I Fond this article on Washington times web page:

Hong Kong, China, Jun. 24 (UPI) -- Disney plans to keep much of its Hong Kong operation under cover, to protect the rides and restaurants from the city's high humidity and heavy rains.
A unique feature of Disneyland in Hong Kong will be that 83 percent of the attractions and 90 percent of the eateries will be roofed, and mostly air-conditioned, the theme park's director of information technology, Noble Coker, said Wednesday.
The park is to open in late 2005 or 2006. Disney officials predict 5.6 million visitors the first year, 30 percent from mainland China, 30 percent local residents, and the rest from overseas, the South China Morning Post reported Thursday.
The park plans to eliminate long waiting lines by providing a "fast pass" that tells visitors what time to come back for a certain attraction.
Coker said that surveys in Asia found tourists most interested in taking photographs, watching fireworks and stage shows, and enjoying the scenery. This contrasted with the United States, where most people came for the thrill rides, he said.

I think that Hong Kong Disneyland is being built the way it for a reason. Sure some of the parks problem is budget cuts. But as a “surveys” say “in Asia found tourists most interested in taking photographs, watching fireworks and stage shows, and enjoying the scenery. This contrasted with the United States, where most people came for the [thrill] rides”. Also with only 5.6 million visitors the first year the park does not NEED high capacity rides like POTC, HM, and IT’S A SMALL WORLD until the there is a higher visitor rating. If there is a demand for rides Disney will build them. Plus Disney does not want to over spend like they did with Disneyland Paris, or they will have another messy situation.

on another note the new Honk Kong Disneyland web site is up at www.hongkongdisneyland.com. Its been up for a wile. Its a very nice web page.

If you look at an overhead photo of construction, it does not appear that any space was left in the various lands for attractions that require a large amoutn of space such as Pirates, Masnion, Small World, Indy, etc.

I'm also skeptical of the rationale that not a lot of attractions are needed because "in Asia tourists are interested in taking photographs, watching fireworks and stage shows, and enjoying the scenery." That may be the main focus for Asian tourist during their vacations, who may go to locations to simply enjoy the environment. But for those tourists who choose to go to a theme park, I think they are going to be expecting attractions. To me it's like the owners of a restaurant saying that they don't have to have a lot of food for visitors to eat because they have a good atmosphere. Don't forget that Tokyo Disneyland caters to Asian tourists, also.... and they have plenty of high quality, high capacity attractions.

Cris

Don't forget that Tokyo Disneyland caters to Asian tourists, also.... and they have plenty of high quality, high capacity attractions.

HKDL will have vastly different guest demographics than TDL. Although not completely analagous, let me make the comparison that "greater Tokyo = Hong Kong" and "mainland China = non-Tokyo Japan" for the purposes of comparison. Based on the above stats quoted from the Washington Times, HKDL will have only 60% same-country visitors, whereas TDL has got to be at least 90% (and I think it's possible that it's actually much higher than 95%). Looking at it another way, HKDL will have 40% foreign visitors, whereas TDL probably has far fewer than 10% foreign visitors.

Another complication is that all of Japan speaks the same language, whereas the situation in Hong Kong is very different: Hong Kong and adjacent regions of China speak Cantonese, but the predominant language in all of China is Mandarin by a longshot. So, where at TDL greater than 90% of the guests speak the most common language, at HKDL probably at most 40% of the guests speak the most common language. I'm guessing that this will have a huge effect on how the park is designed.

If we wanted to make comparisons based on the variety of guests at HKDL (both lingustically and socially), I think that Disneyland Paris is a far closer match than Tokyo Disneyland.

Hello Mousepadders from Hong Kong! I was so excited to hear about Disneyland Hong Kong. One of our tour guides pointed out the site on our bus ride. I saw a few cranes in that direction, so work is in progress!

Disney is definitely smart for building everything in the park in air-conditioned enclosures. It is so hot and HUMID here that I feel like my face is going to melt off every time I step outside. I think it's a great idea to put a park here -- Hong Kong is truly an impressive world city.

I agree that the DL HK demographic will be largely foreign visitors. It's unfortunate, but Chinese nationals cannot enter Hong Kong without obtaining a visa. This restriction is for obvious reasons...Hong Kong could simply never accomodate 1 billion Chinese citizens -- or even a portion of them!

