Disney's fourth park outside the United States will be the first on mainland China, giving the company a new avenue to market its popular properties in the restriction-laden Red Dragon. The park, to be located in the Pudong district between Shanghai's main international airport and its downtown area, will target China's growing middle class.

"Shanghai Disney would be a huge boom," Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group told Bloomberg News. "You have 80 million people within 3 hours' driving distance."

Still, a densely populated area doesn't necessarily make for an economic slam-dunk. Take Disneyland Hong Kong, for instance: It's easily accessible to about 60 million people in the Guangdong province and burgeoning Macau, but it drew just 5.2 million people in its first fiscal year, 2005-2006 – short of Disney's goal for 5.6 million visitors.

Things didn't get much better in the following two years, as visits dropped to 4 million and 4.5 million, respectively. Meanwhile, nearby Ocean Park in 2008 enjoyed its fifth straight year of more than 5 million visitors, Fortune magazine reported.

It's generally accepted that Disney's shortcomings in Hong Kong and its other international locations were due to a failure to adapt to the local cultures.

"I wasn't trying to kill the Mouse," Ocean Park Chairman Allan Zeman told Fortune. "They've done it themselves."

Indeed, it's often said that Disney force-feeds its products to international markets, thus homogenizing culture.

"Ocean Park is more fun – Disneyland is more for kids," Ocean Park visitor Frankie Tong told The New York Times today (Wednesday).