When I saw this article the other day on how there is a plan to bring a Universal-like(key word being like) theme park to southern Taiwan my snark meter went off the scale. I’ve been here too long and heard to0 many idealistic glorious plans only to see them all become glorious mud fences in their execution.
Firstly, the best of the local amusement parks are mediocre with the worst being totally lmae and that si the majority of them. Here in central Taiwan the big myth for years was how Disneyland was coming to Houli where there is a huge tract of TaiSugar land(TaiSugar being the largest property owner in Taiwan and also owned by the government of Taiwan). Of course I never believed that knowing only too well that Disney was way to savvy to locate there. However, the real possible deal was with Warner Brothers. They actually sent people here and were getting close to going forward when the whole thing was submarined in red tape because a favor was owed to Yang Tien Sheng who really wanted to do a racetrack but was surreptitiously floating a plan for his own amusement park on that site. His racetrack dream probably took too much power of positive thinking and payoffs, much more than he had budgeted no doubt and was scotched. We did in fact get the underwhelming Mala Bay Yamay Resorts a water park not quite on steroids-yawn. No pizazz or sizzle of an internationally successful entertainment company to wow the rubes. No Disney not even a Warner’s. Sad because the Taiwanese are such family people and don’t mind spending money on their families. It’s too bad they get so few quality options locally and usually have to go overseas to enjoy something decent.
So here we are again(full story here):
“We will build a theme park next to our film studio. It will something like Universal Studios, ” said Tsai Yueh-hsun, who is currently turning his award-winning police drama Black and White into a full-length motion picture.
“We have already sent people to Universal Studios and other theme parks to learn from their expertise, ” the director of Taiwan’s first Hollywood-style TV drama said during a recent interview with Taiwan’s Chinese-language daily Liberty Times.
OK color me cynical not even guardedly optimistic that this thing even if it happens and I sense it probably will, should just be another empty box or fizz-less can of soda. One can only hope…
