Travel agencies in Shanghai promised yesterday that all the Shanghai tourists who were barred from entering Hong Kong Disneyland during the Spring Festival will get full ticket refunds.

Ctrip.com International Ltd has gone one step further, offering its 17 customers a free night stay at the Disney hotel in Hong Kong.

From February 1 to 3, Hong Kong Disneyland locked its gate after the number of guests reached the park's maximum capacity of 30,000. As a result, hundreds of visitors from the Chinese mainland couldn't enter the park including 50 Shanghai tourists.

Many of the mainland tourists had bought open date tickets that are good for six months, but couldn't use them. Mainland visitors made up about 70 percent of the park's attendance during the holiday.

"I arrived at 10am and was able to enter, but they closed the gate in an hour, as there were just too many people already in the park, and the park was too small," said Jin Jing, a Shanghai tourist.

Hong Kong Disneyland is the world's smallest Disney amusement park. Disneyland in Florida covers about 300 times the space.

The situation became so bad in Hong Kong last week that several disappointed travelers climbed to top of the gate and tried to jump in.

"No one told us the park would turn its back on us," said Bai Yun of China Travel International Ltd.

Bai said the agency had several phone calls from its customers complaining they couldn't get into Disneyland on February 1.

"Their schedule had to be put off for one day," said Bai. "These guests were let in the next morning at around 9am."

Tourists who had simply bought plane tickets, not Disney tickets, in advance weren't as lucky. Bai said two families called to say they couldn't get into the park.

However, local travel agencies said such problem might occur again if the Disney headquarter doesn't adjust its ticket policy on the Chinese mainland market.

Currently the company offers six-month open tickets to China's mainland, which is the major cause for the holiday chaos, said Wang Zhicheng, a spokesperson for the Shanghai Jingjiang International Travel.

(Shanghai Daily February 8, 2006)