Discussion keeps the world's turning.
This is Roundtable. Hello everybody, welcome to Roundtable.
Coming to you live from Beijing.
I'm a young good to have you join us on a day's show.
Forget the classic roller coasters and mascots, Chinese theme parks are now celebrating traditional culture with impressive new twists.
With fireworks, folklore and harmful costumes, what makes these parks stand out in a crowded entertainment market?
And how do these new parks measure up against their international counterparts?
And we're sharing the happiness that lit up our week.
Essentially what's made us happy in Roundtable's happy place.
For today's program, I'm joined by Dingheng and Steve Hatherley in the studio.
First on a day's show, Chinese style theme parks are taking the spotlight, offering a fresh, highest experience that dives deep into the classic Chinese culture and history.
From mingling with mythical characters such as the Monkey King and Nujia, to exploring themes from various ancient dynasties, these parks are rapidly gaining popularity.
According to a recent report by the Institute for Theme Park Studies in China, theme parks in the Chinese mainland saw about 76 million visits last year, with revenues passing 15 billion yuan, about 2.13 billion US dollars, marking a 15% increase from the previous year.
Whether you're visiting the Tang Dynasty theme, streets in Xian, or enjoying immersive dramas in Hunan, these parks are drawing huge crowds.
So what sets domestic theme parks apart from the likes of Mickey Mouse and Minions?
What's new in these Chinese theme parks?
Yeah, so I guess in theory, any architectural space within an urban area that is built around one or multiple themes and offers a kind of immersive experience to its customers can be labeled as a theme park.
I guess an impression from the past here in China is that many of those domestic theme parks here lacked a clear theme, actually, and mostly featured some homogenous amusement rides like roller coasters, fairies, wheels, and marigold rounds, etc.
The redeclarations were often limited to animals, dinosaurs, etc.
etc. So overall, the designs were seen as pretty much outdated.
However, just as everybody was about to settle on this stereotype, in most recent years Chinese theme parks have really emerged as a surprise, as a surprising new force in the market.
Many of them now have their own versions of iconic praids, seeing in international theme parks, for example, the journey to the west themed night tour in Changchun at a local park called Changchun Zoo and Botanical Garden.
It has attracted large crowds and gals and budas from mythology, various demons and characters from this classic Chinese novel journey to the west, to Austro through the park from 5pm or 6pm each day, each evening, and mingling with visitors.
Wow, it's really, really something.
Sounds like fun. I guess that's the difference between an amusement park and a theme park.
Amusement parks just have things like Dingheng said, like, fairies wheels or roller coasters.
But if you have a theme, it makes it all the more enjoyable, I think, for the visitors to the park.
Right, and I suppose that could be the...
Well, I don't necessarily think that Walt Disney invented the concept of theme parks, but he's the one that sort of made it a grand concept that's applicable.
And they are the biggest in the world in terms of revenue made.
Yeah, they make a lot of money.
But it's cool to see that theme parks here, I don't know if you can call it a comeback or not, the parks here in China, I know that we have one not too far away from our workplace here.
I don't know if that's called a theme park or an amusement park, but it's there.
And that one actually Dingheng has visited.
Oh, you went to that one.
Because it's pretty close to my home.
It's really close to here, isn't it?
Yeah, Tamina's walk. And yeah, I think it was an iconic amusement park here in Beijing in the 90s, I guess.
But later was the rise of, say, Juan Loco, the Happy Valley.
And most recently, Universal Studio in Tongzhou.
This amusement park is gaining last traction, I guess, by comparison to its good old days.
Right. Yeah, for the generation of Beijingers, millennials, and maybe younger Gen Z, maybe mostly millennials, I would think this was Bajol, Yolo Yuan.
That is the amusement park that you guys have been referring to nearby.
Was the perfect place for the first date.
Oh, nice. And a perfect place to take the kids on the weekend.
I guess that would have been a popular place when it opened in the 1990s, but it's been a while now, maybe not the cool place to hang out anymore, though.
Probably still very fun.
What types of things, Dingheng, can we expect to see if we're visiting these Chinese parks these days?
Well, I guess we have a pretty much examples like fireworks shows.
