Chinese Disneyland-style theme park goes global

BEIJING -- A Chinese Disneyland-style amusement park, the Fantawild Theme Park, will be completed and open for business in Esfahan, Iran, by the end of this year.

The park's owner, Shenzhen-based Fantawild Holdings, has also signed export agreements with South Africa and Ukraine. Projects are being prepared in both countries, Liu Daoqiang, vice president of Fantawild Holdings, said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

According to Liu, like Disneyland, the Fantawild site will export the whole package of brands, technology, products and management.

The Fantawild Adventure Theme Park, with a large variety of amusement facilities featuring high-end technology such as 4-D animation, was firstly built across an area of 1.25 million square meters in Wuhu, central Anhui province.

In 2011, the six Fantawild theme parks in operation in China, raked in a revenue of 1.26 billion yuan (199 million U.S. dollars).

The Wuhu park has registered 11 million visits since opening in April, 2008. Liu said on Thursday that Fantawild's blueprint is to have 10 to 13 theme parks across China, with annual ticket sales of three billion yuan by the end of 2015.

The park is different from many others in the country in that its high-tech rides and attractions were completely designed and built in China.

Fantawild Holdings, like Disney, is primarily an animation producer, with an animation output of 18,512 minutes last year, the longest in China. "These cartoons were both aired at home and exported to other countries, and the cartoon development capacity also makes innovation in our amusement facilities possible," Liu said.