A Wish Upon a Star.docVIP

A Wish Upon a Star 　　“To all who come to this happy place； welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here， age relives fond memories of the past .... and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals， the dreams and the hard facts that have created America .... with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world，” declared Walt Disney as he opened Disneyland in 1955. 　　In June 2016， 61 years later， Shanghai Disney Resort， the Chinese mainland’s first Disney resort and the world’s sixth， welcomed Disney fans from across China and around the world. “I think Walt himself would be impressed， maybe even surprised， to see what his great dream has become in 2016 in Shanghai，” grinned Robert Iger， chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company. And the project took 17 years of painstaking efforts to give birth to such an instant icon. 　　The park’s history can be traced back to 1990， when Zhu Rongji， then mayor of Shanghai， visited the original Disneyland in Anaheim， California. Zhu was deeply impressed by the experience and vowed to bring such an amusement park to his city. Actual talks between Shanghai and Disney didn’t happen until nine years later， at which time Robot Iger investigated Shanghai and chose the last stop on his tour of the surrounding area as the place ?C a tract of land near the villages of Zhaoxing， Qigan， and Jinjia in Pudong District. “They were small villages with crisscrossing rivers， ditches， and dogs，”recalled Iger. “There were few pedestrians during early development of Pudong， and the new airport had just opened. It was hard for me to imagine what my Disneyland would look like down there several years later.” 　　Although negotiations brought a series of twists and turns， the rapid development of China’s economy guaranteed enormous potential for Disney， which reaped tremendous rewards for its efforts. In 2002， the municipal government resumed negotiations when Shanghai’s