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Shanghai Disney welcomes 11m visitors in first year

Chinese park is ‘close’ to break-even as attendance falls at other venues worldwide

© Reuters

YESTERDAY by: Tom Hancock in Shanghai
More than 11m people have visited Shanghai’s Disney Resort since the $5.5bn park opened a year ago, roughly in line with expectations but providing relief for the company as attendance falls at its other parks worldwide.

Bob Iger, Disney’s chairman, announced the attendance figure in front of the Sleeping Beauty castle at a ceremony on Friday, thanking the state-owned Shendi Group, which owns 57 per cent of the park, and the Chinese government for their support.

“The reality is better than I ever imagined,” Mr Iger declared, before launching a lavish firework display.

But the attendance figure, while in line with Shendi’s initial projection of 11m-12m visitors in the park’s first year, was below estimates by banks such as Barclays and Nomura, which forecast 12m-15m people would pass through its gates.

Mr Iger said the park was “close” to breaking even, without giving figures. That would set it on a course for profitability — a status that has mostly eluded the company’s Paris and Hong Kong parks, with attendance at the latter dented this year by a fall in Chinese mainland tourists heading to Shanghai.

Attendance at all of Disney’s 13 other resorts fell last year, according to an independent report this month by the Themed Entertainment Association and engineering company Aecom, with a 14 per cent year-on-year fall at Disneyland Paris to 9.8m, and a 10 per cent decline at Disneyland Hong Kong to 6.1m.

Parks in the US also experienced declines ranging from 1 to 2 per cent, according to the report, which blamed higher prices that were designed to reduce crowding on popular rides. Disney does not generally disclose attendance figures for its parks.

Visitors to the Shanghai resort said popular rides were already too crowded. “Visiting here is a way of recapturing our youth. But the lines are really too long,” said Li Ruiqi, a 21-year-old wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.

Zhang Yanjun, a 20-year-old student who had travelled from Fujian province several hundred kilometres away, said queues of up to three hours for some rides were “too long”.

Nearly all visitors to the Shanghai resort are from mainland China, with about one-third from the Shanghai region, said Bob Chapek, Disney’s head of parks and resorts. Visitors spend nine hours in the park on average, he added.

Disney offered to incorporate more Chinese elements into the park at the request of the ruling Communist party, which has a longstanding mistrust of US cultural infiltration. “We never forget that it’s a privilege to be here. We didn’t build Disneyland in China, we built China’s Disneyland,” Mr Chapek said, standing in front of a large painting of a dragon.

Disney said significant revenues had been generated by merchandise sales at the park, including 1m plush toys. China is a key market for Disney’s films, with box office takings in the world’s second-largest film market reaching $1bn last year.

Western theme park companies are piling into China, betting that an expanding middle class will spend more on entertainment and travel. Construction began in November on a $7.4bn Universal Studios park in Beijing which is expected to open in 2020.