marked the one-year anniversary of the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland (HKD) Amid the hoopla and celebrations, media experts were reflecting on the high points and low points of HKD's first year of operations, including several ies that had generated some negative publicity At a press conference and interview to disc the first year of operations BilFErnest, HKD's executive vice-president, acknowledged that the park had learnt lot its experiences and that the problems had made it stronger. Ernest also announced that HKD attendance for the year had been "well over" 5 million visitors. Still, this figur was short of the 5.6 million visitors that had earlier been projected by park officials. Ernest stated that the park was on sound financiabfootinn but would not release the details. He also announced the appointment of two non-executive directors Payson Cha Mou-sing, managing director of HKR International and Philip Chen Nan-lok of Cathay Pacific would be joining the board of directors in a move calculated to counter charges of a lack transparency. The criticisms were, in part, coming from members of the Hong Kong Legislative HKD was 57 per cent owned by the Hong Kong invested HK$23 billion.
Since plan for the high profit HKD PROJECT were first announced, there had been criticisms of a lack of transparency from Hong Kong government officials, the Consumer Council and members of the public The dissatisfaction was refle a survey conducted by Hong Kong Polytechnic University in March 2006 Although 56 per of e 524 respondents believed the government's HK$13.6 billion (about US$1 billion) inves e of a "fair" value, 70 per cent of respondents had a negative impression investment in HKD. This response was a considerably more pessimistic result than previous of the public surveys. It was in the interests of HKD to turn this situation around.
HKD was the third park that Disney had opened outside of the United States, following the
Tokyo Disney Resort and Disneyland Resort Paris. The Tokyo Disney Resort was the most successful of all of the Disney