Walt Disney Co. might be thinking about expanding Shanghai Disney Resort even though it won’t be open until late 2015 in order to meet rising demand in the world’s most populated country, Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo said.
Shanghai Disney Resort will be almost 1,000 acres in size when it opens, putting it third behind Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland Paris among the company’s resorts, Rasulo said.
“We’re opening the park for a pretty healthy number of attendees but more importantly both we and our partners and the Shanghai government are eager and willing to expand rapidly after that,” Rasulo said.
Attendance could ultimately top the company’s second-most popular property, Tokyo Disney Resort, which has 28 million annual visitors, Rasulo said, reiterating remarks he made in September. Disney, the world’s largest theme park operator, is building a 29 billion-yuan ($4.78 billion) resort in Shanghai that will have two hotels and an outdoor recreational area.
The Disney company owns 43 percent of the park with the state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group Co.
The resort is part of a larger focus by Disney on China, where entertainment spending by consumers has lagged the growth of the middle class, Rasulo said. The new park is within a three-hour drive of 330 million people, many of them young families, he said.
Disney announced its first corporate sponsor of the new park. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. will feature its brand in the Garden of the Twelve Friends, part of an 11-acre compound at the center of the park where each animal of the Chinese Zodiac will be represented by a Disney or Pixar character.
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