Walt Disney’s newest theme park opened today on
Lantau Island, about a 30-minute
subway ride from downtown Hong Kong.
Plans to build Hong Kong
Disneyland were unveiled in 1999 and now, seven years later, the $1.8 billion project is complete, the place is
feng shui and the doors are
open. The placement of every building, stream and waterfall within the park was carefully planned out, and even the
date was picked because it is a lucky one in the Chinese tradition. Officials also paid special attention to Asian
culinary customs, making sure that menus were respectful of traditions and offered a wide variety of local favorites,
like dim sum, beef noodle soup and roast duck. (They
changed their mind about the shark fin soup
though.) A different part of cultural preparation included a visit by over 500 Hong Kong natives to Orlando earlier
this year to get their crash course
training in the “language of Disney”.
Hong Kong Disney is the smallest Disney theme park (310 acres) but also the cheapest among the global parks. The
park expects to welcome 5.6 million visitors in its first year, with a daily maximum capacity of 30,000. Of course, it
is already sold out for today :-)