General Hong Kong Disney News

[Gavin]

Re: Hong Kong Disney Castle Refurb

^ It had an issue with capacity in the first few weeks that it opened, with far too many people trying to get in. That's obviously calmed down now, and the capacity is higher since 3 new lands have been added since opening.

The figure is lower than most Disney parks, but it's also the smallest one, so that's to be expected. 7.5 million is still huge. At 7.4 million last year, it was the 13th most visited park in the world, more than any European park apart from the main Disney park in Paris, and more than Universal Studios (Florida and California) and 2 million more than Orlando's Sea World. Port Aventura gets less than half that, and Alton Towers 5 million fewer.

Most parks can only dream of getting anywhere near those figures.

Considering that the main Disney park in Paris gets 3 million visitors a year more than Hong Kong, the fact that Hong Kong has been in profit for years, despite only being 10 years old, while Paris continues to be up s**t creek 20+ years down the line says it all with regards to how the places have been run.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Hong Kong Disney Castle Refurb

Double post, but just saw this over at Screamscape:

Height marker balloons over at the site of the second park.

Also:

the Hong Kong Tourism Commission is now asking the Walt Disney Company to begin looking into plans for a second park as well now that the first park seems to be off and running well at last.

http://www.screamscape.com/html/hong_kong_disneyland.htm#2ndPark

 

[Gavin]

Re: Hong Kong Disney Castle Refurb

I popped in for an afternoon the other week, but didn't hang around in the evening to see if the fireworks were any different, but they definitely are.

The castle is looking better, but the changes are subtle. The pink colour has been made to look more like pink stone, rather than a "painted" pink if that makes sense? I think the roof tiles are different now as well. Now, they're mutli-coloured blue/purple whereas I think it was monochrome before. The golden spire bits seem a lot more gold as well.

The new walk-through thing seems closer to opening as well. Previously, there seemed to be nothing going on, but now there's clearly an entrance, you can see quite heavy planting coming up behind the construction boards and there was a lot of construction noise when I was there.

As I said, I didn't catch it (wasn't really thinking to be honest and had plans that evening anyway), but they've now got the whole projection-mapping thing that a few of us thought might happen, which was just posted up on Screamscape:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2LeRDKp13c[/youtube]

Quite a busy year then with the new night time show up and running, new Halloween events on the way, a new walkthrough looking to open imminently, and the new replacement show for The Golden Mickeys thought to be opening around November.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Hong Kong Disney Castle Refurb

I popped in for a bit to pick up my new annual pass a week or so ago.

Some more concrete for Iron Man, but you can at least see an entrance taking shape. Only a year to go...

The walkthrough thing has had the consturction boards taken down. It's due to open in December and feature scenes from various Disney films.

The temporary Frozen Village attraction and show has gone now after being extended well beyond the original dates it was planned for. The building is used for temporary attractions, but no idea what, if anything, is on the way.

The new show, Mickey and the Wondrous Book, which is replacing The Golden Mickeys, is due to open in late November with preview shows for annual pass members slightly earlier. I'm going on the 17th. Apparently, it's featuring songs from The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid, Tangled, Brave, Aladdin, The Princess and the Frog, and Frozen. The previous show featured Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid, so no idea if that will be kept in, but all of the other films will be new.

The Golden Mickeys had an original song, so I'm thinking this might too. There's a new 10th Anniversary song, which I'm inclined to think might show up in The Wondrous Book. It would seem a waste not to use it (not that I like it) after going to all the effort.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn1tPl0H9Pc&list=PLf6oMRxq-EOowh-EhaUtAatIfy4EdDFGF&index=1[/youtube]

 

[peep]

I'm intrigued by this new walk-through. Looks like a cross between the Storybook rides and the Alice labyrinth.

Also hope this new show is good, sounds like the golden mickeys was very popular.

Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk

 

[Pink Cadillac]

Although I'm not really that looking forward to the Iron man ride, this walk through looks like it could be lovely and I never knew it was being built. I knew Hong Kong had something called Fantasia gardens but I thought that was a similar thing to this. Also look at that tree! (in the pics with the lanterns) <3

 

[Gavin]

The Fantasy Gardens thing is close to this. It's a small area with three or four pavilions used for meet and greets / character photos. I think the thought process behind it was that even if it's raining you can get some characters out.

 

[Lofty]

The walkthrough sounds really interesting actually - really looking forward to seeing Iron Man pop up too. It looks like such a lovely Disney park and they're adding attractions that actually interest me, which is novel ha.

 

[Gavin]

Got to see the show a few days ago, and it's really impressive. Fairytale Forest is due to open later this month, so I'll post some pictures up in about a week.

I've stuck a trip report up with some pictures from Mickey and the Wondrous Book:

http://forums.coasterforce.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=39588

I put a video from YouTube in there as well - not mine - but will just throw that in here too. It's from the opening ceremony, with the show starting at 11 minutes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV4eCorb-Xk[/youtube]

 

[Gavin]

I forgot to mention earlier, not that it's massive news, that there has been a small change to he Paint the Night Parade. They've got rid of the silly "paint" section in the middle.

Previously, people could buy magic paintbrushes which were supposed to interact with performers costumes. The parade would stop halfway through and performers would approach people with the brushes to "paint" the costumes. They just didn't work though, and after a while nobody was buying the brushes, so you had an awkward 3 minutes or so with nothing happening.

That's been removed now though, and the parade just continues without stopping. The whole flow is a lot better now.

 

[Lofty]

That sounds so great on paper but I can imagine it being completely ridiculous and it just not working at all. Not to mention it completely alienating those not buying an extra add-on.


Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk.

 

[Gavin]

^ Yeah, it just never worked on any real level.

The brushes seemed very temperamental, with parade performers having to literally stand right over people and guide the brushes to the right part of the costume, and even then they didn't always do anything.

It just totally broke the whole flow and performance aspect of the parade because the costumed performers had to break out of what they were doing to try and help people get the stupid things to work.

When people stopped even trying, you were left with an awkward few minutes of performers fannying around with literally nothing to do.

California, quite rightly, didn't include it when they took it on.

Anyway, they did the right thing by taking the parade down for a couple of nights while they redid the soundtrack to take out the "Let's paint!!!" crap.

Nice idea. Failed fairly miserably, but at least they recognised it and ditched it.

 

[Gavin]

Not news, but I just saw this whole "Broadway" style advertising thing for this year's new stuff while I was out for dinner last night and thought I'd shove it in here.

 

[Gavin]

I went to a preview of Fairytale Forest yesterday afternoon. I'm not going to do a trip report so soon after the last one, but I'll just throw some pictures and video in here.

It's cute I guess, and a good way to use up a bit of free space that is too small for much else. I imagine it would look really nice at night, but it's not exactly going to be on my must-do list whenever I'm at the park.

A crappy quality walk-through:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSPLneaSWu4&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

 

[Pink Cadillac]

Thank you! From the video it looks amazing and I like most of the planting choices too. The whole area looks really nice. <3