DanMargarita.com

Recent news reports indicate that the entertainment conglomerate is considering building yet another theme park, this time in Shanghai China. Reportedly, this has not made the people who run the Disney park in Hong Kong very happy.

Shanghai went from a city to a verb in the nineteenth century when men would find themselves drugged and forcibly pressed into service as sailors on ships heading to the Orient, which when you think of it, would make quite a theme ride. What a family experience as Mom, Dad and the kids wake up in irons below deck sporting tattoos, being whipped by a foul smelling man named Captain Ned!

The two cities are not that close together so I shouldn't think that attracting customers to each venue should be a problem, particularly in a country whose population is over one billion. In such an overpopulated country, the Disney theme song "It's a small world after all" certainly must ring true.

To what degree the Chinese would tailor their park to their society I can't imagine.

Will rides be interspersed with the forced labor exhibit? They could save on labor costs by getting prisoners to work the park. How about the one family, one child exhibit? One show they couldn't do without would be the "Hall of Dictators."

I wonder if the Hong Kong Cities of the World exhibit features Hong Kong as one of it's cities. That would really smack of authenticity.

Has there been a family that's gone through Florida's Disney World and not commented on Epcot looking like a giant golf ball? Since golf is probably not the leisure pastime it is here, perhaps the Chinese version of Epcot would look like a giant ping-pong ball.

One of the lowest points in Chinese history was Mao's failed "Great Leap Forward" in which his attempt to industrialize the nation led to mass starvation, and according to some accounts, cannibalism. Well, with over a billion people, food shortages should not be a problem.

Of course, Disney parks are famous for their "You must be this tall to ride" signs, which probably never was a problem for 7' 5" Yao Ming, the basketball star who has been made available for next year's NBA draft.

There's no telling how familiar the Chinese are with the Disney culture. It may perplex Chinese patrons to see giant rodents wandering around, waving and shaking hands. Whether or not Donald Duck may be any more intelligible to them, one can only guess.

I guess the main problem with visiting a Chinese Disneyland is that an hour later, you'll want to go back for more.

One had better be careful in taking on the Disney machinery. They don't let a dollar get away, a prime example being several years ago when they sued a grammar school who had painted Disney characters on the side of their building without Disney's permission. The folks at Hannah-Barbera played the good guys and sent some of their artists to paint their characters on the school's walls. This incident only reinforced the notion that Disney is a massive corporation that can ruthless.

Come to think of it, maybe they'd fit right in with China.