Voilà un nouvel article dans le NY Times où un des boss de Disney parle des changements effectués à HK Disney
Citation
HONG KONG, Oct. 12 - The Walt Disney Company is taking a series of steps to address local cultural sensitivities as it prepares to open Hong Kong Disneyland a little more than a year from now, the company's president said here Tuesday night.
The new theme park, long controversial here because of the local government's lavish investment in it, will include local food and music and provide services not only in English but in two Chinese languages, said Robert A. Iger, Disney's president and chief operating officer. He described these steps as part of the company's broad effort to recognize national differences.
"We know if we're too U.S.-centric, the products won't be too relevant to those markets," Mr. Iger said. "That's particularly true as it relates to Hong Kong Disneyland."
Esther Wong, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong Disneyland, said that the company had rotated the orientation of the entire park by several degrees in the early design phase after consulting a master of feng shui, a Chinese practice of seeking harmony with spiritual forces. "This is essentially an American product, but it's a question of how we tailor it to an audience in this part of the world," Ms. Wong said. "Disney is an American brand, and our guests, our potential guests, believe in this product."
As Disney prepares to open the park with the broadcast on Thursday of the first television ads in Shanghai, there are some signs of growing anti-American sentiment here. A survey of nine Asian countries and territories released on Monday found that 47 percent of residents here held a negative opinion of the United States, second only to Indonesia. Gallup and TNS, a market information company, conducted the survey.
The survey found that the poor opinion here had been shaped mainly by American foreign policy, however, with residents still holding a much higher opinion of the American economy. Eden Woon, the chief executive of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, which played host to Mr. Iger's speech, said that he saw very little chance of any anti-American protests here and doubted that any such sentiments here would hurt Hong Kong Disneyland.
"China always is conflicted between accepting foreign things and trying to maintain its own culture," he said.
Many prosperous residents here pursued various stratagems to obtain American passports before Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. Jeffrey K. F. Lam, a member of the Legislative Council here who attended Mr. Iger's speech, said that some were now renouncing their American citizenship. But he said this was mostly to avoid paying American taxes in addition to Hong Kong taxes, and because of renewed confidence in Hong Kong's future, not because of hostility to the United States.
The park is controversial here because it is being built with $2.88 billion (22.45 billion Hong Kong dollars) in investment from the Hong Kong government. The government provided the land and is building road and rail links, although some of the road and rail costs might have been incurred even if the theme park had not been built.
The government owns 57 percent of the park, with Disney owning the rest. The government also holds subordinated shares that would convert to ordinary shares, raising the government's ownership as high as 75 percent, if the park does much better than originally envisioned.
Many here were upset by the disclosure - made after the deal was signed - that Disney was in separate talks to open a park in Shanghai. Disney has not concluded any deals in Shanghai, however, and has said that any park there would not open before 2010.
Michael J. T. Rowse, who negotiated the deal for the government as tourism commissioner and is now the director general of the government's foreign investment attraction arm, InvestHK, said that a series of recent visa policy changes by Beijing would result in far more visitors to Hong Kong Disneyland than originally anticipated.
Seeking to lift Hong Kong's economy in hopes that would help blunt demands for democracy here, Beijing has moved in stages over the last 16 months to allow many more residents of neighboring Guangdong Province and many of China's big cities to start coming here. They may now come on individual visas instead of joining tightly controlled tour groups. The number of tour groups has increased as well. Mainland visitors now mob tourist attractions and shopping malls here.
Mr. Iger said that Disney already employed 1,000 people in Hong Kong, and would employ 5,000 by the time the park opens. Many park employees will speak both Cantonese, the language of southeastern China, including Hong Kong, and Mandarin, the mainland's main language and the language of school instruction.
An unemployment rate of 6.9 percent helped prompt 5,000 people here to apply recently for 500 jobs as "cultural representatives" who will go to Walt Disney World in Florida next January and stay there for training until next summer. They will then return here to train other workers for the opening of the park.
While Mr. Iger said that the park would open in roughly a year, Disney officials have been careful to say that opening day could come in either late 2005 or early 2006.
Hong Kong Disneyland is being built on Lantau Island, part of Hong Kong territory, and faces the famous skyline of Hong Kong Island six miles away. Ms. Wong said that market research had shown that visitors would want to take a lot of photos, and that the layout was designed to accommodate this.
Yet dense smog now regularly blots out the view, a result of the rapid, largely unregulated industrialization in Guangdong Province in the five years since the project was approved, as well as the expanded use of coal this year by Hong Kong power stations. The best time for seeing one island from another comes during the steamy summer months, when frequent tropical downpours wash the grime from the air.
Another big question here is how the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland will affect the city's nonprofit theme park, Ocean Park, which relies heavily on mainland tourists.
Situated on a promontory of Hong Kong Island with superb views of outlying islands, beaches and passing container ships, Ocean Park has dolphin shows, two large aquarium complexes, robotic dinosaurs and two pandas. It also has attractions that rival those at the best American amusement parks.
An Ocean Park spokeswoman said that the park would emphasize its role as a marine park and could co-exist with Hong Kong Disneyland. By the end of the year the park's board will draft a plan for any improvements that may be needed, she added. "We do not think we are in direct competition," she insisted.
Ouias, ça confirme tout le mal qu'on peut penser du parc. Un maître de Jin Su qui a viré les meilleures attractions et le fait que ce sera avant tout un parc pour... prendre des photos. Des photos de quoi? Je ne sais pas, car à part Main Street, le SM et le château en frigolite (ou légo, je sais pas), y aura pas grand chose à photographier, puisque chaque attraction qui manque, c'est un élément de décor qui a disparu. Le Phantom manor, le Big Thunder Mountain, la forteresse des Pirates, le Nautilus, la façade de Small World sont autant d'éléments qui participent à la magie de Disney, à l'ambiance dans le parc. Et tout ça, les gentils Chinois ne pourront pas le photographie (au fait, puisqu'ils veulent plus prendre des photos que de faire des atractions - dixit les pontes écervelés de Disney - ils auraient pu faire un parc rien qu'avec des façades et sans attraction derrière, non? C'est un idée, ça!)
