| OCEAN PARK HONG KONG (Wikipedia) |
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Ocean Park Hong KongFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The park, ranked seven in 'The World’s Most Popular Amusement Parks’ by Forbes in June 2006[1], had 4.38 million visitors in the fiscal year 2005/2006[2]. It covers an area of 870,000 square metres[3]. The different parts of the park are connected by a gondola lift system (or cable car system), as well as the world's second longest outdoor escalator. The theme park currently has over 14 rides and other attractions such as aquariums[3]. Besides housing two roller coasters, Ocean Park also features a Giant panda exhibit, a jelly fish and shark aquarium, as well as a four-story aquarium displaying more than 2000 fishes. The official mascot of Ocean Park is "Whiskers"—a waving sealion. Besides being an amusement park, Ocean Park Hong Kong also operates observatories, well developed laboratories, an education department and a Whales And Dolphins Fund. Ocean Park Hong Kong was the first institution in the world to have success in artificial insemination of bottle nose dolphins, and developed numerous new breeds of goldfish. In September 2007, Ocean Park increased its prices by 10% for adults and 12% for children so they could profit more from their visitors. HistoryThe park was built with donations from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club. now Hong Kong Jockey Club) and opened on 10 January 1977. The park is operated by Ocean Park Corporation, which is a statutory board. It offers affordable marine animal education and entertainment and is a private organization for commercial purposes. In the early operation of the park,the rapists were swarming the area. the main sources of income for the park were the ticket revenues and the fundings from the Jockey Club. Since the ticket price was low, most of the time Ocean Park was operating under deficit. On 1 July 1987, the government established a 200 million trust from the fundings of Jockey Club, under the Ocean Park Corporation Ordinance (Hong Kong Law Cap. 388). This separated Ocean Park from Jockey Club and became a non-profit organisation; it needs to be responsible for its own income and was allowed to use commercial means to operate the park. It gradually raised its ticket price and the deficit turned into profit. In 1992, 3 million visitors visited the park. Since 1998, the East Asian financial crisis, aging attractions, and the passing away of the killer whale; the park recorded a deficit for a couple years. Although it was allowed to host 2 pandas in 1999 (named An An and Jia Jia), the visitor count did not go up and Ocean Park was forced to close its water attractions and the "Old Village" attraction and switched to bring in more rides in an attempt to capture the youth demand. Together with the opening up of mainland visitors under the Individual Visit Scheme, Ocean Park recorded an increase to 4 million visitors in the fiscal year 2004-2005, the highest since the park opened. In March 2005, Ocean Park revealed its redevelopment plan.(Details are in the section below.) On 23 November 2006, Ocean Park held a groundbreaking ceremony for its redevelopment. The public believes that the redevelopment is a measure to counter another major theme park Hong Kong Disneyland. 2 more pandas named Le Le and Ying Ying were added to the Ocean Park on May 1, 2007. After quarantine, they made their first public appearance in Ocean Park on July 1, 2007. AttractionsHeadlands Rides (山上機動城)
Adventure Land (急流天地)
Marine Land (海洋天地)
Lowland Gardens (綠野花園)
Kids' World (兒童王國)
Bird Paradise (雀鳥天堂)
Further developmentOcean Park announced a redevelopment master plan to redevelop the park into the world's best marine-based theme park, doubling the amount of attractions and firmly establishing itself as a world-class, must-see destination that will further strengthen Hong Kong as a premier tourist destination. In the next few years HK$ 5.55 billion will be spent on refurbishing Ocean Park with new rides being installed so that it can compete with Disneyland. The new Ocean Park's main two areas shall be renamed as The Waterfront (formerly the Lowland) and The Summit (formerly the Headland). The park will be expanded to almost twice its current size and new attractions will be added including a funicular train for transport from The Waterfront to The Summit, 1 new live animal show and an area featuring polar animals. Ocean Park also announced that there will also be an MTR station on the South Island Line that will link the current subway system with Ocean Park and the south of Hong Kong Island. This project will therefore attract more visitors. The first attraction to be opened is the Sky Fair with a large balloon for tourists to fly in. Ocean Park then will open the Animal Encounter where wolves, Arctic foxes and all sorts of amphibians will be displayed. Criticism
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ocean Park Hong Kong.") |
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