Shanghai Disneyland is gearing up for its grand opening on June 16th. How prepared is the Magic Kingdom and how will the local government cope with the tourist influx?
The Shanghai municipal government has an ambitious goal to build a modern tourism hub that could be an example for future projects of China’s booming tourism market. It will launch an International Tourism and Resort Zone, with the Shanghai Disneyland at the core.
The local government in Shanghai hopes Disneyland and the surrounding resort zone can help boost the city’s reputation as a world-class tourist destination. And this high-profile theme park will also further upgrade Shanghai’s services sector.
Officials say they’ve conducted trial runs to test the theme park before it opens in less than a month.
“As of May 18th, the core area has been open for 23 days. We’ve received about 960-thousand tourists. The number of tourists reached a peak during the May Day holiday. About 110-thousand tourists visited our theme park. Since the main area opened, we’ve seen the operation is generally safe, stable and in an orderly fashion,” Liu Zhengyi, executive VP of Shang Int’l Tourism, Resort Zone Administrative Committee, said.
But they still find more than 100 areas could be improved. They cover transportation, safety management, and operation, as well as how to better cope with great tourist traffic and emergencies.
“We have quite a bit of experience about managing crowds and managing attendance. And all that experience goes into how we’ll manage both the theme park and all of the areas that open to the public without a ticket,” Murray King, vice president of Shanghai Disneyland, said.
“We’ve designed an emergency response plan and conducted emergency response trials,” Sun Jiwei, governor of Shanghai Pudong New Area, said.
A 24-hour emergency response team will be standing by daily for the very first Disneyland on the Chinese mainland.