Shanghai’s Magic Kingdom

It’s been a bumpy two-year ride for Hong Kong Disneyland. Visitors are shunning the $37-$45 admission tickets and pouring through the turnstiles at Ocean Park, which is enjoying the highest attendance in its 30-year history. And it’s about to get worse for HK Disneyland, where nearly half of all visitors come from the mainland. There’s been talk of building a Disneyland in Shanghai’s Pudong district for years, but negotiations stalled last year when a scandal broke over the city’s pension fund. But yesterday, the China Business Post reported that the talks are on again, and that the location is likely to be switched to Shanghai’s Chongming Island, with 2010 as the target completion date–the year Shanghai hosts the World Expo. China’s third largest island (after Taiwan and Hainan), Chongming is a largely undeveloped swath of land an hour from Shanghai by ferry. A bridge and tunnel are expected to be finished in 2009. (See map here.) Chongming is also the future home of Dongtan eco-city, a huge sustainable community powered by renewable energy and traversed by hydrogen-fueled cars. So will Shanghai Disneyland go green too? Guess they’ll leave shark fin soup off the menu this time.