The main reason why everyone comes to DisneySea is the “Mysterious Island” with its two blockbuster rides, the 20,000 leagues under the sea and the Journey to the centre of the earth, both extremely well themed. Don’t expect however huge thrills in DisneySea, Japanese taste for adventure and exotism seems to be limited to experiences that still feel very safe. And like for the new Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride at Universal Studios Orlando, theme park imagineers need to resolve the consumer’s dilemma stretched between a desire for adventure and a reluctance for extreme situations.

The little Mermaid section is also very well designed with one of the best themed shop of the park. As Seth Godin puts it, “The product is nothing but a souvenir of your trip to the store, and a reminder of the way you felt when you bought it.”

Various other examples of themes in rides of DisneySea, always perfectly executed!

Shows are also impressive. Even though the stories are always more or less the same. Read my analysis of the heterotopia of Disney World if you are interested to know why.

The Hermitage is a massive residential property under construction in Kowloon (Hong Kong). I was living just next to its location, so I could see the progress of its development and I was very intrigued by the inside. Few weeks ago, I was walking in the adjacent Olympian shopping mall and I discovered that The Hermitage opened its showroom to the public. It went beyond all my expectations and was by far the craziest thing I have seen during my stay in Hong Kong, The showroom is completely out of reality, immersing visitors into a manufactured ‘dream’-like experience.

People from Hong Kong and Asia more generally associate romantic western imagery with luxury. The Hermitage gives them all that on steroids. The showroom is entirely in marble, fake gold, crystals and mirrors. Space is very expensive in Hong Kong and most of the apartments on sale are actually very small, but no trick is spared to make the flats look bigger: lights, mirrors, smaller than usual furniture. The Hermitage showroom plays a soundtrack which is a condensed version of cheesy opera music, at the moment when the princess falls in love with the prince. They also made a dream like movie introducing the property; again everything is in gold.

Associations with symbols of prestige are heavily used to promote the apartments. Real Rolls-Royces from Europe are on display in the showroom and in the huge ads flooding the Hong Kong subway. But the most surprising is the collection of authentic Russian golden accessories displayed in introduction to one of the showroom. Models of high end apartments made of crystal-like material are then presented in the same fashion than the golden artefacts, in case someone didn’t appreciate well enough there intrinsic value. Videos mix images of the property and the original Hermitage in St Petersburg, making it somehow confusing, but the point is of course not to make it all rational, we are in a dream. The property is not so central in Hong Kong but the issue has been cleverly resolved by introducing the concept of ‘golden circle’ which happens to enclose the Hermitage property and the most famous central landmarks, a wonderful marketing imagery.

Tens of clerks and estate agents stand in the many showrooms, all very polite and nice. One was explaining to a potential buyer that the Hermitage is also the biggest museum in Paris, not so right, but who cares anyway.

The showroom itself is not even in The Hermitage building, it is just a temporary site reproducing with some liberty the final product, and you can even visit reproductions of the lifts! When you visit the fake flats all decorated in a very heavy romantic style, red sections are displayed on the floor to indicate space that will actually not be part of the asset on sale, so potential buyers still get the correct information, but from a manufactured dream that can completely submerge them. It is a fake of a fake to use postmodernist terminology. I would recommend anyone to visit the showroom, you will have a great time and it is even better than Hong Kong Disneyland or casinos from Macau!

New and shiny buildings are the ones that attract most of the attention in Hong Kong. But older buildings are also remarkable. The new towns in the Hong Kong New Territories (such as Fo Tan and Sha Tin) and some residential lots in Hong Kong Island and Kowloon are worthwhile a visit. They are usually from the 70s and look all more or less the same: apartment towers, multiple levels of public spaces for pedestrians, a park and a playground, a shopping mall, parking and roads at the ground level. I have seen similar examples in Western cities but most of them become urbanistic nightmares. The model seems to work much better here, maybe because of the habits of its people.

Shopping in Tai Po

Very early in the morning, the parks get invaded by old people practicing their tai chi and sometimes playing music. Then you see students getting to schools and parents to their offices. Later in the day, the public spaces get used by a mix of people: elderly, mothers living at home, workers getting a break, teenagers. In the evening, people do sport in the parks, play football, jog or simply chat. The shopping malls attract the younger crowd, not necessary to shop, also to hang around or have an afternoon snack with their friends. The towns and residential lots are always lively and feel very safe. I’m sure they also have their urbanistic problems and that life is far from being perfect here. Maybe the liveliness in public spaces is nothing but a consequence of the very small flats that families can only afford here in Hong Kong. It remains that the social cohesion and the coexistence between generations really transform the space.

