Hong Kong Disneyland

I'd already been to Disneyland in Anaheim, Orlando, and Paris so I figured I shouldn't pass up crossing Disneyland #4 off my list whilst here in Hong Kong. Now there's only one Disneyland I have yet to visit: Tokyo.

Hong Kong Disneyland opened less than a year ago, in Fall 2005. So far it has yet to attract the crowds of the other Disneys. I visited on a beautiful, sunny weekday in late May and the crowds were remarkably thin. There were plenty of people, but there no excessive queues. The longest I ever waited in a queue was 10 minutes, and most of the time it was far less.

To some Disneyland fans, Hong Kong Disneyland might be something of a disappointment. It has far fewer attractions and rides than the other parks. It even has fewer "lands": just Main Street USA, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, and Adventureland. No Frontierland, no New Olreans Square, no Critter Country. No Pirates of the Caribbean, no Haunted House, no Thunder Mountain Railroad, no It's A Small World, no Splash Mountain, no Star Tours, no Peter Pan, no Alice in Wonderland, no Pinocchio, no Indiana Jones, no.... a lot of things. But that's okay. Because I still had a good time. I think what Hong Kong Disneyland lacks in rides it makes up for in what Disney does best: theming, atmosphere, and the manufactured "Disney magic".

Most of the visitors here are from Hong Kong or China. Most of them have probably never been to the other Disneylands so they don't miss what's not here. What they get in abundance is what they came for: the Disney experience. Disney's imagineers are masters of creating mood and theme. Little flourishes and details make the experience that much more enjoyable.

Some of the familiar sights are back: the basic layout of the park is the same. Main Street USA is the same. Sleeping Beauty castle is still the centerpiece of the park. The jungle cruise is more or less the same, down to the corny jokes. Space Mountain is the same, maybe better than the original. The teacups are there, and so is Dumbo. The treehouse on the island and the rafts to get there. And of course the characters.

The cast members (employees) are one of the best things about the park. They are all super-friendly, much more so, I think, than in the American parks. They are all fluent in both Cantonese and English, and they switch back and forth with ease. Everywhere I went they greeted me with enthusiasm in my native language. I got my picture taken with all the characters, including the princesses.

The food was surprisingly Chinese. I expected either American food or a Disneyfied version of Chinese food, but the food looked pretty authentically Chinese, with special pains taken to represent the various cuisines of different regions in China. There were noodles, wok dishes, curries, sushi, hotpot, dim sum, and roasted duck. The food wasn't even all that overpriced. Everything was a uniform $45 HK, or $5.50 US, far more reasonable than the price gouging that goes on at Disneyland back home.

One distinct difference between this and other Disneylands was its setting. The other Disneylands are dead flat. But nowhere in Hong Kong is flat. And so Hong Kong Disneyland, which was built entirely on landfill in what was once a bay, is set against a backdrop of dramatic green mountains. In the northern latitude Disneylands, Adventureland plays on its exotic man-made jungles. But here in the semi-tropics, Adventureland doesn't look too terribly different than the rest of Hong Kong. Main Street USA looks just like it does in the states, with the same tunes from The Music Man playing through the loudspeakers. And Fantasyland is based on the same European market town motif.

There are a couple of rides or attractions which are new. The Buzz Lightyear Astroblasters is an interactive ride. Each passenger is armed with a laser guns and has to shoot targets as he moves through the rides, earning points as if in a live action video game. Mickey's Philharmagic Orchestra is a 3-D experience similar to Honey I Shrunk the Audience, that incorporates all your favorite Disney songs and characters with 3-D imagery popping out of the screen, and splashes of water and other surprises that seem to immerse the audience in the action. I was rather amused to see tourists attempting taking snapshots of the 3-D images with their cameras. The live shows were great. One was essentially a 30 minute highlights version of Broadway's The Lion King. Same sets, costumes, big budget extravaganza. The songs and dialogue were in English, but there were two monkey characters who translated the story into Cantonese. The heroes of the story were actually played by actors of African origin, while the smaller parts and dancers were all Chinese. The other show, The Golden Mickeys, was based on the Oscars, and was essentially a best hits of Disney songs from a dozen or so Disney movies. This time the cast included Asians, Whites, and Blacks. This time Mickey and Minnie Mouse spoke only Chinese, but the songs were still in English. Even the Mulan song.

I took a break in the afternoon to check out the hotels. They're lavish and posh. One is the classic Disneyland Hotel, modeled after the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, and the other is the art deco "Hollywood Hotel". I'm not really sure why anyone would stay at either hotel, when the park is so close to the city of Hong Kong. You can reach it by ferry or metro. There's a special metro line built solely to connect Disneyland to the rest of the system. The trains themselves are like a ride, decorated in colorful Disney style, with mouse ear-shaped windows.

There are fireworks every night, and they include not just fireworks but a choreographed sound-and-light show at Sleeping Beauty Castle. Main Street is aglow in a sea of cameras being held up to capture the ceremony.

Not everyone in the park is Asian. There are a few foreigners. And a sizable number of Indians. When I went on the English-speaking Jungle Cruise, most of my fellow passengers were members of a large family from Hyderabad. As the ride passed by the "ancient Indian temple ruins" and the statue of "Ganesh" I wondered what must have been going through their heads.

The whole experience is such a clash of cultures and images, a sort of petri dish for the study of globalization. I'd visited Paris Disneyland three years ago with the same idea in mind, and here it was the same, but to an even greater degree. I wondered what all the Chinese visitors thought as they wandered through the park. Did they buy into Disney's sanitized, inauthentic versions of "Main Street USA", "Europe", and "The Tropics" (Adventureland)? Or, to them, was Disney's American origin irrelevant, the park having been made something Asian instead?

On the metro ride home at night, I found myself sitting next to a young woman. She had a Disney bag but she was riding the metro alone, so I guessed that she was not a visitor but a cast member. She seemed surprised that I had guessed, and we proceeded to talk the whole way home. Turns out that she's Karen and she works in the entertainment division. She sings and dances in the Golden Mickeys and the parade, but she can't divulge any more than that because its "company policy". She seems to have bought into the whole Disney aura. She loves working there. She wanted to know all about my experience there, and how I liked it, and how it compared to Disneyland in America. She wanted to know who my favorite characters were. Hers are Chip and Dale.

As a student of geography and the social sciences, I have to be skeptical of places like Disneyland. Of course it's all fake, and it's an excuse for promoting Disney's movies and expensive toys. But there's also something very intriguing, from a planner's standpoint, about a theme park, especially one so carefully designed as Disney's. The idea that you can move from between lands, that the whole park is like a giant map of the world to explore. And there's not really anything wrong with that. Going to a fake version of the world is no substitute for seeing the real world, but if it inspires the young mind to seek out new places by offering a "preview" of what's out there, I say it's worthwhile.