Shanghai Disney: The rudest place on earth?
According to Disney, their theme parks are “where dreams come true,” but according to recent video footage of one man’s visit to the new Shanghai Disneyland, a lot of nightmare manners also surface.
In the new YouTube clip, an American-Chinese man called Disney Dwayne takes a tour of the new theme park and points out all of the aspects that he was shocked by during his two-day visit.
They included a woman helping a young boy to urinate in a public place, an electrical socket ripped from a wall and children freely playing in an off-limits display area.
Dwayne is a huge Disney fan who has already visited all of the other theme parks run by the corporation, but this year he decided to make the trip to the Shanghai version with his friend Adrian and filmed the event for his YouTube channel.
While the vlogger enjoyed much of the experience, he was horrified to discover what he perceived to be some of the most impolite aspects of the crowds in China.
His negative experiences started at the entrance to the park, when several people pushed in front of him to get a ticket.
He said: “One thing you’ve got to get used to is getting pushed and shoved around here in Shanghai, for example, there was a family of 17 that had issues at the gateway and I had to wait there.
“[Even though] I was next in line they just started pushing past me, then there were people who pretended to be part of that family and they just cut into my queue, it was horrible.”
Dwayne’s problems in queues continued as he and Adrian waited for one of the rides, complaining about the lack of personal space they were given, with the camera panning down to the floor to show close people get in the line, with a pair of feet apparently trying to squeeze in between the two men in the queue.
Later, in the audience for one of the children’s show, Dwayne pans a camera around the front row of the audience to reveal that several adults are standing with umbrellas, blocking the view for everyone behind.
He said: “It’s not hot and it’s not raining, so why are people using umbrellas to block the view.”
Then his focus switches to the areas of the park that have been vandalised by the tourists, including a plug socket that has been ripped out of a wall, before he films several children and even an adult trespassing onto a display area to “trash” the ornaments.
The final nail in the coffin though, is video footage of a mother holding her son against some railings in a busy public area to urinate in an ornamental garden instead of taking him to the toilet.
This isn’t the first time that behaviour at Disneyland Shangai has hit the headlines.
In May, six weeks before the theme park even opened, badly-behaved tourists had already left their mark after trampling plants, picking flowers, carving graffiti into freshly-painted lamp posts and leaving bags of rubbish on the grounds.
One woman was photographed allowing a child to urinate in a flower bed in full view of other visitors, who travelled to the park just to hang out around its locked gates and peer into buildings that weren’t open yet.
Ahead of the official launch, the government even created an etiquette guide for any tourists planning to visit.
From reminding visitors to put litter in bins to asking them not to deface public facilities, the guide featured six pointers on how guests can maintain decorum at the US$5.5 billion ($7.7 billion) park.
The guide was created by the city’s civilization office and the tourism bureau, in light of badly-behaved tourists already causing damage to the Disney park’s surrounding areas before the opening.