There is a moment in Shanghai Disney Resort’s live Tarzan show where the audience holds its collective breath. Tarzan and Jane dangle from a large hoop suspended high above the Storyhouse Stage, their bodies intertwined. Then Jane lets go and stretches out her arms as if to fly through the air, while Tarzan, still grasping the hoop, catches her between his knees. She dives gracefully again and this time ends up vertical, her arms hooked over Tarzan’s feet. The only thing between her and gravity is his toes.
Absorbed in the spectacle, it is easy to forget what I am watching: a 1912 American novel set in the African jungle, reimagined by Disney and performed by Chinese acrobats for a mostly Chinese audience. That sort of cultural mélange characterizes the whole of Shanghai Disney Resort, which opened to enthusiastic crowds on June 16 (a numerically auspicious date that in Mandarin sounds like “will go smoothly”). An adaptation of the Broadway show The Lion King, all in Mandarin, contains a reference to the Chinese novel Journey to the West. At the attraction Frozen: A Sing-Along Celebration, toddlers belt out their favorites along with a Mandarin-speaking Princess Anna. The Wandering Moon Teahouse is punctuated by the click-clack of chopsticks as guests scoop up Shanghai pork belly rice and slurp beef noodle soup.
“We didn’t just build Disneyland in China. We built China’s Disneyland,” Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger said before a Tarzan performance on the eve of the theme park’s grand opening. “We want people to feel this is their park, created just for them.”
Perhaps nowhere is this global fusion as evident as at the theme park’s Soaring Over the Horizon ride, an East-meets-West sensory explosion adapted from Epcot Center’s Soarin’ Around the World and replete with piped-in scents. Guests are propelled over the Great Wall, the pyramids and the Taj Mahal before being returned to Shanghai to take in the city’s futuristic skyline. As the African savanna flashes before my eyes and the smell of grass and dust permeate the air, I am reminded of the “feelies” in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
The $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort, which is 57 percent owned by the Chinese government-controlled Shanghai Shendi Group, has been years in the making. Iger first visited the site—a swath of semi-rural, largely undeveloped land in a distant corner of Shanghai’s Pudong area—in 1999 while scouting out potential locations for a new theme park. The company broke ground in 2011, with some 100,000 workers ultimately involved in converting 72,000 metric tons of steel into glistening attractions. “Imagineers” from China and abroad as well as leading artists hired from around China soon got to work creating original content and adapting existing attractions to China. The Tarzan production is the work of renowned director Li Xining, known to Chinese audiences for shows such as Shaolin Warriors and Gallant Swordsmen, and it is powered by an entire acrobatics troupe from the city of Wuhan.
Disney executives now gush excitedly. Shanghai Disney is the biggest Magic Kingdom style park in the world, located on nearly 1,000 acres of land, with the largest entertainment program and the tallest castle. The cable and wiring for TRON, a futuristic space tunnel of a rollercoaster, could circle the city of Shanghai 37 times, and every day the culinary staff serves around 700 kilograms of rice. All of this was created, Iger notes, for the “largest market in the world.” With opening- day tickets selling out within hours of going on sale and the Enchanted Storybook Castle’s signature restaurant booked months in advance, the new park is indeed a shrewd business move, building on decades of Disney effort to win over Chinese consumers. Call it the merger between the Magic Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom.
Disney’s history in China dates back to 1938, when the company released Snow White in Shanghai. “We’ve had grand ambitions for China since day one, essentially,” says Bob Chapek, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Disney’s technical magic was not lost on China, either. Brothers and animators Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan sat in the audience at one movie theater that year. What they saw inspired them to produce the first Chinese animated feature, Princess Iron Fan, which was based on a chapter in Journey to the West and released in 1941.
In 1986, as China began opening up to foreign companies, Disney reentered the market in a path-breaking deal. CEO Michael D. Eisner signed a contract with national station China Central Television to air more than 100 episodes of a cartoon featuring the company’s most iconic characters—making Disney only the second Western company to supply programming to post-1949 China. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck soon graced screens across China, creating demand for Disney merchandise. In 1994, the company got another boost when The Lion King became one of the first 10 imported films to be shown in mainland theaters, in a market tightly controlled by the Chinese government.
In 1998, Disney released Mulan, which is based on an ancient Chinese folktale, and the next year Disney announced plans for Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, which opened in 2005. Since then, the company has been on an upward trajectory overseas: As CEO, Iger has made international expansion a major goal.
Today, Disney’s offerings span the globe: When you’ve had your fill of Hong Kong’s stunning harbor views, you can meet Cinderella and Mickey Mouse at the city’s Disneyland. While in Hawaii, you can spend your days body surfing and partying with Goofy at Aulani, a Disney Resort and Spa. Between visits to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, you can ride a mine cart through Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains at Disneyland Paris, which opened in 1992. And that doesn’t even include the company’s Adventures by Disney tours all over the world.
