Ailing Hong Kong Disneyland thrown magic lifeline

HONG KONG (Reuters Life!) - Hong Kong Disneyland, which has struggled since opening in 2005, was all smiles on Wednesday after the government made it the sole beneficiary of an easy-visa scheme that could bring millions of tourists from mainland China.

The new initiative, which immediately drew accusations of administrative interference, will bring people from the neighboring city of Shenzhen who are not normally qualified to visit Hong Kong straight to the theme park and straight back again, Hong Kong media reported.

"Under the pilot scheme, migrants living and working in Shenzhen will be able to join group tours to Disneyland without having to return to their home provinces to obtain travel permits," the South China Morning Post said.

Most of Shenzhen's 16 million residents are migrants.

Disney's second Magic Kingdom in Asia after Tokyo has missed attendance targets, prompting the Hong Kong government, a major stakeholder in the park, to brand its performance "unsatisfactory".

The Hong Kong government owns 57 percent of the park and Walt Disney Co. owns the rest.

"We see a lot of up side," said B.C. Lo, vice president for public affairs at Hong Kong Disneyland.

The plan would boost attendance at first by about two to three tours a day, each including 40 to 100 people, he said. That number was not huge, but Disneyland saw the scheme as a foot in the door to other parts of Guangdong province, a magnet for laborers from other areas in China.

"The goal is to expand," Lo said.

The park does not release daily attendance figures, but Lo said Hong Kong Disneyland could accommodate a maximum of 34,000 people at any given time.

Charles Li Kui-wai, associate professor of economics and finance at City University, said there were many ways for Disneyland to promote itself to mainland visitors.

"This interference by the government is not good," he was quoted in the Post as saying.

(Reporting by Nick Macfie and John Ruwitch, editing by Miral Fahmy)