Happy Valley, a theme park in Beijing, is reportedly modeled on a western park with six theme areas: Firth Forest, Aegean Sea, Atlantis, Lost Maya, Shangri-La and Ant Kingdom. (Photo : www.skyscrapercity.com)
Chinese firm Shenzhen OCT Vision Inc. has teamed up with U.S.-based CAVU Designwerks to sell jointly developed theme park products across the world, China Daily reported.
Li Jian, the general manager of Shenzhen OCT Vision Inc., and Peter Schnabel, the chief executive officer of CAVU Designwerks Inc., have collaborated to jointly tap the international theme parks such as Europa-Park, the John F. Kennedy Space Center and the Niagara Falls.
"He (Schnabel) leads creativity and marketing teams, and I'm responsible for specific product development, manufacturing, engineering and delivery," Li said.
The report said that Li and his partners set up Shenzhen Vision, a theme park products company, in Dec. 2009 and sold off a 60-percent stake to Overseas Chinese Town Group (OCT), a state-owned tourism firm, two years later.
Li said that Shenzhen Vision's products, such the 360-degree-view full-universe theater, the vision drop ride and the flying theatre, have attracted OCT. He added that Shenzhen Vision has about 100 patents and inventions, with 12 of them filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
The report said that after joining the OCT Group, Shenzhen Vision grew rapidly, becoming Shenzhen OCT Vision Inc. in the process. Its products are now sold to the group's flagship theme park chain, Happy Valley, in places such as Shenzhen, Tianjin, Chengdu and Wuhan.
According to U.S. engineering services company AECOM, Shenzhen OCT Vision's business growth coincided with the theme park boom in the country. In 2013, Chinese developers have spent nearly $24 billion on construction of theme parks, up from $9 billion in 2011.
AECOM estimated that in 2014, about 60 more parks were scheduled to be built, and by 2020, China's parkgoers are predicted to surpass the current 220 million in the United States.
In China, OCT Group's parks already attract 30 million visitors a year, next only to those of Walt Disney Attractions, Merlin Entertainment Group and Universal Parks and Resorts.
The report added that the company continues to expand as it hired 700 people and posted a revenue of 240 million yuan last year. Aside from selling equipment to other amusement park operators, it also provides holistic planning and building solutions for projects such as those in Yulin and Liuzhou in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It has also exported its flying theaters to theme parks in Turkey and Vietnam.
Shenzhen OCT Vision is now reportedly planning to buy out popular intellectual properties abroad and adapt them for its new facilities, such as Assassin's Creed, a popular video game developed by UBisoft Entertainment S.A.
Li, however, also plans to develop products by drawing from Chinese folklore, fairy tales and history, as he dreams of building Chinese culture-based tourism towns overseas to cater to local Chinese.
