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Ocean Park Hong Kong
The Culture Show 
Ocean Theatre 
Musicians performing at the ocean theater 
Atoll Reef 
Sea Jelly Spectacular 
Some of the rides in Ocean Park 
The gondola lift system that connects the two parts of Ocean Park 
Panda, Le Le at Ocean Park Panda Exhibit Ocean Park Hong Kong () is a theme park in the Southern District of Hong Kong Island. The marine-themed amusement park covers the area of Wong Chuk Hang and Nam Long Shan, and is located in Hong Kong. Public can go to Ocean Park by taxi or Citybus. The park, ranked 7th 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] Ocean Park also ranked 16th in the TEA/ERA Theme Park Attendance Report 2007 with approximately 4.9 million visitors, higher than Hong Kong Disneyland at 21st place with 4.1 million visitors.[3] It covers an area of 870,000 square metres.[4] 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.[4] 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 fish. 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 Hong Kong increased its ticket prices by 12% and 14% to take advantage of the Golden Week Holidays.[5]
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 organisation for commercial purposes. In the early operation of the park, 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 of 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. MascotsOcean Park introduced a sea lion named Whiskers (known as Wai Wai in Chinese) as the major mascot on December 9, 2000. Whiskers is cute, and has a smile on his face and is always waving a warm welcome with its flippers. There are 5 more members of the Ocean Park family: James Fin H2O (a shark); Jewel (a feminine butterfly); Swift (a dolphin); Chief (a parrot); Professor (a turtle). AttractionsHeadlands Rides (?????)
Adventure Land (????)
Marine Land (????)
Lowland Gardens (????)
Kids' World (????)
Bird Paradise (????)
Chinese Sturgeon fatal accidentIn June 2008, Ocean Park came under fire when a Chinese Sturgeon in its possession was found dead. Chinese Sturgeon is critically endangered and five of them were recently bestowed upon Ocean Park. However the smallest of the five was found dead on 21 June 2008, with wounds inflicted by a great barracuda. Ocean Park has been criticized as careless in putting the Chinese Sturgeons in the same aquarium as the aggressive barracudas, but according to a spokesperson from Ocean Park, the decision to put the 2 species in the same aquarium was made by Beijing experts. 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, Ocean Park 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. ReferencesExternal links
Gallery<gallery> Image:Crowd_waiting_for_the_Dolphin_Show.jpg|Crowd at a dolphin Show Image:DolphinsHongkong.JPG|Dolphin show in progress Image:HK OP Sea Jelly 410 Location.jpg |The entrance of Sea Jelly Spectacular Image:Aquarium_in_Ocean_Park_2.jpg|Zebra Pattern Fish Image:HK OP Sea Jelly 410 Octopus Jelly.jpg |Octopus Jellyfish Image:HK OP Sea Jelly 410 Flower Heat Jelly.jpg |Display of the Flower Heat Jellyfish Image:HK OP Sea Jelly 410 visitors.jpg |Tourists taking pictures Image:Oceanparkhk.jpg|A bird's eye view of Ocean Park from the Ocean Park Observatory. Image:repulsebay.jpg|spectacular views over Repulse Bay. Image:Oceanpark main halloween.jpg|Main entrance of Ocean Park Image:Oceanparkentrance.jpg|Another entrance at Tai Shue Wan Image:HotAir_Ballon.jpg|Sky Fair Image:Go-Karts_in_Ocean_Park.jpg|Grand Prix </gallery>
de:Ocean Park Hong Kong fr:Ocean Park Hong Kong ja:?????? zh-yue:?????? zh:?????? Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
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