On This Day20,000 Hongkongers ride Disneyland Resort line as it opens in 2005 – from the SCMP archive
On this day 20 years ago, tens of thousands of people pay to use the new MTR service from Sunny Bay to the then unopened theme park
This article was first published on August 2, 2005.
Disney isn’t open, but 20,000 pay to ride Mickey’s caboose
By Dennis Eng
Disneyland has yet to open and they could not buy tickets when they got there – but nearly 20,000 people tried out the train service from Sunny Bay to the theme park on Monday (August 1, 2005).
The only glitch came early in the day, when one of the driverless automated trains stopped at the wrong point along the platform of the Disneyland Resort station at 8am, leaving it out of alignment with the platform screen doors and delaying passengers for two minutes.
The MTR’s head of operations, Wilfred Lau Cheuk-man, played down the incident, saying that the six weeks left until the park’s opening gave time to work out “a few teething problems”.
Part-time female “customer service ambassadors” were on hand at both stations to assist passengers and answer any questions.
By 8pm, 18,500 passengers had used the line, which will be able to carry 10,800 passengers an hour when the park opens on September 12.