One of the many small gardens between apartment buildings

Playgrounds all look the same in Hong Kong, but are always very well maintained.

The community buildings feature typically a series of local facilities: kindergartens, dry cleaners, second hand shops and so forth.

Older generations seem to play an essential role in this equilibrium; they are the ones who have the most time and incentives to appropriate the public space. Far from being inactive people without any function in society, their everyday activities seem to help maintaining a neighbourhood that is useful to the whole community.  I wonder if there are others reasons why these residential lots and planned towns work somehow better than in other parts of the world.

I started to appreciate the amazing diversity of their forms and of the symbols used. It is actually a very interesting place because religious icons are not historical relics here; they are the evidences of a living religious practice.

Statues are colourful; like most centuries-old statues were at their origin.

It is fascinating to see how the craftsmen and craftswomen produce them today.

The first, Café de Coral, is from Hong Kong. It has a very distinctive board at the entrance where meal placards are hanged and moved manually by waiters dressed like flight attendants. Other smaller chains have also this system and I don’t know if Café de Coral was the first one to use it. But it still makes the experience feel different. It materializes a menu that is changing day by day, even hours by hours between the breakfast, lunch, dinner and meals being sold out. But the fact that it is updated manually makes it somehow more playful and trustworthy than a digital screen, even though the entire process flow seems to be anyway automated.

The second, Pepper Lunch from Japan, is a genius marketing concept. People are served food on hot iron plates while it still sizzles. People can then ‘cook’ there meal according to their own preferences. The plates are intriguing, make a lot of noise and are always grasping attention even in a food court full of competitors.  TV screens explain customers how they can mix there food, which might be useful for newbies but more importantly reinforces the message that there is a specific way to eat a Pepper Lunch, for newbies and experts, which adds to the buzz and playfulness. One disadvantage for them though: the hot iron plates are not children friendly.

Here are few pictures of the Tree of Prosperity at the Wynn casino of Macau. It is a very impressive piece of technology, but more interestingly, it merges various purposes and cultural influences into one big display. It mixes Western and Chinese astrological symbols, a tree made of gold and many visual effects in a show designed to ‘thrill and excite’ the visitors of the casino. Many people come in to see the tree, which is already a big success. But the tree does more than simply attracting visitors, they throw money to the golden tree in the hope it will make them luckier in their gambling, which validates its symbolical value. It is interesting because the show is a big patchwork of symbols, some traditional, some invented, and they manifestly deliver all together a message that the audience can understand. A simple hole could have achieved the same function of course, and people would have also thrown money in it. But the massive scale of the tree of prosperity is also designed to showcase the power of gold and money, to make people desire prosperity beyond what is ordinary. If not, the Wynn casino would have no point. The tree works exactly like a religious temple dedicated to prosperity and luck. It seems all natural and appropriate inside the casino; this is why the tree is worshipped. What I like is that it doesn’t lie about anything. The message is bold and universal. I’m sure that gamblers appreciate this way to wish them good luck during their visit to the Wynn casino.

A giant futuristic screen opens on the ceiling.

The screens open and a giant chandelier appears above.

A tree made of gold then appears from below the ground.

The whole forms a moving sculpture dedicated to prosperity.

By the way, this is the sign outside of the Wynn casino and hotel. It mixes Chinese, American and French elements, and is situated on a former Portuguese territory. What a world!

Ok, this entertainment complex is clearly fake and tasteless.

Here are some nice Portuguese ceramic tiles on a concrete building.

The Lisboa casino dates from the 60s. Its retro architecture is refreshing and its name is directly related to the history of Macau.

Its recent extension, the Grand Lisboa looks more like a building coming from space, and the inside is not so interesting.

Here is a view of Macau mixing old and new.

Macau is not only about Portuguese vestiges, you can also find some nice examples of Chinese architecture, such as in the A-Ma temple. Its history is by the way wonderfully illustrated in the Maritime museum just next door.

I like the way they restored the St Dominic’s Church, they kept its relative simplicity.

Here is the Venetian casino and hotel in Macau, similar to the one in Las Vegas, but bigger. The one in Las Vegas is still a little better I think; its sections are a little more diverse. It is a fake reproduction of Venice of course, and its theme has not any connection with Macau, at the opposite of the Lisboa casino. It features however an amazing number of details that reproduce relatively faithfully the ones in Venice. The entertainments inside the casino such as opera acts and classical music are of good quality and not fake at all. I’m not saying it is like Venice, but it is not a totally fake place.