They are a must-a-sing nowadays at these theme parks.
But in addition to fireworks, a domestic theme park in Huai An, East and Chinese province of Jiangsu, also features some 2000 Jones performing a so-called return of the Monkey King show.
Have you ever seen a drone show before?
Yeah, I saw it during the Spring Festival back in my hometown, and it was amazing.
And of course, the development of the drone technology is really the vital issue here.
When you think about, say, companies like Dajian, the Shenzhen-based, the Taac Company, very, very internationally competitive.
I saw, they do them in Busan in Korea every weekend at one particular beach, almost every weekend.
And the first weekend I saw the drone show, I didn't know there was a drone show.
All I heard was, in the sky, I didn't know what was going on.
And then all of a sudden, this really beautiful performance of these drones overhead, it was really cool.
If you have a chance to see and you haven't yet, I would definitely try to check one out.
You mentioned doing different types of things too, costumes, different types of costumes, different themes there.
Yeah. Oh, indeed. And we see that Universal Studios, because it's got the Harry Potter franchise, and therefore, Wizarding houses.
This is something that a lot of Chinese theme park goers are really excited about.
And also, when you look at the Chinese theme parks, I wonder if they've drawn inspiration from that, or maybe they came up with their own ideas of offering costume changes for a theme park goers, changing to all kinds of Han-Fu, and offering makeup and the proper hairdo.
And that becomes one thing that really attracts Chinese theme park lovers as well as maybe international goers as well.
Yeah, really cool. And you mentioned, you know, Xi'an in the opening of the show, and the downtown area of Xi'an is almost, it almost feels like a theme park in itself, because when people go there, what they'll do is they'll get, there's so many shops that will do your makeup for you, and they'll put you in the traditional clothing.
So people don't go to a park and do that.
They do that in the downtown area, and then just walk around and take pictures, and then you've got the traditional street there that you mentioned.
So the whole downtown area is kind of like a theme park.
It's a pretty cool experience.
That is very cool. And also, we see that, well, there might be some Chinese style adaptation to what you see tested, tried and true methods to get people excited, for example, like the Halloween theme.
Has its own Chinese version here nowadays that apparently there are the Chinese hopping zombies and ghost bras that can sort of comprise of one parade, or at least become, I don't know, the NPCs, the non-player characters in the theme park to scare people and also get people excited.
Absolutely. And it's kind of like a show to show within the park, right?
And traditional theme parks will have that.
They'll have parades, they'll have the characters walking around in costume, interacting with the audience, interacting with the kids, and it's just a fun experience.
Yes. And there's also the traditional local features that have been picked up by these Chinese theme parks.
Yeah, exactly. I guess we are seeing cases like a unique regional history can be become a really the natural kind of backdrop as we see in this Tongling Yongchuan town, an ancient town in Anhui province in eastern China, as well as Loujian Town, just to name a few examples.
That is another location, based in Suzhou City.
Yeah, and this NPCs that you are young, you have mentions, they are unique in the sense that they are not really employees of any company, right?
In a sense, then they are self-employed and they perform their own duty, like dressed up in a particular kind of costume selling their local either delicacies or any kinds of specialties and really offer a authentic flavor to visitors to really have them help them with this gaining this kind of immersive experience.
Yeah, like they're basically local residents and their day job, or maybe night job, could be dressing up as a local, but maybe 200 years ago, and then they could be the boatmen, they could be the restaurant tier or whatnot.
And then these are local people, so instead of, let's offer a comparison, such as in Disneyland, where you work for Disneyland.
Yeah, so you've got the folks dressed up as the princesses, as Mickey Mouse, but here you get these local people as a source of maybe local employment or extra income, and then they become the NPCs.
My sister applied for Disney World when she was about 20 years old, and she didn't get the job.
Do you know why? They told her she wasn't happy enough.
I still tease her about that today.
To work at Disney World, you have to have this really ultra-super bubbly personality, which apparently she did not have at the time.
Here's my next question.
No pandemic times all around the world.
Nobody was going to theme parks, right?
They suffered greatly economically speaking.
Now coming out of the pandemic, people are starting to travel again, people are starting to have fun again, having some disposable income for things like theme parks.
