Out of the Loop: Disney finally breaks ground on The Shanghai Disney Resort
Column by Andy Guinigundo
Pudong New District, Shanghai, China – Well it finally happened. After literally years of on-again, off-again agreements between Disney and various Shanghai China entities, an official groundbreaking for a new Disney park took place on April 8, 2011. This symbolic turning of a few shovels full of dirt marked the end of all the negotiations that had more ups and downs than Space Mountain, Expedition Everest and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster combined!
The Shanghai Disney Resort will be located on mainland China in the Pudong New District, Here. The Shanghai Disney Resort will be home to Shanghai Disneyland, a Magic Kingdom-style park.
The entire resort will cover 963 acres. In comparison, Walt Disney World Resort in Florida covers 30,000 acres while Disneyland Resort in California occupies 500 acres.
Shanghai Disneyland, the actual park area, will be cover 225 acres while the Magic Kingdom in Orlando is 107 acres. There will be two on-site hotels, one value and one deluxe, with a total of 1,220 rooms. The shopping, dining and entertainment area will be approximately 300,000 square feet of retail space. This is roughly the size of the Downtown Disney in California.
The resort is a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (43 percent) and The Shanghai Shendi Group Co, Ltd (57 percent) and will represent a $4.4 billion investment. Construction is expected to take five years.
Click Here to visit the official English language Shanghai Disney Resort website.
• Andy Guinigundo is the author of the Out of The Loop column in “Orlando Attractions Magazine”. Out of the Loop keeps you up-to-date with attraction news outside of Central Florida. Andy lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife and three daughters. He grew up frequenting theme parks around Ohio and making trips to Orlando with his family. While for most of the year, he’s out of the Orlando loop, he tries to visit Florida at least once a year.