If you are interested in the idea of travelling in fake places, you can also check out the artistic video I did a while ago about Las Vegas..

The park was definitely lacking a level of details in the execution of the themed areas. The budget was too tight it seems. It was nowhere more apparent than on Main Street USA and the Disney castle. The buildings were smaller than in other Disney parks and didn’t have enough details; some looked as cheap as in second class parks.

However, the excitement of the crowd was visible. That along with the Disney train similar to the one of Disney Tokyo and the soundtrack at the entrance gate was enough to put me into the ‘Disney’ mood.

There were a minimum of attractions in Hong Kong Disneyland. I thought it would not be enough to entertain me for a whole day but their choice was actually quite good. The attractions were also slightly adapted to feature more Disney characters and to compensate the lack of classical rides such as Pinocchio.  It was very interesting to see how this Disney Park relies more than any others on symbolism, sometimes only materialized by very simple blocks of concrete. It is a very risky game though, and even if I think they managed to make this park work for now, they should be careful to invest enough if they want to preserve the ‘magic’ of their brand.

Three new massive sections were also under construction and will surely help raise the overall level of the park. Here is a picture from the Tarzan’s tree house of what I think will be the Grizzly trail.

Hong Kong Disneyland is the only one to tolerate natural intrusions in its landscape but I think that seeing the mounts behind the castle works quite well.

I loved the space mountain, the queue was very basic but it’s the first time I tried a revamped version of the ride. The soundtrack adds more to the experience than in any other rides, adding even maybe a little of derision to the theme of space invasion from the 60s. The tempo of the ride and of its special effects is absolutely perfect.

Tomorrowland

This was the advantage of having many Indian visitors to the park, good Indian vegetarian food! I also understood why they decided to build a second park in Shanghai. This one seems to be targeting people from Hong Kong, but also people from Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries in the region. I guess that the one in Shanghai will target visitors from mainland China.

Adventureland

The jungle river cruise

Tarzan's tree house

“It’s a small world” has been relatively heavily adapted. As I mentioned earlier, they added many Disney characters in the ride, I guess to compensate the size of the park, and maybe even to ‘educate’ the audience. But I can’t stop wondering if it is not also because Disney characters have now succeeded to invade our “small world”. New sections have also been added I think, like the rainforest one, the general feeling is more oriented towards nature and environmental awareness.

This picture is a little blurry but I like it because it shows the many digital cameras. I know that Hong Kong Disneyland did not provide initially enough picture opportunities to the local audience, but they seem to have done a good job at improving that part. I don’t know why, but they put forward characters from Toy Story, Stitch and other more recent films here, probably the conclusion of some clever customer segmentation and marketing studies.

If you want to read more about the subject, check out my other posts on theme parks or my analysis on the heterotopia of Walt Disney World.

The “Better city, better life” official theme of the Shanghai World Fair was an excellent choice. It encapsulated all that needs to be addressed nowadays: sustainability, globalisation, urbanisation, fairness between the poor and the rich. The right questions were asked. However, the states and corporations present at the expo showed how unconvincing their answers were. Their self-interest and reliance on established industries lead them to the most desperate and risible rhetoric, see my previous posts for some examples.

The solution to all our problems is technology according to the participants of the Expo. Yet, and as far as I know, none of the big pavilions had an absolute zero impact on the environment. Instead, a splash of energetically very demanding presentations explained to the audience that some symbolic features of the buildings were sustainable, a non-sense.

Throughout my visit, oil companies, car manufacturers, heavy industries told me that their technology will bring soon a solution to the challenges that the world is facing. And the only role of the national pavilions was to repeat the absurd solutions that their biggest industries had to sell. How lower a national self-esteem could be?

The best place to experience these contradictions was in the area of the Expo devoted to industries. There, I was being told that I will have a better life thanks to bigger boats, more oil and concept GM cars; Answers that were totally inadequate and only increased my feeling of insecurity. To be fair, there were some good intentions and ideas at the Expo, and technology is surely part of the solution. But they were squeezed in an absurd vision serving national and supranational short-term interests.

In his book, Jay Winter explained how the Paris World Fair of 1937 was a desperate invocation of the illuminations of technology to prevent another war. Reality was not long to impose itself. Let’s hope that history will give us more time to resolve our incapacity to face limited resources on earth.