Visitors take the canoe ride at Treasure Cove at Shanghai Disneyland in China, June 10, 2016. Plans for the $5.5 billion park, which officially opens June 16, were stalled until Disney dialed back its demands to the Communist Party and offered a more conciliatory approach. (Lam Yik Fei/The New York Times)
Source: Time
Will Mickey Mouse and friends succeed in winning Chinese hearts and minds?
Oscillating between drizzle and downpour, the weather is typical for Shanghai, though perhaps less fitting for “the Happiest Place on Earth.” No one seems deterred, however: in multicolored ponchos, tens of thousands of enthusiasts line up for security checks. Others stroll around the 40-hectare Wishing Star Park, taking selfies by the Steamboat Willie Fountain, discreetly approached by scalpers with tickets twice, even thrice, the market price, when police aren’t looking.
The world’s newest Disney theme park — the work of over 700 designers (imagineers in Disney lingo) — is not open yet, but it has already attracted 1 million visitors during a six-week, preopening trial period. Tickets sold out almost instantly for the much hyped June 16 grand opening. A Disney exhibition is touring the country, and China Eastern Airlines has laid onthemed flights plastered in Disney magic, with stewardesses wearing mouse ears, for the occasion. Feng shui masters have been consulted, and local officials have released an etiquette guide warning visitors against lying on the grass or cutting in line. Minor glitches aside — water fountains were not yet operational during TIME’s visit — Shanghai Disneyland appears ready.
Visitors are already lining up outside the Enchanted Storybook Castle — the tallest of any Disney park — for photo-ops with smiling, imported Rapunzels and Snow Whites (Mulan, China’s own heroine, is curiously low profile). “Designed specifically for the people of China,” the powder-pink structure offers fine dining at the Royal Banquet Hall and glittery $150 makeovers at the Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boutique. Its finials are adorned with traditional Chinese cloud patterns for harmony, prosperity and purity of heart, and one spire is crowned with a golden peony, the nation’s unofficial national flower.
Some classic Disneyland rides — including It’s a Small World and Space Mountain — have been scrapped. Others are on steroids: Pirates of the Caribbean has been revamped with animatronics, a Mandarin-speaking hologram of Captain Jack Sparrow and projections plunging the ship deep into the ocean. And in true Chinese form, the queues are ferocious (thought notably well-behaved). “So many people! Five hours for one ride? I hadn’t expected that,” said one visitor, who spent an eternity waiting for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. “Even in Hong Kong, when I went during [peak season], it was only two hours.”
Categories: Asia, China, The Muslim Times