Trashing Shanghai Disneyland, before the park even opens

As if Disney fans angry over Shanghai Disneyland needed any more provocation, along comes a slew of photos showing Chinese visitors trashing the Disneytown shopping area outside the yet-to-open park's front gate.

First posted to the Chinese social network Weibo, blogs around the world are republishing the photos, which show trash, graffiti, trampled landscaping, and even a child defecating in a planter.

Even though Shanghai Disneyland won't open until June 16, the train station that will serve the park recently opened, and thousands of Chinese tourists visited Disneytown over the recent May Day holiday. While most enjoyed the opportunity to see the park for free — at least from the outside — a few others, well, didn't exactly mind their manners on their sight-seeing visit.

China is battling the stereotype of its visitors acting poorly in locations around the world, and these pictures just fuel that perception.

What will happen when Shanghai Disneyland opens next month? Keep in mind that anyone who gets inside the park will have to pay to enter. Will that help ensure a better behaved crowd inside the gates? Will Disney react to this by hiring more security and custodial staff to police the grounds? Whatever happens, with so many visitors armed with cell phones and Weibo accounts, we can be sure that if anyone does something ugly in or around Shanghai Disneyland, the world will get to see it.

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