It what may be the biggest change at Disney since Goofy saw an orthodontist for his over-bite, Disney is building a 5.5 billion dollar theme park in Shanghai, China. It’s about time. The last themed attraction the Chinese built was a Great wall. You paid your money, got on as a child and at the end of the wall, 4,000 miles later you were an adult. In terms of step aerobics it was the ultimate.

The whole country was walled in which was not good for tourism, although in those days the tourists wouldn’t just come and go, they would come and take over. Now Disney, which uses the very essence of a country and turns it into a souvenir shop, is building in China.

Instead of ‘Mickey Mouse’ they could they go retro and call him ‘Maos Mickey’.

As the most populous nation on Earth certainly ‘It’s a small world’ has no meaning for them unless they’re talking about their Olympic gymnastics team.

They are more open to the rest of the world but since the overly industrious Chinese people work 18 hours a day 364 days a year they don’t really have a lot of spare time to go on vacation or even visit a theme park. How would Disney get the locals to come out?

Operate the theme park as a giant theme restaurant.

Disney needs to do some marketing to get Chinese people to start relating to a mouse as entertainment as opposed to the next course, because to some, comfort food consists of eating everything with four legs except the table.

Some Oriental food is so exotic, it falls under the alternative energy category because you can eat it and burn it as fuel. Think Sweet and Sour Cicada.

Americans travel to foreign countries and often wind up at the local McDonald’s for a familiar menu. Tourists don’t want to go on Mr. Toad’s wild ride and then eat one. They want to enjoy the more familiar food groups and they’ll have them here, with a twist.

You’re only young once at Peter Pan’s Pot-sticker Paradise.

Sit down at a table in Donald’s House of Horrors and through the magic of Disney he morphs into Peking Duck before your very eyes. It comes with a side of Huey Dewie and Egg Drop Louie.

To round out the lunch menu, there are the many adventures of Winny the Pooh Pooh Platter.

I think the concept of ‘food as theme park’ is brilliant because with Chinese food, they’ll all be hungry again in an hour, so why go home? Just change the signs that say “you must be this tall to ride” to “You must be this hungry to eat the Country Bear Jambalaya”. It’s a small portion after all!