Walt Disney Co. has announced the opening date for their new Shanghai Disney Resort.
Disney said that they will be opening the new attraction to the public on June 16. This will be the company's largest foreign investment amounting to $5.5 billion resort.
This resort, located on mainland China, features the company's tallest castle with two hotels and a pirates-themed land. It is situated in an area with 963 acres; the size equal to three Hong Kong Disneyland.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television last month, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger said the slowdown in the host's Chinese economy does not necessarily mean bad for the company and the project. "We're pretty bullish on China," he stated. "We basically believe that the Chinese customer is nevertheless spending. And the Chinese consumer represents, as far as we're concerned, a good marketplace for our organization."
China has been facing a "new normal" with their slow but steady economy.
The building of the Shanghai Disney resort began in 2011. Disney owns 43 % of the resort, while the rest is held by a consortium of Chinese state-owned firms. Its opening was orogianlly set to April 2014; however, further expansions, amounting to $800 million for more attractions, has pushed the opening to a later date.
"The structures that we build in a theme park are particularly complicated," he stated. "They're not just buildings but they're shows and they're rides. And there are not that several examples of the Chinese construction industry constructing points that are as a complex as what we're constructing."
Although the resort will be operating by the middle of the year, the company is not expecting that it would contribute to Disney's earnings for the year, according to Macquarie Capital analyst Tim Nollen. However, by 2018, it is forecasted that the resort could already generate up to $165 million in earnings just before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
