Walt Disney Co employees and guests this weekend received a sneak preview of Shanghai Disneyland, as the world’s largest entertainment company gets set for next month’s official opening of its first theme park in China.
A trial run for the US$5.5 billion Shanghai Disney began on Saturday.
Guests are limited to the resort’s employees, partners and stakeholders, who can try out some attractions, entertainment and dining on selected dates over a six-week period.
Photo: Bloomberg
Lines had formed by 10am outside shops and restaurants in the non-ticketed area, where the World Disney store opened to the public.
Wang Xingmiao, a retiree who has never traveled outside of China, is among thousands who came to the site even though he was not on the guest list.
“It opens the eyes of old people and young people to see something like this,” the 78-year-old said outside the World Disney store.
“It shows the importance of China that something like this comes to us and we don’t have to go out to see it,” he said.
Such trials are a crucial pre-opening step for all Walt Disney Parks and Resorts destinations and major attractions around the world.
The Shanghai resort, located in the Pudong District, officially opens on June 16.
The highly anticipated park, Disney’s sixth worldwide, comes as the company shocked investors on April 4 when it announced chief executive officer Robert Iger’s top lieutenant, Thomas Staggs, would depart in September, leaving the CEO without an obvious successor.
A 26-year-company veteran, Staggs had supervised some major expansions, such as the Shanghai resort, and spearheaded acquisitions for the Burbank, California-based company.
Iger met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Thursday in Beijing, in which Xi cited Disney as an example of expanded cooperation between US and Chinese firms.
“What the Walt Disney Company has been able to achieve in China, I think, is a perfect example of cooperation, but it also came after years of understanding, years of building up a deep respect for one another and appreciation for each other’s interests,” Iger said in comments to Xi at the meeting.
He has said that the Shanghai Disneyland is the company’s greatest opportunity since Walt Disney bought land in Florida in the 1960s.
He is counting on 330 million Chinese living within a three-hour train or car trip of Shanghai to fill the resort, which boasts two hotels and the largest castle it has built.
Tickets for the Shanghai park, three times the size of Hong Kong Disneyland, are priced at 499 yuan (US$77) for peak periods such as weekends and summer holidays, and 370 yuan at other times.
Disney is planning a three-day event to mark the opening of the park next month, which is going to include a red carpet premiere of its Lion King Broadway musical, the first time the production will be performed in Mandarin.
The company has been on a recruiting drive to staff the park, which Iger said last year would employ about 10,000 workers.
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