CONFIRMED: Shanghai Disneyland will NOT have a Main Street USA

From the New York Times: In italics, comments by Shane Snyder in bold

 

Shanghai’s Disneyland, for instance, will not feature a Main Street-theme entrance, a staple of every other Disney resort. Instead, guests will enter through a lush 11-acre area featuring water and trees, where they will be greeted by costumed characters, Mr. Iger said. The castle will be Disney’s biggest.

 

Interesting - sounds more like Joe Rohde’s oasis concept from Animal Kingdom.  I’d love to see if/how that works in the Magic Kingdom!

 

Disney is walking a careful line with the Chinese government, which approved the park, after two decades of off-again, on-again talks, on the condition that it would be sharply different from the original Disneyland; which has become a symbol of American culture. Disney agreed to heavily incorporate Chinese culture (dressing Mickey Mouse in a kung fu robe would not do).

 

The Chinese wanted a park that was “sharply different from [our] symbol of American Culture”.  Wow, what a statement.

 

Some [Chinese] officials have also been pressing for the government to negotiate more favorable terms with Disney, pointing to the company’s park in Hong Kong, which opened to underwhelming results. Hong Kong Disneyland initially suffered from a range of problems.

I still think Paris was their biggest financial blunder.  That park needed serious infusions of cash (supplied by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed; who still owns nearly 25% of property shares).  The stories about how poorly Disney management handled that park’s opening are truly entertaining.

Disney executives emphasized that its parks — including the original in Anaheim — have traditionally taken time to work out the kinks and sought to position Hong Kong as a learning experience.

One important lesson involved food. Disney expected visitors in Hong Kong to spend an average of 20 minutes eating in restaurants, which is how they behave at Disney World and Disneyland Paris. But Hong Kong visitors stayed an average of 40 minutes, creating backups. Seating has since been added, but Shanghai will have cavernous restaurants from the beginning.

I find this particular part of the story, about restaurant capacity, eerily familiar to EuroDisney’s dining failures.  Disney Management was told by their scouts that Europeans “don’t take breakfast” and planned their resort with minimal breakfast offerings (enough to serve about 250 people).  Naturally, they were very surprised to find over 1200 people lining up for breakfast each morning.  Also, Disney was told by these scouts that Europeans take extended lunch breaks from 11-2 every day; so Disney planned for the parks to have numerous large restaurants that could literally absorb the full capacity of the park.  It turned out that most European guests preferred to snack all day long (taking the “American approach” of just grabbing a hot dog) and those who did stop to dine did so after 1:30.  This left the “cavernous restaurants” virtually empty – except for the cast members who were no doubt twiddling their thumbs.

“We have a special opportunity to build aresort that reflects everything we have learned from our various parks around the world,” Mr. Iger said.

 

But, Bob… no other place in the world is Shanghai.  Everything you’ve learned from Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong may not apply to Shanghai at all.  Learn about Shanghai’s people and culture first – get to know the audience you seek to entertain.  Was creating the park without a Main Street USA dictated to you by the Chinese Government or did you come up with that idea on your own?  How can you give your customer what they want if you have no idea who your customer is?

 

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality”

-Walt Disney