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Indeed, success is far from assured, despite the feng shui. Disney faces a special hurdle in selling itself to mainlanders: until a few years ago, hardly any knew of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Though Disney first entered China way back in the late 1930s—when the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs animated movie premiered—Disney cartoons were later banned in Mao's China. Nowadays, Chinese kids are familiar with the classic characters—in part from pirated DVDs—but their knowledge is limited. "This is the first market where we've opened a park in which we don't [BRACKET {already}] have a long-term relationship with our guests," says Jay Rasulo, Burbank-based president of Disney's parks and resorts.
Disney has launched an all-out marketing effort to fill in the blanks. The company partnered with the Communist Youth League of China to run special events in which kids entered Mickey Mouse drawing contests and read Disney stories. Disney is using a TV program, The Magical World of Disneyland, to broadcast movies linked to park attractions. Although the free-to-air program appears on Hong Kong TV, it can be received in southern China. During each broadcast, Hong Kong pop star and Disney pitchman Jacky Cheung introduces behind-the-scenes reports on Disneyland, featuring interviews with ride designers. Even Walt Disney himself, who died in 1966, has been enlisted. He talks up the original Disneyland in 1950s footage, with Chinese subtitles.
The Hong Kong park is Disney's biggest and boldest jump into the burgeoning China market, and executives hope it will pave the way for the company's DVDs, TV shows, stuffed toys and other goods. "At the highest level, Hong Kong Disneyland is a beachhead for the Walt Disney Co. in China," says Rasulo. Disney already sells toys and other branded paraphernalia in China through a chain of 1,100 Disney Corner outlets, and has movies and television programs, such as the popular Dragon Club, on local TV. The firm has also been successful in getting its movies into restricted mainland cinemas—in 1995, the Lion King was one of the first Western films authorized to be screened since the Communists conquered China in 1949. But Disney wants much, much more, including a Disney TV channel in China and better access for its films. With 290 million mainland consumers under the age of 14, "we know we have an addressable market just crying out for Disney products," Walt Disney International president Andy Bird told investors in February.
Disney also wants to expand its theme-park business into the mainland. Rasulo confirms that Disney has been in discussions with government officials to bring a Disneyland there, possibly in Shanghai. "There will be a second Disney destination in China some day," he says. Meanwhile, the company is already imagineering new attractions for Hong Kong, such as an updated version of popular racing ride Autopia, due to open in mid-2006. On the drawing board are plans to nearly double the park's capacity and possibly add a second theme park. "We're in for a long-term commitment," says Robinson. "It's not like just opening an office and selling a product. We have a castle."
Still, skeptics say Disney isn't the answer to Hong Kong's long-term needs. "For those who want to go to Disney, fine. But Hong Kong needs other sides to it as well," says Benny Chia, director of the Fringe Club, an independent downtown arts center. "Hong Kong always goes for the big projects, but people keep returning to Paris for things like the little corner galleries." Lantau resident Wong Wai-king has deeper concerns. Disney, she fears, is just one sign that Hong Kong's own history and culture will be sacrificed in a mad rush for tourist dollars. She runs a two-room museum of local antiques and yellowed photographs in Tai O on the southern coast of Lantau. In this quaint village—accessible by a narrow road that winds precariously over mountains thick with green forest—cows graze peacefully in grassy fields, and many houses are built on wooden stilts stuck into mud along the shoreline. Residents are famous for homemade shrimp paste, which ferments in wicker pans in the hot sun. It's amazing that such a place can still exist in hyper-modern Hong Kong, with its lofty skyscrapers and superb high-tech infrastructure—and Wong wants to keep it that way. "What's important for Hong Kong is the local culture, not these attractions," she says. "If we don't protect our culture now, Hong Kong will become a place where people don't have a sense of belonging."
Yet Wong appears to be a voice in the wilderness, even in her own village, where other locals buzz about the possibility of Disney's creating a bigger market for the town's dried squid and shrimp paste. Wong Tak-yau, a 77-year-old Tai O retiree, can't wait for the Happiest Place on Earth to open next door. "I've never been to other countries," he says, "so I want to experience what Disney is like." The rest of Hong Kong will be going along for the ride.
with reporting by Chaim Estulin, Ling Liu and Scarlet Ma / Hong Kong and Jeffrey Ressner / Los Angeles
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