The Shanghai municipal government revealed its blueprints for the latest Disneyland Resort for the first time on Wednesday, the Xinhua news agency reported. Ground breaking on the theme park, estimated to cost nearly $4 billion in the start-up phase alone, is scheduled to begin later this year. Around 3 square miles in Shanghai will be reserved for the park, a lake, hotels, parking lots, retail centers and commuter rails. It is slated to open in 2015.
Shanghai Disneyland will be the Burbank, CA based media and entertainment giant’s third theme park in the region, following Tokyo Disney and Hong Kong Disney. In the usual Chinese fashion, hundreds of people were already uprooted from the area late last year to make way for the park, the Wall Street Journal reported in November.
Wednesday’s news marks the end of a 20 year plan by Disney to break into the Chinese market, with its population of 1.4 billion and a growing middle class.
Disney’s plans are ambitious. Shanghai Disney will be large enough to rival its flagship attraction Walt Disney World in Orlando, which brinigs in over 40 million visitors to each year. The company’s ultimate goal is to increase demand among Disney entertainment products for mainland Chinese. Right now, that is not easy because there are laws that restrict foreign media, Disney’s brand-builder. There is no Disney Channel in mainland China, only in Hong Kong via cable. China protects that market. It has its own brand of home grown entertainment, expected to double in size over the next five years, according to the Ministry of Culture this week.
Disney parks have had mixed results in Asia. Hong Kong Disneyland is still a money losing operation. Tokyo Disney, on the other hand, has been on a tear. It posted record profits in 2009, just a year after the worst financial blowout in a generation.
Disney in betting that their Shanghai resort will at least be comparable to Tokyo, with its expected Mulan-esque touch to bring in the locals.The investment is one of Disney’s largest in China and stands as yet another testament of big US corporations looking far east for growth.