Disneys slow start

last updated 8 January 2015

Hong Kong

The newest Disneyland opened last week, in Hong Kong, and even by Disney standards, the lines were outrageous. Amid reports that some parkgoers managed to get into just four attractions in an entire day, some observers looked for cultural explanations for the long waits. According to Hong Kong sociologist Rongrong Zhou, individualistic Westerners will simply get out of a line and go somewhere else when there are too many people in front of them. But the Asian tendency, she told The New York Times, is to make “social comparisons.” Asians will look behind as well as ahead of them, she said, and if they are better off than others, they’ll stay put. “The longer the line,” she said, “people think the service is more worthwhile.”