Hong Kong Disneyland Set to Expand?

According to some unisonous reports from various media outlets in Hong Kong, Disney is currently negotiating with the local authorities on the expansion of Hong Kong Disneyland, which only just opened in 2005 and is the smallest Disneyland Park to date. A 30-percent expansion is being discussed. Visitor figures have not been all that satisfactory since opening and, on various occasions; have been linked to the (relatively small) size of the park, which is why the latest considerations on expansion are thoroughly understandable. However, it seems as if Disney has not yet taken the level of income outside of Hong Kong into consideration enough, much less the traditional cultural identity of the Chinese. In conjunction with the planned expansion, an investment sum of roughly 464 million dollars was stated. Based on insider reports, Hong Kong Disneyland noted around 4.5 million visitors between October 2007 and September 2008, which lags significantly behind the visitor figures that were forecast at the time: approximately 5.6 million. Irrespective of this, information on another Disneyland park in China was already cumulating prior to Christmas: Disneyland Shanghai, which, following some long and tough negotiations is likely to lead to a formal result pretty soon. At the start of the new year, the first key data were announced for this undertaking, which is scheduled to open in 2014. The amusement park is to be built at a roughly ten-square kilometre large site near the Pudong Airport for an investment sum of around 3.6 billion dollars. The park planned for Shanghai would then be roughly eight times the size of Hong Kong Disneyland. (eap)