SHANGHAI: Dipping golden shovels into a trench of sand, Walt Disney Co. executives and their Shanghai partners broke ground Friday for a long-sought theme park that will feature the world's biggest "Magic Kingdom" castle, and ambitions to match. The 24.5 billion yuan ($3.7 billion) park in Shanghai's southeastern suburbs is meant to serve as a brand-building cornerstone, luring legions of newly affluent Chinese with world-class facilities that will be "authentically Disney, but distinctly Chinese," said Disney CEO Bob Iger. "Today is the culmination of many years of hard work, dedication and partnership," Iger said. "This is a defining moment in our company's history." After over a decade of haggling, Shanghai's communist leaders seemed equally enthusiastic about the project, which will serve as an anchor for an "international tourism resort zone" with hotels and other large-scale entertainment venues. It will be Disney's fourth theme park outside the US, after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong. "Disney is a classic urban entertainment brand," said the city's mayor, Han Zheng. "This project will help improve Shanghai's profile as a world famous tourism destination." The project is a new showcase for this city of 22 million, whose aspirations as a tourism destination were fortified by the 2010 World Expo, which drew a record 72 million visitors during its six-month run, almost all of them Chinese tourists. Both sides are presumably hoping the park will prove more successful than Hong Kong Disneyland, which has struggled to remain profitable though it reports increasing popularity with visitors from the mainland, who account for more than 40 percent of total attendance.
