Zhuhai, Tuesday, 18 November 2025.
Statista placed Chimelong Ocean Kingdom among the world’s top-attended parks in 2024, underscoring a clear shift: domestic Chinese destination parks now drive massive footfall that can recalibrate regional retail and F&B planning. For retail executives, the most intriguing fact is Chimelong’s 12.63 million visitors — demand comparable with established global brands — signalling strong local penetration and resort-duration stays in the Greater Bay Area. Expect pressure on international operators to adapt pricing, merchandising and omnichannel strategies, and consider multimodal infrastructure and resort retail formats when allocating capital across Asia‑Pacific pipelines. Operational priorities will include capacity-driven assortment planning, seasonality hedging, and guest-experience diversification tied to marine-themed IP. Regulatory attention on animal welfare and safety may affect attraction programming and related retail product lifecycles. This snapshot offers implications for site selection, partner negotiations and inventory cycles; a follow-up will unpack actionable tactics for merchandising, pricing and partnership models tailored to high-volume Chinese resort environments.
Attendance milestone and global ranking
Statista’s 2024 global attendance list places Chimelong Ocean Kingdom among the world’s most-visited parks with 12.63 million visitors, positioning it alongside legacy leaders such as Magic Kingdom (17.84 million) and Tokyo Disneyland (15.1 million) in the same ranking — a data point that signals the park’s emergence on the same scale as long-established international brands [1].
Quantifying scale relative to legacy parks
To put scale in perspective: Chimelong’s 12.63 million visitors represent a significant share of Magic Kingdom’s 17.84 million attendance; the raw percentage relationship can be expressed as 70.796 using the Statista figures, illustrating how Chimelong’s volumes approach those of the highest-attended global parks and therefore command similar considerations for retail and operations planning [1].
Why this matters for retail and F&B strategy
High annual footfall at Chimelong implies sustained daily demand, which changes how retailers and food & beverage operators should design assortment, replenishment cadence and price architecture within resort ecosystems: inventory must be scaled for high-throughput, merchandising needs to reflect resort-duration stays, and omnichannel fulfilment requires integration with resort reservations and hotel occupancy flows — considerations that follow logically from large, gated attendance figures reported by Statista [1].
Resort infrastructure and multimodal access in the Greater Bay Area
Chimelong Ocean Kingdom sits inside the Chimelong resort cluster on Hengqin island, a location served by growing cross-border and regional transport links that support multi-day resort visits; Trip.com listings and destination guides describe the park as part of a broader Changlong/Chimelong tourism and vacation area with multiple on-site hotels and nearby accommodation options, underscoring the multimodal, resort-scale infrastructure that underpins extended guest stays and higher per-capita retail spend [2][4].
Operational priorities driven by volume
Operators targeting Chimelong-scale volumes must prioritise capacity-driven assortment planning, seasonality hedging and diversification of guest experiences: high attendance rates require automated inventory replenishment, broader SKU depth during peak periods and retail footprints that can flex to daily demand surges — strategic imperatives that follow from the park’s top-tier attendance statistics and the resort’s integrated hotel offerings described in regional travel guides [1][2][4].
Intellectual property, marine-themed product lifecycles and merchandising
Chimelong’s marine- and animal-themed positioning implies specific merchandising lifecycles tied to attraction programming and IP: product assortments will favour themed plush, educational merchandise and experience-driven upsells that align with marine show schedules and habitats, which retailers should synchronize with park programming and hotel packages to maximise capture of multi-day guests — a merchandising logic informed by the park’s thematic profile and its role within a resort cluster [1][2].
Regulation, animal welfare and program risk
Regulatory scrutiny on animal welfare and attraction safety is a material operational risk for marine-animal parks; while the provided sources document park policies and large-scale resort operation, specific regulatory actions or rulings affecting Chimelong are not present in the supplied material, so the degree and timing of any regulatory impact on attractions and related retail lines remain uncertain [1][2][3][4][alert! ‘no supplied source documents explicit regulatory rulings or enforcement actions regarding Chimelong’s animal-welfare governance — further primary-source verification required’].
Implications for investors and regional operators
For investors and competing operators across the Asia‑Pacific pipeline, Chimelong’s attendance demonstrates that domestic Chinese destination parks can produce visitation on par with top global brands; this reality should influence capital allocation toward integrated resort formats, multimodal access improvements and retail strategies that prioritise scale and seasonality management — implications drawn from the park’s ranking and the resort’s documented hospitality footprint [1][2][4].
Tactical directions for merchandising and partnerships
Practically, park retail leaders and brand partners operating at Chimelong-like volumes should consider: 1) modular retail formats that expand during peak windows, 2) dynamic pricing and bundling tied to hotel packages, 3) inventory systems integrating park and hotel POS, and 4) licensing arrangements that allow rapid refresh of marine‑IP product lines — strategic recommendations that respond directly to the attendance scale and resort model reflected in the cited attendance and destination data [1][2][4].
Bronnen