Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Hu Chen
Happy Valley Beijing. Image source: Figureworm Creative
In the latest raiders on social media such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, the Beijing Happy Valley, which was complained by tourists that "often has to queue up", has been linked to "no queue" and "few people".
The "hero" behind it, Universal Studios Beijing, will officially open for business during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday (September 20). This means that For the first time, Beijing Happy Valley will meet the challenge in the tourism season under the blessing of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day.
Lin Huanjie, president of the China Theme Park Research Institute, told Times Finance on September 17 that Beijing Happy Valley will be downgraded from a national theme park to a regional theme park after the opening of Universal Studios.
Referring to the situation of Shanghai Disneyland and Shanghai Happy Valley in the past 5 years, Beijing Happy Valley has been greatly influenced by Universal Studios in terms of tourist growth. Passenger flow will decline significantly in the short term (3 months to half a year); in the long run, the first year is expected to decline by 40% to 50% year-on-year, and the decline on weekdays is more obvious than that of holidays. ”
<h5>Achieve "roller coaster freedom" at Happy Valley</h5>
At 11:30 a.m. on September 16, Jimmy wrote on the Little Red Book: "Brushing Happy Valley is really cool and crooked, not to mention queuing, not to mention the queue, not many people, the hottest roller coaster does not have to queue."
Yan Rong, who came to Happy Valley the day before (September 15), said in the comment area above that all projects can be lined up in one round, and the roller coaster can be directly brushed twice. Some netizens said that she brushed all the projects of Beijing Happy Valley last week, and the roller coaster also played twice.
Just half an hour's drive from Beijing's Happy Valley, Universal Studios Beijing, which is about to open to the public, is crowded. Also experience the "sense of weightlessness" project, which can be a 3-hour wait at Universal Studios. According to data from the third-party software Time Machine, Universal Studios' "Decepticon Roller Coaster" has an average waiting time of 53 minutes in the most recent week, and the longest waiting time is 180 minutes.
If you compare the ticket prices, then it reflects the "cruelty" of Universal Studios to tourists. According to the latest ticketing policy, the Beijing Happy Valley Play Card (annual pass) is 499 yuan, which is common for fake festivals, while the single-day ticket price of Universal Studios Beijing starts at 418 yuan, and the earliest entry date that can be bought at the current starting fare has been scheduled two months later (November 22).
"Buying a ticket to Universal Studios off-season is almost enough for me to play in Happy Valley for a year." Some players joked that it was still a foreign monk who was good at chanting. At present, Universal Studios' tickets for the Mid-Autumn Festival and three days before the National Day holiday have been sold out, and high-priced tickets such as U-Speed Pass (Fast Track Ticket) and VIP have also been difficult to find.
Xiaoni, a xiaohongshu user, found that Beijing Happy Valley has recently begun to play "willfully" on work days. "I went to Happy Valley this Tuesday night, and all the events were not queued, or just waited for one round; I also went in late August evening, although it was a working day, but there were still many people, and the odyssey (Happy Valley water project) had to queue for 100 minutes." She told Times Finance.
"This year's double festival has been affected by the epidemic, and the tourism market is under pressure. As far as theme parks are concerned, even under the influence of the current epidemic prevention and control situation and the opening of Universal Studios, the number of theme park visitors in 2021 will still be 40% less than in 2019 (normal years). Lin Huanjie said.
Nevertheless, in the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Beijing Happy Valley is still a popular playground. According to the "2021 Mid-Autumn Festival National Day Holiday Travel Forecast Report" jointly released by Baidu, Ctrip and Mafengwo, amusement parks are popular choices for holiday parent-child travel, couples' tours, friends' tours and family tours. Among them, Universal Beijing Resort (including Universal Studios) and Beijing Happy Valley are among the hot lists.
Image source: 2021 Mid-Autumn Festival National Day Holiday Travel Forecast Report
<h5>The opponents are not only Universal Studios</h5>
Beijing Happy Valley is the first theme park in the north, it was officially opened in July 2006, located in the East Fourth Ring Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, covering an area of 560,000 square meters, consisting of seven theme areas: Fjord Forest, Atlantis, Aegean Port, Lost Maya, Shangri-La, Dessert Kingdom and Happy Hour.
According to official data, in the past 15 years, the Beijing Happy Valley project has developed from the first phase to the sixth phase, receiving nearly 50 million passengers and generating more than 5 billion yuan in revenue. Although this achievement is second to none in Beijing, it may face many challenges after the opening of Universal Studios.
The most direct reason for the source of customers to be sucked away is distance. The distance between Beijing Happy Valley and Universal Studios Beijing is only about 17 kilometers, compared with The distance between Shenzhen Happy Valley and Hong Kong Disneyland is about 45 kilometers, and the distance between Shanghai Happy Valley and Shanghai Disneyland is about 53 kilometers.
In addition, taking into account the cold climate of Beijing in winter, Universal Studios has developed more amusement projects suitable for indoor entertainment, which has more advantages than Happy Valley, which accounts for a large proportion of open-air projects.
A former employee of Universal Studios Beijing told Times Finance in August that if Beijing Happy Valley wants to differentiate its competition, it should add more roller coasters with a strong sense of weightlessness, which is different from Universal Studios' IP experience-based features.
The roller coaster is indeed the signature project of Beijing Happy Valley, and now Beijing Happy Valley has 7 of the 47 sets of themed amusement facilities owned by Beijing Happy Valley, making Beijing Happy Valley the asian theme park with the largest number of roller coasters.
However, Lin Huanjie believes that Chinese people will not rush to Happy Valley because of the weightless experience of chasing roller coasters, because there is not much of an audience with this demand. He said that tourists like to go to theme parks because the "theme" itself is attractive enough, such as Disney's Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse; Universal Studios' Harry Potter and Transformers, Minions, etc., a few more roller coasters, can not solve the problem of customer source.
In contrast, Beijing Happy Valley is lackluster in building IP. "Whether it is the introduction of IP by Emperor Wanxiao, Lion King Ah Xing, Tang Renfang, Sad Frog, etc., or the localization IP of Shanhaijing, which is planned to be introduced to the market in 2024, there are common problems of domestic theme park developers - IP for IP." Lin Huanjie said bluntly that in the creation of IP, China's theme parks have a long way to go.
In the face of the city's strong teams, does Beijing Happy Valley still have a chance to win?
"Because Beijing Happy Valley is smaller than Universal Studios, its project updates and adapts to market changes. In addition, due to less investment, it should increase its efforts in ticket promotion to attract more local tourists in Beijing, such as the annual pass recently launched by Beijing Happy Valley, which has sold hundreds of thousands of pieces, which is conducive to increasing the stickiness of Beijing Happy Valley to local residents in Beijing. Lin Huanjie said.
Tianfeng Securities Research Report expects that universal studios will have a certain impact on the flow of happy valley customers in the short term after the opening of the park, but considering the age group of the two target customers, Universal Studios mostly takes the popular films it shoots as the theme, which attracts more adult participation, happy valley main cartoon characters, more suitable for family travel, in the long run, universal studios and happy valley differences will become more and more obvious.
It is worth mentioning that domestic theme parks will have to meet more challenges in the future.
It is reported that lego theme parks will open in China in the next two to three years. At present, LEGOland has entered the construction stage in Sichuan, Shanghai and Shenzhen, of which the Shenzhen LEGO Theme Resort covers an area of about 580,000 square meters, which will be the world's largest LEGOLAND resort.
(Jimmy, Yan Rong, Shawne are pseudonyms)