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Hong Kong's Disneyland suffers crowd problems

Two girls from China, wearing Minnie Mouse hats, visit Hong Kong Disneyland yesterday. Hong Kong Disneyland will tweak its ticketing scheme after angry ticket holders from China who were turned away tried to storm into the park this week, a park executive said yesterday. PHOTO: AP

Thousands of people lined up to visit Mickey Mouse in Hong Kong this week. But when they could not get in, they got grumpy.

Crowds of angry Chinese, brandishing tickets after they were turned away at the Disneyland entrance, had shouting matches with the police and security guards. Some clambered over the heavy steel gates after guards closed them, and in a scene played repeatedly on local television, an unhappy child had to be passed by the crowd over the spikes of the gates to his parents inside.

The culprit was a discount-ticket promotion gone awry. Disneyland had failed to anticipate the rush of vacationers from China during the Lunar New Year. As the numbers trying to enter the park swelled, officials closed the gates and stopped admitting people who had bought tickets in advance.

Even the Hong Kong government issued a statement late on Thursday calling on Disneyland to improve its ticketing and entry procedures. The park has issued an apology to disappointed ticket holders.

By Friday morning, the crowds had subsided, as most Hong Kong residents stayed away from the park and the flow of visitors became more orderly.

But the lines were still long, even by Disney standards, and the park announced it would not sell more tickets at the gate for the day. Even Internet sales were temporarily suspended.

The problems began last month when Disney introduced a discounted one-day ticket plan that allowed the holder to use the ticket any time within the next six months except on designated "special days" when the park anticipated big crowds.

In Hong Kong, a four-day public holiday for Lunar New Year began last Saturday and ended on Tuesday. The park designated those dates as special days. But in China, the holiday for Lunar New Year lasts a full week, so the Chinese were able to use their discounted Disney tickets on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Chinese tour agencies had bought large batches of discounted tickets and brought in busloads of mainlanders to Hong Kong this week. The park said it would review its policies on what days to label as special.

Bill Ernest, the executive vice president of the park, acknowledged that "the numbers were larger than we anticipated." The park has a capacity of about 30,000 people.
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