Business

Shanghai Disney Resort to Open in 2015
By wchung | 07 Jun, 2026

Despite the 2,500 theme parks that have been built in China over the past two decades, one being built on 2.9 square-kilometers in Shanghai’s Pudong district is seen as opening a new era for China’s amusement park industry.

Shanghai Disney is scheduled to open in late 2015 or early 2016 at a cost of 29 billion yuan investment ($4.4 billion). About 12.5 billion yuan ($1.9 bil.) of that comes from Disney for a 43 percent stake with the rest coming from a state-owned investment holding company called Shanghai Shendi Group. Disney will retain control of management over the park despite its minority stake.

Disney is expected to follow the Shanghai resort with others across China in an inevitable effort at tapping a market that continues to boom while theme parks in Europe and North America are suffering from the economic slowdown. Through 2010 park attendance has been growing at a 7% clip. The Shanghai Disney Resort is expected to add to the growth.

Tokyo Disneyland is Asia’s top amusement park, with 14.5 mil. visitors in 2010, showing Disney’s potential in Asia. But the Shanghai Disney Resort is likely to eclipse that. Even in the absence of a major western theme park operator like Disney, China has seven of the 15 biggest theme parks in Asia.

China’s homegrown OCT operates Happy Valley which attracted 20 million visitors last year. The company opened Splendid China, the nation’s first theme park, over 20 years ago and has become the 8th largest theme park chain in the world.

The number of visitors to China’s theme parks is expected to soar from 60 million in 2010 to 423 million by 2030. Once China’s consumers begin visiting theme parks at the same level as Americans — or 0.7 visits per year per person — the number will hit 925 million.

China’s government has tightened regulations against building huge amusement parks that gobble up investments without adding anything to the entertainment landscape. In August it announced a ban on new theme parks larger than 20 hectares (50 acres) or of an investment value of 500 million yuan ($77 mil.). However, some see the ban as intended only to apply to lavish resort developments masquerading as theme parks.

The eagerness of major U.S. theme park operators like Sea World and Universal Studios, as well as the British Legoland, are currently being stymied by China’s efforts to nurture homegrown theme parks. It took Disney many years to negotiate the deal to build Shanghai Disney Resort.

One change that Disney and other big-name foreign operators are likely to bring is the practice of leveraging strong themes to generate more revenues from sales of souvenirs. In the U.S. about 50 percent of revenues come from such sales while China’s theme parks only get about 20 percent from souvenir sales. That’s because only a small number of its theme parks offer well defined and recognized theme experiences.