Disneyland is supposed to be “The Happiest Place on Earth,” but Liang Ning isn’t too happy. The engineer brought his family to Disney’s new theme park in Hong Kong from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou one Saturday in April with high hopes, but by day’s end, he was less than spellbound. “I wanted to forget the world and feel like I was in a fairytale,” he says. Instead, he complains, “it’s just not big enough” and “not very different from the amusement parks we have” in China. His seven-year-old daughter Yaqin disagrees, calling the park “fantastic,” but her father grumbles: “If she wants to come again, “I’ll send her with somebody else.”
Hong Kong’s Magic Kingdom has so far been a little short on magic. The $1.8 billion theme park, which opened last September, was touted by Disney executives as its biggest, boldest effort to build its brand in China, a potentially vast new market for its toys, dvds and movies. The Hong Kong government
