer]

Interesting article. I am impressed that Happy Valley had 25 million guests in 2008 :veryconfu They need to go back and check their facts again because Happy Valley had just over 3 million guests in 08'. The Magic Kingdom was the most visited themepark in the world in 2008 with 17,063,000 guests visiting. I wonder how many other numbers in this article are completely false?

Below is part of the TEA/ERA 08 theme park attendance report showing Happy Valley's attendance

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Top 10 Asian/Pacific Rim Amusement/Theme Parks (2008)
Rank,Park and Location,2008 Attendance,% of Change
​

[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]1 TOKYO DISNEYLAND, Tokyo, Japan 14,293,000 2.8%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]2 TOKYO DISNEY SEA, Tokyo, Japan 12,498,000 0.7%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]3 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN, Osaka, Japan 8,300,000 -4.7%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]4 [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]EVERLAND, Gyeonggi-Do, South Korea [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]1[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]6,600,000 -8.3%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]5 OCEAN PARK, Hong Kong SAR 5,030,000 2.2%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]6 YOKOHAMA HAKKEIJIMA SEA PARADISE, Yokohama, Japan 4,555,000 -4.5%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]7 HONG KONG DISNEYLAND, Hong Kong SAR 4,500,000 7.9%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]8 LOTTE WORLD, Seoul, South Korea [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial] 4,236,000 n.a.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]9 [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]NAGASHIMA SPA LAND, Kuwana, Japan 3,734,000 -4.5%[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]10 HAPPY VALLEY, Shenzhen, China 3,180,000 -4.2%​

[/FONT][/FONT]

That alone makes me doubt them a little bit. :shrug:

Maybe it's just a typo....


....that they based the whole article on.:lol::lookaroun

 

[PhilharMagician]

That alone makes me doubt them a little bit. :shrug:

Maybe it's just a typo....


....that they based the whole article on.:lol::lookaroun

It looks they were purposely trying to make a Chinese based amusement company look spectacular against Disney. Maybe the person who wrote the article works for Happy Valley and has been trying to build a theme park in Shanghai?

Or maybe as you said, a typo 3,180,000 to 25,000,000. That would be easy to mix up.:brick::ROFLOL:

 

[DVCOwner]

I think that the main reason Disney wants into Shangha is that a Disney park in the mainland will open the door for all the other products that Disney wants to market in the mainland. Disney wants a Disney Channel on Mainland TV, wants every store selling stuff Mickey dolls, and every young girl wanting to be a Disney Princess. Even if the park losses money for the first 20 years, the investment in the park will return many times that in total profit to the Disney brands.

 

[Kuhio]

Interesting article. I am impressed that Happy Valley had 25 million guests in 2008 :veryconfu They need to go back and check their facts again because Happy Valley had just over 3 million guests in 08'. The Magic Kingdom was the most visited themepark in the world in 2008 with 17,063,000 guests visiting. I wonder how many other numbers in this article are completely false? [FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]
[/FONT][/FONT]

There are four Happy Valley parks in China -- one of which is the Shenzhen one on that list. There are others in Beijing, Chengdu, and Shanghai; it's kind of like the Six Flags of China. I'm sure Six Flags, Cedar Fair, etc. have also conflated their parks' numbers at times to portray their brand as "one of the most popular theme parks" in the U.S.

That said... even if the other three Happy Valley parks all came in just under the Shenzhen park's 3 million visitors, that still would be far from 25 million visitors total -- in fact, less than half.

My guess is that the author of the article got some figures mixed up and made an error. You see it all the time in American articles about theme parks, where the writer doesn't really have any experience or particular interest in the subject -- including plenty of articles about Disney parks that have WDW-only attractions being at Disneyland or that refer to the Magic Kingdom as "Walt Disney World."

 

[wm49rs]

I think that the main reason Disney wants into Shangha is that a Disney park in the mainland will open the door for all the other products that Disney wants to market in the mainland. Disney wants a Disney Channel on Mainland TV, wants every store selling stuff Mickey dolls, and every young girl wanting to be a Disney Princess. Even if the park losses money for the first 20 years, the investment in the park will return many times that in total profit to the Disney brands.

Disney has a park on the mainland in Hong Kong. They want the Shanghai project to move forward so they can pull visitors in from Beijing south, from a line roughly above the Zhejiang province west to the north of the Sichuan province. This area encompasses hundreds of millions of people (Shanghai alone is at 16 million). That's why they want the park. The PRC will never allow a Disney channel on their network, and the selling of merchandise from the Shanghai park is merely a secondary benefit. It's the millions upon millions of people they can get through their turnstyles that is the driving impetus....

 

[EPCOT Explorer]

It has more attractions than HKDL!


:ROFLOL:




:lookaroun Couldn't resist....

Not in a few years.

It looks they were purposely trying to make a Chinese based amusement company look spectacular against Disney. Maybe the person who wrote the article works for Happy Valley and has been trying to build a theme park in Shanghai?

Or maybe as you said, a typo 3,180,000 to 25,000,000. That would be easy to mix up.:brick::ROFLOL:

Yeah....simple typo,:ROFLOL: