Word: themes
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...until now, Disney's foray into China has been anything but magical. Its Hong Kong theme park, opened in 2005, has had a bumpy ride due to early missteps and competition - in its first year, attendance fell 400,000 short of an initial 5.6 million target. The following year, the number of visitors dropped to 4 million. To add insult to injury, the company in 2007 discovered an amusement park near Beijing that was filled with knockoff Disney characters...
...towel in a market with 1.3 billion potential customers. After more than a decade of negotiations, Disney has received clearance to build its second Disneyland in China, this one in Shanghai. The company announced on Tuesday that China's top planning agency had approved plans to build the new theme park, which will join the existing parks in Anaheim, Calif.; Orlando, Fla., Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong. (See a brief history of Disney teen stars...
...Although theme parks made up less than a third of Disney's total revenue of $38 billion last year, Shanghai Disneyland still figures to be a key addition to the business because it will boost the company's visibility in one of the world's fastest-growing markets. Due to government rules aimed at protecting the public from what are perceived to be unwelcome foreign cultural influences, awareness of the Disney brand in China lags that of the rest of the world. Unlike in the U.S., where Disney operates a 24-hour TV channel and radio station, the company...
...Critics also believe the idea is motivated by political opportunism. With regional elections looming next March, leftist politicians and pundits say the government is using the national-identity theme to appeal to the right-wing Le Pen voters who flocked to Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign once he began promising to get tough on crime and immigration. Le Pen's daughter Marine, the FN vice president, has voiced a similar accusation. "This country is suffering a major crisis of identity that is driving it into chaos," she told the Europe 1 radio station on Oct. 28. "We've been denied...
...American jazz musician who befriends Gardner, has a completely different syntax that instantly identifies him as a member of the L.A. music scene: “If it’s pop they want, it’s pop I play. R&B? Fine. Car commercials, the walk-on theme for a talk show, I’ll do it. I’m a jazz player only when I’m inside my cubicle.” Ishiguro’s on-the-spot prose makes for a delicious reading experience, but it functions better as a placeholder...