Ambitious Wanda City wants to rival Disney

CHINA'S WANDA GROUP has opened a 20-billion-yuan ($3 billion) theme park in Nanchang, capital of East China's Jiangxi province, less than a month before the Shanghai Disney Resort opens. Eastday.com commented on Tuesday:

The Nanchang-based Wanda Cultural Tourism City, also called Wanda City, is believed to be a rival to the Shanghai Disney Resort, which is scheduled to open next month.

Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda Group, said Wanda City is aimed at competing with the Disney Resort to some extent and it is part of his company's cultural, tourism and entertainment focus.

Such competition is essentially market-oriented and thus should not be over-interpreted.

The established appeal of the Disney brand is evident in the number of people that visited Shanghai Disney Resort during its soft opening - more than 960,000 people in just 23 days.

While Wanda has been expanding and diversifying its activities, leisure tourism is already one of its core activities. It has already opened many theme parks with different focuses in the country.

In all likelihood, that Wanda City seeks to challenge Disney Resort's popularity in the country is more about promoting its own cultural products.

Consumers should be assured and even delighted about such market competition even though Wanda City may still have a long way to go to be on a par with Disney on theme development and the services it offers in its parks.