Ocean Park Hong Kong (Traditional Chinese: 海洋公園; pinyin: Hǎiyáng Gōngyuán) is a theme park in the Southern District of Hong Kong Island. The marine-themed amusement park covers the area of Wong Chuk Hang and Nam Long Shan, and is Hong Kong's very own theme park.
The park has 4.2 million visitors annually in recent years. It has an area of 870,000 square metres. The different parts of the park are connected by cable car, as well as the world's second longest outdoor escalator. The theme park currently has over 40 rides and attractions.
Ocean Park features a Giant panda exhibit, a butterfly garden, a shark tank, and a three-storey aquarium, as well as numerous rides. The park also has its own cable car system, which takes visitors from one side of the park to the other (the two parts are separated from each other by hills). The official mascot of Ocean Park is "Whiskers"—a waving sealion.
Besides being an amusement park, Ocean Park Hong Kong also includes observatories, well developed laboratories, an education department and a Whales And Dolphins Fund.
Ocean Park Hong Kong was the first institution in the world to have success in artificial insemination of bottle nose dolphins, and developed numerous new breeds of goldfish, proving the standard of its laboratories.
The park was built with donations from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club (now Hong Kong Jockey Club) and opened on 10 January 1977. The park is operated by Ocean Park Corporation, which is a statutory board. It offers affordable marine animal education and entertainment and is a private organization for commercial purposes.
In the early operation of the park, the main sources of income for the park were the ticket revenues and the fundings from the Jockey Club. Since the ticket price was low, most of the time Ocean Park was operating under deficit. In 1 July 1987, the government established a 200 million trust from the fundings of Jockey Club, under the Ocean Park Corporation Ordinance (Hong Kong Law Cap. 388). This separated Ocean Park from Jockey Club and became a non-profit organisation; it needs to be responsible for its own income and was allowed to use commercial means to operate the park.
Since it was permitted to use commercial means to operate, it gradually raised its ticket price and the deficit turned into profit. In 1992, 3 million visitors visited the park. Since 1998, the East Asian financial crisis, aging attractions, and the passing away of the killer whale; the park recorded a deficit for a couple years. Although it was allowed to host 2 pandas in 1999, the visitor count did not go up and Ocean Park was forced to close its water attractions and the "Old Village" attraction and switched to bring in more rides in an attempt to capture the youth demand. Together with the opening up of mainland visitors under the Individual Visit Scheme, Ocean Park recorded an astonishing 4 million visitors in the fiscal year 2004-2005, the highest since the park opened.