Material for thought

I visited Hong Kong Disneyland the other day. It was not without any resistance as the park has not the reputation of being the best of its kind. But it was only 20 minutes away by public transport and I’m a specialist in theme parks after all, so I could not resist and did my duty.

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.

Tags: experience design, Hong Kong, marketing, theme parks