Shanghai Disneyland
| Shanghai Disneyland | |
|---|---|
| Location | Shanghai Disney Resort, Pudong, Shanghai, China |
| Opened | June 16, 2016 |
| Area | 225 acres |
| Theme | Fairy tales, adventure and classic Disney storytelling, adapted for China |
| Owner | Shanghai Shendi Group and The Walt Disney Company |
| Operator | Disney Experiences and Shanghai Shendi Group |
| Status | Operating |
Shanghai Disneyland is a theme park in Pudong, Shanghai, China, and the main park of the Shanghai Disney Resort. It opened on June 16, 2016, as the sixth Disney castle park and the second in China, after Hong Kong Disneyland. The park is owned through a joint venture in which the state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group holds 57 per cent and The Walt Disney Company 43 per cent, with management led by Disney. Disney described its guiding brief with the phrase "authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese," and the park departs from the established Disneyland template more than any of its predecessors.
History
Disney negotiated with Shanghai's government on and off for more than a decade before the project was approved in 2009. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on April 8, 2011, and the total investment eventually reached about 5.5 billion dollars for the resort's first phase, which included the park, two hotels and the Disneytown shopping district. The park opened on June 16, 2016, a date chosen in part because the number six is associated with smoothness and good fortune. Attendance passed early expectations: about 5.6 million guests visited in the remainder of 2016, and more than 11 million in the first full year of operation.
Design
There is no Main Street, U.S.A. Guests enter instead along Mickey Avenue, a cartoon-flavoured street populated by Disney characters, which leads to the Gardens of Imagination, a hub of Chinese-inspired gardens in front of the castle. That castle, the Enchanted Storybook Castle, stands about 197 feet tall and is the largest and tallest at any Disney park; it represents all of the Disney princesses rather than one, and it contains a restaurant, a boat ride passing beneath it and a walk-through attraction — features no earlier Disney castle combined.
Six lands surrounded the castle at opening: Mickey Avenue, Gardens of Imagination, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Adventure Isle and Treasure Cove. Treasure Cove, themed to the Pirates of the Caribbean films, was the first land built entirely around that franchise, and its headline ride, Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure, uses a magnetically controlled boat system and projection on a scale the earlier versions of the ride never attempted. Tomorrowland's TRON Lightcycle Power Run, a launched coaster on which riders straddle motorcycle-style vehicles, has since been copied in Florida. Toy Story Land opened in April 2018, and a Zootopia land, the first at any Disney park, opened on December 20, 2023.
Elements familiar elsewhere were deliberately reworked for local audiences: the park has no railroad circling it, its Adventure Isle replaces Adventureland with an original storyline, and Chinese cultural references, from the gardens' zodiac murals to Mandarin-language stage productions, run throughout.
Attendance
Shanghai Disneyland quickly became one of the most visited theme parks in the world, drawing roughly 14 million guests in 2023 and ranking in the global top five, an unusually fast climb for a park of its age.