Disney's Great Leap into China

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Disney made sure not to repeat those mistakes in Hong Kong. "We've come at it with an American sensibility, but we still appeal to local tastes," says John Sorenson, one of Hong Kong Disneyland's landscape architects. Fantasyland has a garden where photo-happy tourists can always find Mickey, Minnie and other popular characters. Mulan will have her own pavilion in the garden, designed like a Chinese temple. Mickey even has a new red-and-gold Chinese suit to wear. Restaurants boast local fare, such as Indian curries, Japanese sushi and Chinese mango pudding served in containers shaped like Mickey Mouse heads.

The park's designers brought in a feng shui master, who rotated the front gate, repositioned cash registers and ordered boulders set in key locations to ensure the park's prosperity. He even chose the park's "auspicious" opening date. New construction was often begun with a traditional good-luck ceremony featuring a carved suckling pig. (Ironically, Disney kicked up trouble not by being too American but by being too Chinese. Disney offered to serve shark-fin soup at banquets, but the local favorite got yanked from the menu in June after environmentalists, who blame consumption of the delicacy for endangering the global shark population, howled in protest.) "Disney has learned that they can't impose the American will--or Disney's version of it--on another continent," says Dennis McAlpine of McAlpine Associates, a securities-research firm specializing in media and entertainment. "They've bent over backward to make Hong Kong Disneyland blend in with the surroundings."

Still, most of the park looks as if it were airlifted from the U.S. Imagineers used Walt Disney's original designs for the first Disneyland in Anaheim as a starting point. Many Disney classics are there, including a fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty Castle and a Space Mountain roller coaster. Will this slice of Americana appeal to the Chinese? Disney executives think so. The Chinese "have heard so much about the parks around the world, and they want to experience the same thing," says Don Robinson, managing director of Hong Kong Disneyland. Disney may be catching China at just the right time: Chinese consumers want to connect with the global pop culture that poverty and communist dictate had long kept out of reach. The Chinese, says Kevin Wong, a tourism economist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, "want to come to Disney because it is American. The foreignness is part of the appeal."

But the park's success isn't a sure thing. Disney faces a special hurdle in China. Until a few years ago, hardly anyone knew Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck even existed. Disney characters were banned for nearly 40 years after Mao's takeover. Now Chinese kids are familiar with the classic characters--in part from pirated DVDs--but their knowledge of Disney lore is limited. "This is the first market where we've opened a park in which we don't have a long-term relationship with our guests," says Rasulo.