Breaking ground in 2011, the first Disneyland in Mainland China, located in Shanghai’s Pudong district, started to sell tickets on Monday to welcome its first guests in June. And its official flagship store on Alibaba’s travel platform Alitrip sold more than 20,000 tickets within half an hour, reported China Business News.
The Shanghai Disney Resort will host a multi-day, grand opening celebration from June 16 to 30. Tickets for the first day have been extremely popular among Chinese tourists, selling out in less than six minutes on Alitrip, one of the resort’s official ticket channels.
Actually, the company gave out the opening day tickets in batches on different platforms, trying to control the number of visitors on that day and avoid scalpers. According to a report from CBN, a new batch of tickets for June 16 were released for sale at 3am on Ctrip, one of the company’s 60-plus ticket-selling partners.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Alitrip has sold more than 39,000 tickets, and the first three days are temporarily sold out.
But some Chinese consumers who have made orders on Alitrip have been complaining on Weibo that they aren’t guaranteed a ticket, even after they’ve paid online. According to the text message Alitrip sent to those users, the platform will issue the ticket within no more than seven days after the order is made, and for those who don’t successfully receive their tickets, a refund will be transferred to their accounts automatically.
Shanghai Disneyland is a theme park with six themed areas, two hotels, a shopping and dining district and a recreational area. A one-day ticket for adults is priced at RMB 499, and at most five tickets can be bought in one order with a single ID.
Before Shanghai Disneyland was built, mainland tourists had to take their children to Hong Kong or Japan, the two closest Disneyland theme parks. Chinese news site iFeng.com said Shanghai Disneyland is expecting 16 million visitors this year.
(Top photo is a screenshot of the homepage of Shanghaidisneyresort.com)
