Originally Posted By HongKongDisneyLand according to one newspaper in HK. there will be profit margin of 20% for HKDL in 2006 based on current attendance figures.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORDDU: Thank you for letting us know about this, duckling! ORWEN: And surely this must mean they can afford to add more attractions soon! ORGOCH: Er at least put in a crop FROGS somewhere's--fer witches who likes ta eat Frog LEGS!!
Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt Depending on how you look at it this is either good or bad news. It's good for the company and the investors. It's bad for those who believe that building skimpy parks is the wrong way to go. It basically shows that there is some financial merit to Disney's strategy of building on the "light" side.
Originally Posted By BrigmanMT 2 This was not a cheap park. If it opened with 2 more C-Tickets in Fantasyland, and a prettier Tomorrowland, I would say that it is a perfet model fo future theme park development in foreign lands. I like it as both a stockholder and a fan (as long as they dont plan on replicating it in under 10 years time, leave the people wanting more). It is the easiest way to gauge the audience for future additions. It seems like Disney is going to win out in the end, by discovering that the shows are incredibly popular. They will probably add 1-2 more venues in the next 3 years, with maybe a thrilling E-Ticket alongside them for looks. I dont have too many issues with this development strategy. I would have much preferred DCA if they had left Paradise Pier off completely and invested that $100 million in the entrace area, San Francisco, and on a C-Ticket for the wharf/farm area. It is a smart and succesful way to build.
Originally Posted By WorldDisney ^^^Eh, I'm not sure I can agree with all of that completely. Sure, they obviously got enough people interested for NOW, but it's the next few years that will tell (and btw, it's obvious that its just projecting a lot right now since the park hasn't even been opened for 3 straight months yet). I'm with Hans though, in the end, if this thing becomes a huge sucess, then sure, its great, but it will also say they could build like this and get away with it (at least where no other Disney parks exist ). But, I think its too early to tell either way. It seems bizarre to me since attendance seems to be way down on the weekday, but I guess when you are only aiming for 5 million, maybe that's what they projected already?
Originally Posted By HongKongDisneyLand They opened HKDL in the middle of September. October(excluding Golden Week) and November are traditionally Low season for tourists. December is typically the busiest Month, and Chinese Lunar New year is in late January 2006. So January would also be a very busy month. I believe they already have very good bookings for the coming holiday season, thats why they seem to be very confident.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< It seems like Disney is going to win out in the end, by discovering that the shows are incredibly popular. They will probably add 1-2 more venues in the next 3 years, with maybe a thrilling E-Ticket alongside them for looks. >>> As long as they are real shows and not just DCA-style projected attractions, I think this would be a good thing. HongKongDisneyLand, could you share with us your thoughts as to how well the park has been received by the locals? Ignoring the obvious issue of there being too few attractions, has the local market understood the whole "Disney magic" aspect of it as compared to Ocean Park?
Originally Posted By HongKongDisneyLand I think the comments by Hongkongers are mixed. Those who live in HK already know it is small with few attractions. I have heard a lot of comments (good or bad) from HongKongers. It is not an easy task to draw Hongkongers to the Park, because Hongkongers are mostly workaholics and most of them have been to other disneylands overseas. Although it is small, in my opinion I can easily spend a full day (10am-7pm) in the park. Those who like the park said the small size of the park make it easier to see everything in a day rather than just spending your energy walking from one point of attraction to another. So HKDL is mostly geared towards families with small children and tourists(mainlanders as well as tourists from malaysia, singapore, etc) that have never seen a disneyland before(they have lower expectations). The initial and on-going bad press have dentrimental effect on the attendance. it is still too early to draw any conclusion on performance, but the marketing people at HKDL really have to work harder!!
Originally Posted By HongKongDisneyLand I mean "detrimental".. and if they could maintain the daily attendance over 10,000 on weekday in November, it would be a good start!
Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt "This was not a cheap park." Maybe, but it was certainly a lot cheaper that DLP when that park opened. It certainly very skimpy on attractions. How many rides does HKDL have. Five? They've created a model that pretty much guarantees that the place will turn a sizeable profit and minimize losses if things turn sour.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORDDU: According to a news article my sisters and I just conjured up in our crystal ball today, Hong Kong Disneyland's attendance is already beginning to drop dramatically. So these profits will--most likely--be short lived--now that the curiosity factor is wearing off and the park must find strong enough legs to stand on its own. (At the moment, those legs seem to be pretty wobbly.)
Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt But didn't the report say that the 20% profit was forcast for 2006?
Originally Posted By HongKongDisneyLand Yes...basically it is a forecast. who knows what might happen in the end .. but some newspapers are reporting on HKDL very negatively. In my opinion, with HK Government on board, and with the full support of Central Government of China. There is still a bright future ahead, although it might be bumpy first couple of years.
Originally Posted By WorldDisney You know, I don't know WHAT to believe!! On one hand, maybe the papers ARE pretty negative against the park, but at the same time, Disney has given so much ridiculous spin for this park (the latest, making the resident discounts as a 'thank you' for the Chinese, a whole two months after opening and lackluster crowds, yeah right!), it's hard to know who to believe? Yeah, with a measely 5 million a year attendance with a population of 1.2 billion people in China alone, not to mention all the other rich Asian countries like Korea, Japan, Singapore and etc just 3-4 hours away by plane, it can't be THAT hard to make that. But it would be hard to believe that this park can make such a sizeable profit on its first year just based on the attendance thus far. I'm certainly not saying the park is struggling, again, it's only been a few months, but it certainly doesn't seem to be doing what they assumed and with that 30,000 attendance cap in place, they obviously thought a lot more people would be trying to see this park (thankfully for the people who ARE there, they don't have to deal with those size crowds so far). But hey, I'm just a guy on a keyboard that don't get the internal Disney documents or have any real clue what they expect attendance to be daily, so what do I really know .
Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt "But it would be hard to believe that this park can make such a sizeable profit on its first year just based on the attendance thus far." I dunno.... Shouldn't we assume that HKDL has much lower operational costs compared to other Magic Kingdoms? All you have to do is compare the number of rides and facilities. It isn't really all that hard to accept that HKDL is likely less expensive to operate than your average MK park. Also, how do we know that the forecast margin for profit isn't lower than planned or lower than their other parks? It's all speculation. I have no idea what they charge to get in, but assuming it is roughly comparable to the U.S. parks then I would say that it's reasonable to believe that any reduction in attendance would easily be offset by a reduction in operating costs. "but it certainly doesn't seem to be doing what they assumed and with that 30,000 attendance cap in place, they obviously thought a lot more people would be trying to see this park (thankfully for the people who ARE there, they don't have to deal with those size crowds so far)." I get what you are saying WD, but how often does Animal Kingdom or Epcot reach capacity? I think we put far too much emphasis on these kinds of figures when trying to interpret profitability. "But hey, I'm just a guy on a keyboard that don't get the internal Disney documents or have any real clue what they expect attendance to be daily, so what do I really know ." Right! It's all kind of a mystery, isn't it?
