Disney Breaks Ground on Shanghai Theme Park

CTV News: Dipping golden shovels into a trench of sand, Walt Disney Co. executives and their Shanghai partners broke ground Friday for a long-sought theme park that will feature the world's biggest "Magic Kingdom" castle, and ambitions to match.

The 24.5 billion yuan (US$3.7 billion) park in Shanghai's southeastern suburbs is meant to serve as a brand-building cornerstone, luring legions of newly affluent Chinese with world-class facilities that will be "authentically Disney, but distinctly Chinese," said Disney CEO Bob Iger.

"Today is the culmination of many years of hard work, dedication and partnership," Iger said. "This is a defining moment in our company's history."

After over a decade of haggling, Shanghai's communist leaders seemed equally enthusiastic about the project, which will serve as an anchor for an "international tourism resort zone" with hotels and other large-scale entertainment venues. It will be Disney's fourth theme park outside the U.S., after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

"Disney is a classic urban entertainment brand," said the city's mayor, Han Zheng. "This project will help improve Shanghai's profile as a world famous tourism destination."

The project is a new showcase for this city of 22 million, whose aspirations as a tourism destination were fortified by the 2010 World Expo. It drew a record 72 million visitors during its six-month run, almost all of them Chinese tourists.

Initial plans call for the Shanghai park, at 91 hectares, to be even smaller than the 125 hectare one in Hong Kong, which is now undergoing expansion by about a quarter. But the surrounding resort area in Shanghai, at 390 hectares will be more than twice the size of the Disney resort in Hong Kong, making comparisons of size between the two venues difficult, said Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, calling it "apples and oranges."

"Any park that we build is designed to grow over time," Staggs said, citing Walt Disney's line that his parks were "never finished." "It's clear there is plenty of room for growth here," Iger said.

The Shanghai park will have several advantages going for it, including the general lack of historic attractions in the region, which is home to over 300 million people all looking for ways to spend their growing incomes and leisure time. Details of the park's design are still being worked out, but plans call for it to feature Disney's biggest castle, an "attraction unto itself," a spacious green area, a lake and plenty of space for anticipated huge crowds, Iger said.

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