Let It Go: Disney officially denies claims of a Disneyland being built in Indonesia

“Frozen”, Walt Disney Pictures
“Frozen”, Walt Disney Pictures

Besides the non-stop coverage about tomorrow’s Jakarta election, only one other story managed to grab the Indonesian public’s imagination over the weekend – an announcement that Disneyland was coming to Indonesia.

The announcement that a brand new magic kingdom was coming to the former Majapahit Kingdom came from the regent of Boyolali in Central Java, Seno Samudro, who said with seeming certainty, that construction on the Rp 6 trillion project would begin in September.

Like the rest of the Indonesian media, we reported on the story, though we cautioned readers to take the news with a grain of salt considering that Seno was the only official to actually confirm the news.

But even the State Palace issued a statement welcoming the news, with Chief Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung Wibowo saying the project would be a great investment opportunity for Indonesia.

But Pramono at least knew enough to add, “If it’s really true, then praise God.

And then, of course, it turned out to not be true at all.

Late yesterday, the Walt Disney Company’s  Southeast Asia director of communications, Sesha Kanthamraju, issued a statement to Kompas saying, “Though Indonesia is a priority market for The Walt Disney Company in Southeast Asia we do not have plans to open Disneyland in Indonesia at this time.”

The sound you’re hearing right now is the hearts of millions of Indonesian Disney fans turning cold and frozen – just like in that movie, “The Revenant”.

So how could Seno have made such a maleficent mistake?

“I must emphasize, later the name will not be Disneyland. There are still some options. Whether later the name will be Taman Seloso Kliwon or something else, we’ll just have to wait and see,” Seno clarified later, as quoted by Tempo.

This, despite the fact that he consistently used the term Disneyland to describe the theme park project previously. Is it possible that Seno thought just using the name Disneyland might somehow bring in more investors, even if it didn’t turn out to be true? Or maybe he just thinks that all amusement parks are called Disneylands (as in, “Hey, have you been to the Universal Studio’s Disneyland yet?”).

At any rate, Seno still steadfastly maintains that construction on some sort of Disneyland-like theme park will begin in Boyolali later this year. But we’re not going to waste any of our wishes-upon-a-star to see if even that becomes a reality.



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