China Can Accommodate More Disneylands

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, December 12, 2002

China Can Accommodate More Disneylands

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China can support a number of Disneylands due to the potential of its huge market, but the second Disneyland will not appear until 2010, said the Walt Disney Company (Asia Pacific) Limited on Thursday.

Irene Chan, the corporate communications regional director of the Walt Disney Company in Asia Pacific, revealed the company's business plan during a news conference to announce the facilities of the Hong Kong Disneyland due to be operational in the years 2005/06 in Penny's Bay on Lantau Island in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

Although Chan could not say exactly where the second Disneylandin China might be, she was adamant that there is a possibility that the second one will be built.

"Having two Disneylands in China is definitely feasible becausewhen you look at the United States, with a population of 200 million, it can already sustain six theme parks.

"China with a population of about 1.3 billion, if there were tobe several theme parks..., of course, we would be very confident about that, as we see China as a huge market. Two parks are definitely not a problem," she said.

Chan predicted that in the first year of the park's opening, one-third of visitors will be local HKSAR residents, another one-third Chinese mainland visitors, and the rest from overseas.

Groundbreaking is set to take place in January 2003 here in Hong Kong, the company said.

The future park will feature the traditional Disney Fantasyland, Adventureland and Tomorrowland and the brand-new Fantasy Gardens.

The Fantasy Gardens, which will be the only one in the world, will also feature Mulan, a Chinese character, and others.

Thomas Morris, vice president and executive producer for creative development of Walt Disney Imagineering, told Xinhua, "For Hong Kong, this is the first and only one. This does not existin any of our parks now. It's likely that if it's successful, it'll appear in one or more of other Disney parks. It's a practice that all of the Disney Parks follow from one another."

When asked from where Walt Disney obtained the inspiration in designing the gardens and the characters, Morris said that Disney company takes landscaping and flowers very seriously and has, therefore, constantly seek new ways "to do and play with landscaping and use landscaping almost as artistic material, almost like a paint."

"We have visited many places around the world in Europe, in Asia, Japan, China. That influenced something that would be just very fantastic, not specifically. We didn't want to make it look like Versailles or something you might specifically see in Englandor specially in Asia. We just wanted to do something that was arts-like and an entirely different view of the world."

When asked how the plants in the gardens will move to surprise people, Morris said, "Not all of them will move. But some of them might. We can't, of course, reveal our secrets. But there will be some surprises coming from some of the plants."

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