If I'm ever back in Hong Kong, DL HK will definitely be a stop!

I'm glad to see disneyland coming to HK since I live there myself. Disney putting those gazebo and flora parks where visitors take pictures is just plain ridiculous because China has too many of them. I'm quite sure many mainland tourist are gonna be totally bored same old thing over and over again. Just go up to border city Shenzhen china, that place is oversaturated with those types of places such as Window to the World, and China Folk Center. Mainland chinese tourist will be disappointed going to HKDL if that's all they see.

I'm quite sure HK can get 5.6 million visitors first time around out of curiosity give they have a huge catchment area: India, China, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Phillipines. But will tourist come back again to HKDL after seeing the dismal amount of attractions? Some tourist have already been to Tokyo, Orlando and Anaheim and they will notice the difference.

To be successful in HK market, Disney needs to put back those signature attractions: Big Thunder Mountain, Small World, POTC and Haunted Mansion. Without these attractions, I wouldn't call this place disney.

I wonder if diseny waiting to put in Its a small world, POTC, and HM is due to the fact that those attractions are not the most visited attrections in Tokyo Disneyland.

I also heard that Frontierland/Westerland was not being built becuase of how china views wester culture.(iam not saying that budget cut had nothing to do with Frontierland not being in Hong Kong Disneyland) But that would be a good reason if it was true.

I wonder if diseny waiting to put in Its a small world, POTC, and HM is due to the fact that those attractions are not the most visited attrections in Tokyo Disneyland.


Hk is a different market than Tokyo, given that Tokyo is more catered to the Japanese market. Its the 2nd largest market in Asia, just after Tokyo. Hong Kong has a huge expatriate population (americans, cdns, brits, aussies). It is much more multi-cultural than Tokyo. I would say living 50% of the people in Hk are Chinese and the rest are from other nationalities. Still, I think Disney shouldn't be skimping its signature attractions or else Disneyland should be changed to Dismaland

I also heard that Frontierland/Westerland was not being built becuase of how china views wester culture.(iam not saying that budget cut had nothing to do with Frontierland not being in Hong Kong Disneyland) But that would be a good reason if it was true.

I couldn't care much for frontierland except for Big Thunder Mountain, maybe they could add Muhlan land instead. Have a couple of dark rides with muhlan would make things better.

I wonder if diseny waiting to put in Its a small world, POTC, and HM is due to the fact that those attractions are not the most visited attrections in Tokyo Disneyland.

I also heard that Frontierland/Westerland was not being built becuase of how china views wester culture.(iam not saying that budget cut had nothing to do with Frontierland not being in Hong Kong Disneyland) But that would be a good reason if it was true.


Yup...it's gotta be about budgets cuts for both dealies. The cheaper rides built first, the rest if HK is lucky

As far as adding high capicity larger rides like Pirates, Mansion, or even Small World at a later date, I am wondering if that is possible. If you look at the overhead photos of HKDL, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for expansion. Also, as far as the comment about "cheaper rides built first" and that others could be added later..... if you look at the roster of attractions, it looks as if they even skimped on the "cheap attractions." For example, how hard would it have been for them to have included Snow White's Adventures or Pinocchio's Daring Journey in Fantasyland? I'm wondering if the park will be able to handle the 5.6 million visitors the park expects the first year. Not only does the park have a very limited number of attractions, but most of them are low capacity rides. It would be interesting for someone to calculate how many people can be cycled through the attractions per day.

I have a video of Disneyland's 35th Anniversary special. There is a segment in the show where Miss Piggy is thinking back to her youth when she was visiting Disneyland as a teenager with her girlfriends. One of her friends asks "What do you want to do first?" Miss Piggy responds, "I thought we'd do some shopping on Main Street, get a bite to eat, and then do some more shopping." Then her friend asks, "Don't you want to go on any of the rides?" Miss Piggy responds, "They have rides here?????"

Such rationale was used as sarcastic comedy by Disney on a television show. Now that same rationale is being used seriously by Disney in their theme park planning. Rides at a theme park? Who needs 'em? People can just shop and take photos.

Cris

Well, Disney execs just deny that there is a lack of attractions in HKDL though they are still been secretive to what attractions are there going to be. I got this from a local HK paper. One side note. 300hk is about 40US dollars. You can read this article here:

http://www.ncf.ca/~aa820/attract.jpg