Are they rebounding? Can we see theme parks doing well again?
Yeah, I actually did some checkup on West regards to some available information, and actually in terms of the overall operational situation, according to data from this institute that I mentioned earlier, it shows that by the end of 2019, well, that's before the pandemic, but still it's important to keep that in mind.
I guess out of the 339 theme parks in the country, 25% were operating at a loss, 22% were breaking even, and 53% were profitable.
And fast zooming onto the post-apendemic era last year with the addition of 10 new theme parks included in this institution's evaluation system, the number of visitors to these Chinese theme parks only increased by some 0.3% compared to 2022.
But one highlight is that the Arabian grew by more than 15%.
So maybe people are spanning the flow of population is recovering slower than expected, but people are, but people who decided to go to these values are spanning more money.
I think we're seeing that around the world too.
I was looking at statistics from the United States.
We talked about Disney.
These are not just from the United States actually.
This is from all around the world.
Disney experiences, that's how they refer to it, is still tops in the world.
And in 2023, they were up about 23% to 142 million admissions.
According to this outlet, this is deadline, the media outlet I'm referring to, Fanta Wild Group, which is a group from China.
They are second in the world.
And the deadline article, which is a foreign media outlet, they were really focusing on how Chinese theme parks were catching up to Disney in terms of their popularity.
I find that to be surprising actually.
There's one thing though.
I remember doing, well, this kind of dates me a little bit, but I remember doing this show maybe seven or eight years ago when Chinese theme parks were just coming about.
And then it was so when you asked Steve earlier on whether this is a regain of popularity or whatnot, I think this is making just big strides because for Chinese theme parks for the last few years, it's basically going from zero nothing to where you've gotten now.
So I think people should be happy about maybe an accomplishment to some extent.
Because at the moment, back then, I remember the discussion and a lot of the criticism was going towards what IP do you have what franchising property do you have to attract people to come to your park and say, this is the theme that we want to come experience.
And I remember back then, one of the pretty prominent players in the industry probably no longer in the mix anymore.
He is theme park was accused of having Mickey Mouse and our man in that theme park and people some of the Chinese theme park goers were complaining about that.
Yes, and then there was this already an awareness of IP protection as such.
So what these Chinese theme parks have really struggled and some of them have succeeded to a extent is that finding and constructing and building your own intellectual property attraction.
Their own theme essentially right so whether it's the ancient town your own cultural identity of that locality or is it I'm drawing inspiration from the rich Chinese history and mythology and also like you monkey king came up quite a few times and the right side of it is yes, this is one of the very popular.
Long lasting characters that people do love but the other side of the coin is aren't you kind of lacking of creativity that this is one property that just comes up repeatedly and we need more exciting and new maybe IPs to draw people in and I think that is the really difficult thing because building your own brand is nothing easy.
Yeah, I very much would occur with that point because if we evaluate the whole market here in China in terms of different players, competitiveness, you will find those international renowned brands like Disney, Universal Studio, they are still really, really far ahead in the Chinese industry here according to this evaluation conducted by the Institute for theme
park studies in China. In terms of the operational performance rankings, Shanghai Disney and Beijing Universal Studio are the first and second on the list far ahead of other players.
The third place is held by a local ocean park in Shanghai, but there is a huge gap between this ocean parking in Shanghai and Shanghai Disney and Beijing Universal Studio.
So, yeah, IP franchise building a branding long journey to cover one of the advantages though I would think that local parks have is affordability versus the international parks.
Going to Universal, going to Disney, that's not a cheap day and in the United States it's not a cheap day either.
I watched a video just before the show today about a man who was comparing the price of going to different theme parks in the United States and the example I focused on was when he went to Disney.
He stayed overnight in a Disney hotel on the resort so you have to include that in the price.
But that plus food plus transportation to get there plus all the money that you spend in the park, you know, buying little things here and there.
You don't really mean to spend but you just kind of do $800 for the day.
Now again, that included a $280 hotel room which was on the resort but even minusing that you're looking at $500 to $600 total.
If you're going with the family and that's off in the case, right?
The couple of kids or something like that.
So it's really, really, really expensive to go.
Are they more affordable here in China?
