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Katoey shows rival Mickey Mouse at Hong Kong Disneyland
Hong Kong (dpa) - It's hardly family entertainment but the Lady Boyz of Thailand are proving a rival to Mickey Mouse and Hong Kong's 3.5 billion U.S. dollar Disneyland theme park, it was revealed Sunday.
A cabaret show featuring a troupe of Thai transvestites and transsexuals is playing to packed audiences of up to 3,000 mainland tourists a day - the very market targetted by the new Disneyland.
All five daily shows at the 700-seat venue featuring the Golden Globe Cabaret are selling out with some offering standing room only, despite no local advertising.
Much of the audience is mainland Chinese tourists who are being offered the show in short-break packages to Hong Kong at a price of $160-$200 (850-1,060 baht) per ticket.
The success of the show was revealed by the Sunday Morning Post. Earlier this week the Sunday paper's sister paper claimed Disneyland was failing to pull in the crowds predicted and was on some days only one third full.
The English-language South China Morning Post conducted its own headcount with reporters counting visitors as they entered the park on two days.
It claimed only 12,972 visited on a Sunday and 11,399 on a Wednesday despite the park having a capacity of 30,000 a day.
The Hong Kong government said it expects 5.6 million visitors in the theme park's first year of operations - the equivalent of more than 15,000 people a day.
Disney has refused to disclose exact attendance figures except to say it has welcomed one million in the first 100 days - an average of 10,000 a day.
Apichar Sirichantakul, the executive director of Golden Dome (HK)International, the company behind the Lady Boyz show, told the Sunday Morning Post the show was proving such a success he was considering organising a transvestite beauty pageant.
Hong Kong (dpa) - It's hardly family entertainment but the Lady Boyz of Thailand are proving a rival to Mickey Mouse and Hong Kong's 3.5 billion U.S. dollar Disneyland theme park, it was revealed Sunday.
A cabaret show featuring a troupe of Thai transvestites and transsexuals is playing to packed audiences of up to 3,000 mainland tourists a day - the very market targetted by the new Disneyland.
All five daily shows at the 700-seat venue featuring the Golden Globe Cabaret are selling out with some offering standing room only, despite no local advertising.
Much of the audience is mainland Chinese tourists who are being offered the show in short-break packages to Hong Kong at a price of $160-$200 (850-1,060 baht) per ticket.
The success of the show was revealed by the Sunday Morning Post. Earlier this week the Sunday paper's sister paper claimed Disneyland was failing to pull in the crowds predicted and was on some days only one third full.
The English-language South China Morning Post conducted its own headcount with reporters counting visitors as they entered the park on two days.
It claimed only 12,972 visited on a Sunday and 11,399 on a Wednesday despite the park having a capacity of 30,000 a day.
The Hong Kong government said it expects 5.6 million visitors in the theme park's first year of operations - the equivalent of more than 15,000 people a day.
Disney has refused to disclose exact attendance figures except to say it has welcomed one million in the first 100 days - an average of 10,000 a day.
Apichar Sirichantakul, the executive director of Golden Dome (HK)International, the company behind the Lady Boyz show, told the Sunday Morning Post the show was proving such a success he was considering organising a transvestite beauty pageant.
