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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (5700)	2/9/2006 6:28:00 PM
From: RealMuLan	Respond to of 6370

At Hong Kong Disneyland, the Year of the Dog Starts With a Growl By KEITH BRADSHER Published: February 4, 2006 HONG KONG, Feb. 3 — Thousands of people lined up to visit Mickey Mouse in Hong Kong this week. But when they could not get in, they got grumpy. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Mike Clarke/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Crowds of angry Chinese, brandishing tickets after they were turned away at the entrance to Disneyland in Hong Kong, had shouting matches with the police and security guards. Crowds of angry Chinese, brandishing tickets after they were turned away at the Disneyland entrance, had shouting matches with the police and security guards. Some people clambered over the heavy green steel gates after guards closed them. In one scene played repeatedly on local television, one unhappy child had to be passed by the crowd over the spikes of the gates to his parents inside. The culprit was a discount-ticket promotion gone awry. Disneyland had failed to anticipate the rush of vacationers from mainland China during the Chinese New Year. As the numbers of people trying to enter the park swelled, officials closed its gates and stopped admitting people who had bought tickets in advance. Even the Hong Kong government issued a statement late Thursday calling on Disneyland to improve its ticketing and entry procedures. The park has issued an apology to disappointed ticket holders. By Friday morning, the crowds had subsided, as most Hong Kong residents stayed away from the park and the flow of visitors became more orderly. But the lines in the park were still long, even by Disney standards, and the park announced that it would not sell more tickets at the gate for the day, and even Internet sales were temporarily suspended. The problems began last month when Disney introduced a discounted one-day ticket plan that allowed the holder to use the ticket any time within the next six months except on designated "special days" when the park anticipated big crowds. In Hong Kong, a four-day public holiday for Chinese New Year began last Saturday and ended Tuesday. The park designated those dates as special days. But in China, the holiday for Chinese New Year lasts a full week, so the mainlanders were able to use their discounted Disney tickets on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Chinese tour agencies had bought large batches of discounted tickets and brought in busloads of mainlanders to Hong Kong this week. The park said it would review its policies on what days to label as special. Bill Ernest, the executive vice president of the park, acknowledged that "the numbers were larger than we anticipated." The park, which has a capacity of about 30,000 people, has begun offering refunds to people turned away, but it is not reimbursing hotel and travel costs. Leslie Goodman, a Disney spokeswoman, said that Disney sold undated tickets in the United States as well, and that Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., had turned away visitors on several occasions around Christmas to prevent overcrowding, but that disappointed customers had been directed to nearby parks. nytimes.com