I would think so, right?
Definitely they are more affordable.
I think in terms of the pricing, this journey to the west, the theme tonight or located in Changchuan, that's I mentioned earlier, a ticket for an adult is only priced at some way around 30 yuan, namely about four US dollars and with a student ID, even if you are talking about say a university student, you can even get a 50% discount.
By comparison, the Shanghai Disney and Beijing Universal Studio have an average ticket price of more than 500 yuan, 69 US dollars.
It's just so expensive, right?
And that's if you go by yourself and that's usually not the case, right?
You're at least going with a friend and oftentimes it's a family trip.
So does that in a way also shows that, you know, for it to be profitable for this thing to become a truly viable business, then you need to construct and come up with very desirable themes or these characters or this kingdom, another world for people to escape to.
And then that part is the actually the very expensive bit for any company to come up with something strong enough like that.
And that's where what the real money maker is.
It's true, but it's not easy to compare local parks in China or local parks in Canada or local parks in the United States to Universal or to Disney.
They have a long history of making moves and merchandising, you know, their characters and the Universal's built from films.
So they have a lot that they can use.
So competing with those is perhaps not even fair to make that argument.
Still, I would emphasize IP construction and building because when you have successful operation of franchise and IP, they will allow these theme parks to build a more comprehensive ecosystem, an eco commercial system.
That's what includes say, cultural and a creative products, attractions, hotels, dining, etc, etc.
Because really, I think in the case of the Beijing Universal Studio ticket prices or ticket sales accounts for only 30% of this complexes total revenue.
And so there were many income coming from relevant industries driven by the entertainment facilities also in the case of the Shanghai Disneyland.
I think there is a similar picture in contrast about 80% of those domestically themed theme parks.
And so if they can do better on their franchise and IP, that's what it means much more potential revenues.
Yeah, that's a great point.
And actually, there are some good examples to support that that some of these Chinese IP properties have actually done pretty well.
The Boone Bears, okay, no clap then basically.
We are of the previous generation.
Apparently kids love these bears.
And there's a Boone Bear park.
And apparently, yeah, that's where parents would take their overly eager kids to on weekends.
And then when the kids go, then they want a Boone Bear t-shirt and they want a Boone Bear cup and they want to drink some Boone Bear soda or whatever.
So much more money to be made there other than the ticket sales.
Yeah, so it's exciting to see that some of these while it started off as an animation, but it's sort of followed the path of Universal Studios as well as Disney with this kind of business practice of making an animation into a whole bunch of merchandise.
And then build a park around it.
Yeah, exactly. But you can still have fun.
I mean, just from a customer's point of view, you can still have fun even if you don't have all that merchandise, even if you don't have the characters walking around the park.
We went to Niagara Falls and Niagara Falls on the Canada side.
And by the way, if you are planning a trip to Niagara Falls, there's the American side and the Canadian side.
Please go to the Canadian side.
And I don't say that because I'm Canadian.
There's a park. There's like a fun little amusement park area on the Canadian side.
On the American side, it's nothing over there.
It really sounds like I'm bashing the United States, but it's honestly the truth.
It's just where people live over there.
Anyway, so on that on that day, we had the there's no roller coaster, but they had the haunted house that we went to.
We went to different little rides that you could do.
It wasn't a theme park. And there's no merchandise or anything like that.
There's no characters walking around.
You can still have a great.
That's great. Also just a quick question, guys.
How come adults are the main consumers of theme parks and children don't have much purchasing power, do they?
And growing up as because now we have become the adulthood and growing up, we watch movies like Harry Potter, S.H.R.S.S.S.R.S.S.O.
And buying stuff. Everybody loves nostalgia.
Yeah, maybe there's that.
And maybe in essence, we want to remind us of the simple pleasure of letting go and having fun and making these theme parks a cherished escape from the ordinary, especially when you've got these themes, these movies or animation that you grew up watching.
And then getting a feel of what it's like in that world just sounds great.
And these new, culturally rich theme parks in China are not just attractions.
They're a celebration of our heritage offering an immersive experience that sets them apart from the global theme park landscape.
But as we've discussed, there is still catching up that we can play and can do.
