2:54am ET
As The Walt Disney Company's smallest park, Hong Kong Disneyland is always looking for ways to reinvent itself and continue to turn profit. After losing money and recording a low guest attendance in 2016, Disney is deciding to launch a massive 6-year, $1.4B expansion.
The near-complete overhaul of the park will feature Disney's first ever Frozen-themed land, a performance center based on Moana, various Marvel-based rides, a new nighttime show with fireworks and fountains and completely redone castle.
Arrendelle will be the first expansion of it's kind, catered to the box office-shattering animated feature Frozen. The snow-dusted land will feature two rides (one being Oaken's Dancing Sleighs), shops, restaurants and a place to meet the movie's beloved characters. Scenery will include an ice mountain (thanks Elsa) and a lake, in stunning, intricately well-themed Disney fashion.
"Moana's Village Festival" will be a new entertainment venue for future stage shows and performances.
A complete castle overhaul will be finalized in 2019, turning the 77-foot Sleeping Beauty Castle into a towering, glimmering spectacle. Fountains around the castle will add to the ambiance of new nighttime fireworks and projections shows. Concept art shows the old castle will remain intact, and crews will build on top of it.
Following 2017's plans to add more Marvel to Disney Parks (Iron Man Experience), Hong Kong is planning to devote a whole area of the park to Marvel. Future rides will be focused around The Avengers franchise and concept art also hints at an Ant-Man 3D attraction. The Marvel attractions will be the final projects on Hong Kong Disneyland's colossal expansion.
The Hong Kong Government owns the majority of park's stakes (53%), in the current proposal, they are slotted to fund $650M of the project-- while Disney picks up the remaining tab at $750M.
In a conference call, Disney's CEO Robert A. Iger claimed:
“There seems to be an interesting growth in pride locally in Hong Kong in that park, I guess their competitive spirits have somehow or another been stimulated.”
Construction will begin in 2018 and conclude in 2023, with new offerings being completed virtually every year during that period.
Here's a timeline:
2017 - Iron Man
2018 - Marvel (Antman)
2018 - Moana's Village Festival
2019 - Castle & Hub
2020-Arendelle
2023-Marvel (Avengers) replace the Autopia
