Although animator Walt Disney didn't invent carousels or roller coasters, or even Knott's Berry Farm, he did help create the cartoon rodent that has touched children for over 80 years. Indeed, Disney - the enterprise and the man - is almost as famous today for its amusement parks as it is for cartoon characters or animation blockbusters.
Theme parks may be all the rage these days, yet rides and attractions are as old as country fairs and carnivals that date back centuries. In the age of mega-malls with their own vast playgrounds and themed areas, even the term "amusement park" is a misnomer. I have seen my fair share - from disused former amusement park sites in the US that are decaying (New York's Coney Island comes to mind) to Disneyland in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo Bay, Warner Bros Movie World in Australia's Gold Coast, Luna Park in Sydney and LotteWorld in Seoul. Some are tatty and gaudy while others are barely tolerable, but most somehow just keep pulling the crowds in.
Just 12 weeks from now, in late January,
Resorts World at Sentosa, the first of the two integrated casino
resorts in Singapore, will finally throw its doors open. A key element of the
resort is the Universal Studios theme park, complete with 24 rides and attractions - many of them created or specially reconfigured for the
resort. Though it promises to be a big theme park for Singapore, Universal Studios in Sentosa will be one of the smallest of the branded theme parks built in recent years.
This is just one of the dozens of theme parks being built or planned for the region. From Shanghai and Seoul to Sydney and Singapore, just about every city in the region is either building a new theme park, rejuvenating an existing one or laying the groundwork for the next new one.
Just last week, Shanghai announced a deal to bring Mickey and the Magic Kingdom to China. One Hong Kong journalist described the proposed new Shanghai Disneyland as the "mother of all theme parks". Another called it "the theme park to end all theme parks" in Asia. The Shanghai Disneyland, which will be a massive facility several times the size of the expanded Hong Kong Disneyland, should have its first phase ready by early 2015. It will be the third, or fourth, Disney theme park in Asia depending how you do the counting. Tokyo has a Disneyland and a separate DisneySea and, of course, Hong Kong has one. Though details are currently sketchy, the Shanghai Disneyland is likely to be a franchised theme park like the two Japanese facilities that Tokyo developer Oriental Land built under licence. The Hong Kong Disneyland is a joint venture between the Hong Kong government and Disney. EuroDisney, in the outskirts of Paris, is somewhere in between. It too has Disney as a shareholder, albeit a minority one.
The Chinese aren't the only ones enamoured of an American cartoon rodent. Indian billionaires have been talking about building theme parks in India for years now and, when those plans are crystallised, you can bet your last dollar that Disney and Universal Studios will be among the top names bidding to build franchised theme parks there. The Malaysian government and several state agencies as well as an array of Malaysian businessmen have long toyed with the idea of theme parks there. Just before
Resorts World wooed Universal Studios to Sentosa, Malaysian officials had talked about getting either Universal Studios or Disney to build a theme park as part of the ambitious Iskandar Development Corridor across the Causeway in Johor. Even Thailand once had a fairly ambitious plan to build several large theme parks, though most of those projects have either fallen foul of politics or haven't received much support from bankers and financiers.
To be sure, theme parks are not a licence to print money. Just ask Hong Kong taxpayers who helped fund the local Disneyland, which has yet to show any returns for all the money and subsidies the government has poured in over the past eight years. Their proponents say theme parks help attract tourists who in turn spend money on hotels and shopping, among other things. Their detractors say they are just a waste of time, money and space. Horizon Group, a consultancy firm, estimates that RMB150 billion ($30.6 billion) has been invested in the 2,500 theme parks in China over the past 15 years, of which only about 10% are making a profit. It estimates several dozen theme parks have shuttered in China this year.
Yet, Mickey has helped attract an awful lot of Chinese and Asian tourists to Hong Kong who otherwise might have gone elsewhere. About 45% of Hong Kong Disneyland's visitors are now reportedly mainland Chinese, just under 30% are locals and about 25% come from the rest of world - mainly Southeast Asia, Taiwan and South Korea.
So, will Universal Studios be a roaring success? It depends on how you define success. Clearly, it's just an expensive annexe to a casino that operators look at as part of a bigger
resort project rather than a standalone theme park. But, done right, a theme park can be as good a bet as a casino. Disneyland charges children $50 and adults $70 for a ticket that gives access to all the rides.
Resorts World at Sentosa has reportedly vowed to match those prices, although it will be far smaller, with fewer rides, and won't have a Mickey running around entertaining children.
My bet is that Sentosa's Universal Studios will probably pull in the novelty crowd, people bored of walking around shopping malls in Asia, until they move on to the next new amusement park.
Theme parks need not be a variation on the same theme. The market for themed entertainment is changing and is likely to be dramatically
transformed over the next few years. The children of tomorrow, brought up in a wired world and playing networked games from the time they are in kindergarten, might find today's rides and attractions less than
entertaining. Operators need to stop filling the new amusement parks with weirder rides or gaudier attractions and focus on what the customers want. If not, a decade or two from now, much of Asia's theme parks will look like disused Coney Island attractions in New York.
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