Clowns from the Shenzhen Happy Valley amusement park pose for photos with a foreign tourist at a carnival in Chengmai, Hainan province. YIN ENBIAO / FOR CHINA DAILY

The number of visitors to OCT parks increased from 15.8 million in 2009 to 21.73 million in 2011, according to the TEA report. US-based Walt Disney Parks and Resorts ranked first in the list of top 10 theme park chains worldwide by reaching attendance of 121.4 million in 2011.

However, OCT parks also face growing challenges from their competitors in China.

US leading entertainment company Walt Disney Co has expanded its well-known theme park brand to China. As the world's sixth Disney amusement park and the first in the Chinese mainland, the 24.5-billion-yuan Shanghai Disneyland Park is now under construction and scheduled to open in 2015.

"Shanghai Disneyland Park will attract a significant number of visitors from other theme-park productions in eastern China, including OCT Group's Happy Valley park in Shanghai in the middle and short run, but the effect will gradually weaken in the long term because visitors have diverse demands for theme-park productions," Yang said.

Movie-themed parks have emerged with the boom of China's film industry in recent years. Huayi Brothers Media Corp, one of China's largest movie production companies, entered the field in 2011, when it announced its first movie-themed park project in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in cooperation with other partners.

One year later, it co-invested in a movie-themed commercial zone in Haikou, Hainan province. The zone will feature streets and blocks that once appeared in Huayi Brothers' movie productions.

Hong Kong director-actor Stephen Chow in February announced the plan to build a Journey to the West Film Art Center project in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province, after the namesake film series became popular nationwide. The latest episode of the series, Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, has raked in more than 1.23 billion yuan in box office receipts to date, making it the third highest-grossing film in the Chinese mainland in history.

"The difference between amusement-oriented theme parks and movie-themed parks is that the latter is required to be well-recognized among the public through movies or novels themselves," said Shao.

"But at present I don't think there is any film series in the country that can support the establishment of a theme park," he added. "Because it really asks for considerable details of a movie to afford the sustainable development of a movie-themed park, for example, the Harry Potter attraction in Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando Resort in the US state of Florida."

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