China has changed, too. For eight years, I called Shanghai home, watching as its infrastructure mushroomed and consumer tastes matured. Once, attractions—especially those for children—were often disappointing, the zoo animals penned in too tightly, the rides at amusement parks dusty and squeaky. Now savvy and highly wired young people demand better entertainment, making Shanghai the perfect place for the futuristic spectacle of Tomorrowland. I am hardly the only one to think of Huxley these days. “The last decades have seen life in the city move away from the sort of drab authoritarianism George Orwell imagined in 1984 toward the more hedonistic version Huxley dreamed up,” says University of California-Irvine historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of China’s Brave New World—And Other Tales for Global Times. “First came glittering department stores, now rides that thrill the senses.”
In 2006, Disney helped create The Secret of the Magic Gourd, a Chinese-language film for the mainland market. Soon after, the company began opening Disney English language schools throughout China. By the time the gleeful Toy Story Hotel sprung up in Pudong, Disney had huge cachet in China. The new theme park, says Chapek, “is just the ultimate expression, at least to date, of our ambitions here.”
The night before the park’s official opening, fireworks explode over the Enchanted Storybook Castle, as a veritable who’s-who of Chinese arts parades across its steps. Composer Tan Dun, who penned the scores for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero, leads the Shanghai Symphony in an original composition, while superstar pianist Lang Lang, clad in a white suit and playing a white grand piano, pours his soul into a rendition of “Let it Go.”
“What we have accomplished here far exceeds even my wildest dreams,” Iger proclaims. Mickey Mouse walks onto the stage, clad in a blue silk jacket, and in a dazzling display of special effects, the castle glimmers and twinkles, as images from Pinocchio, Cinderella and other classics flash across it. Topping the tallest of the castle’s eight spires is a carving of a peony: China’s national flower.
The new park has been greeted with fanfare rivaling only the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. In preparation for its opening, the local government decorated Disney-themed metro cars and issued tips for attendance. (Among the “don’ts” listed: cutting in line and harming plants or trees). Stores displayed special Disney lines of adult clothing, while local restaurants like Element Fresh and Blue Frog Bar & Grill snapped up spots in the new Disneytown shopping area, taking their place alongside international chains such as The Cheesecake Factory and Crystal Jade. To curb the proliferation of Frozen dolls labeled “D1snay” and “Disnesy,” the central government’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce published special instructions on protecting Disney’s trademark and cracking down on infringement, announcing dedicated training sessions devoted to the company’s intellectual property.
In 1955, with the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Walt Disney invented the theme park as we know it, introducing rides and experiences driven by powerful storylines. In preparation for the Shanghai theme park’s opening, Disney conducted years of research on everything from Chinese dining habits to feng shui. The result is a breathtaking attention to detail that will likely further boost consumer expectations in China.
Seventy percent of food offerings at the park are Chinese, many of them inspired by China’s eight cuisines—and because Chinese often like to linger over meals, designers expanded the theme park’s restaurant capacity. (More predictably, pizza in the shape of Mickey Mouse is also available.) At the Bippidi Boppidi Boutique, meanwhile, aspiring princesses can star in their favorite stories for the royal sum of 2,999 yuan ($450)—an offering not found elsewhere in the world—or opt for a more basic package. Another feature is an abundance of green space, meant to reflect Shanghai’s lively and heavily used outdoor parks. Already the 50-hectare Wishing Star Park outside the entrance gate has been commandeered by elderly people out for their daily strolls.
Focus groups helped drive the development of a line of original products, including a range of themed plush toys inspired by the Chinese zodiac, says director of merchandise David Koo. (The year of the tiger is represented by Tigger, and the year of the rabbit by Thumper.) Disneytown’s flagship World of Disney store sells ma la peanut brittle infused with Sichuan peppercorn. Even the size of the park’s entertainment program is driven by the fact that Disney expects many three-generational families among its patrons. “You have grandparents, parents and the child or children,” Chapek says. “That really changes the dynamic, because you have to have something that everybody can enjoy.”
The opening did have a few challenges. Despite the clear directive on protecting Disney’s IP, last fall the Chinese government prosecuted five hotels in Shanghai for using the Disney trademark. In May, meanwhile, visitors to a rival theme park in the city of Nanchang spotted performers dressed, rather shabbily, as Snow White and Captain America.
On opening day, crowds ignore clouds and intermittent rain, donning plastic ponchos and mouse ears. As the gates open, they beeline to rides they’ve previewed on social media, including TRON and Pirates of the Caribbean. At every turn, clusters of the 10,000 “cast members” Disney hired for the new theme park wave eagerly. Some guests clamor for selfies with Iger, while others wait for their Mickey Mouse hats to be embroidered with the Chinese characters for their names. Young people film it all, then post videos to the Chinese social network WeChat.
Disney plans to eventually expand the Shanghai theme park, says Iger: “We have plenty of room to grow.” In the long term, Chapek adds, success in Shanghai could pave the way for other new theme parks, both in China and elsewhere. “It took one second for the little girls here to don princess dresses and the little boys to pick up Captain America shields. That was immediate. If that can happen in one location in China, then we have ample opportunity to expand.”