After announcing plans for a Labubu movie, Pop Mart has more news about its theme park.
On April 30, Pop Mart opened a new area of Pop Land, its theme park inside Beijing Chaoyang Park, to visitors. The roughly 40,000-square-meter park, which the company describes as China’s first immersive IP-based theme park, opened in September 2023 and has just completed more than a year of upgrades.
The revamp centers on two of Pop Mart’s popular IPs: The Monsters and Dimoo. It adds three new areas and five large-scale amusement rides, marking the first time Pop Land has introduced major rides, including a drop tower and a pirate ship.
The park turned profitable in its first year of operation. Pop Mart’s management said at its interim results briefing last year that visitor traffic and revenue in the first half of 2025 had already exceeded the park’s full-year figures for the previous year.
Unlike traditional theme parks, Pop Land does not view the park as a straightforward profitmaking project. Hu Jian, vice president of Pop Mart and general manager of Pop Land, said profitability and revenue matter over the long run, but they are not the top priorities at this stage.
Pop Mart has also drawn an unconventional customer profile for a theme park: non-family visitors account for as much as 59% of park attendance, while nonlocal visitors make up 58%.
The following transcript has been edited and consolidated for brevity and clarity.
Q: At Pop Mart’s 2024 earnings briefing last year, you said Pop Land had made some mistakes in its earlier planning because of a lack of experience, and that adjustments and new plans would soon follow. Are those adjustments reflected in the newly opened areas?
Hu Jian (HJ): In fact, many of the original elements were not implemented exactly according to our drawings. For example, we originally planned a roller coaster. After conducting a lot of research and verification, we confirmed that the site was not suitable for it. That kind of project may come later.
For now, at least part of the plan has moved forward. In terms of playability, we are not trying to add a large number of amusement rides. Given this location and environment, what we want is to integrate commerce and amusement. We hope everything has something interesting built into it, and that each element can become part of the visitor experience.
Q: Non-family visitors account for nearly 60% of Pop Land’s audience, while out-of-town and inbound visitors also account for about 60%. That customer profile is very different from traditional theme parks. What do you think is the main reason Pop Land can attract these visitors?
HJ: Previously, because the park did not have many amusement projects, and most of the few it did have were nonpowered play facilities, we were not very confident at first that we could attract adult visitors.
We have been continuously improving and upgrading the software and operational side. Food and beverage, desserts, and other formats have gradually improved. Live entertainment has also played a significant role in driving traffic to the park over the past two years. Many visitors are not coming just for the rides. More want to meet Twinkle Twinkle, or see whether Labubu has changed into new outfits.
I think there are two points:
- First, Pop Mart’s own IPs have continued to break out of their original circles, and their influence has kept rising.
- Second, the park has done a good job absorbing that IP traffic and turning it into an entertainment format young people are willing to accept, which has gradually attracted more non-family visitors.
Q: When Pop Land first opened, secondary spending accounted for 72% of spending in its first month. What new moves will you make in merchandise development and food and beverage to further amplify that advantage?
HJ: We are not deliberately trying to raise the share of secondary spending. We hope secondary spending happens naturally. What we care more about is improving the experience. We have also been talking with the merchandise team, hoping that the products we launch in the future can be deeply tied to the park’s settings, landscaping, and the stories we want to tell. That would make them more meaningful.
Q: Does the group set profit targets for Pop Land?
HJ: The park became profitable in its first year after opening. I would prefer that, in the short term, the team not treat profitability as the core metric. Otherwise, the way we do things can easily become distorted. We need to polish the park as a creative work. Profitability and revenue are, of course, important in the long run, but they are not the most important things at this stage.
Internally, we often say we should not measure everything by short-term returns. Although we often make decisions that may not look especially commercial, over the long term, the commercial results tend to turn out quite well.
Q: Compared with other theme parks, where does Pop Land’s differentiation lie?
HJ: There are mainly two points. The first is the differentiation of the IP itself, which is the most important. The second, in my view, is that we have a deep understanding of consumers and can accurately capture user needs. This follows the same logic as when we were making toys.
Q: The newly opened areas have added many large-scale facilities. Why did you choose these facilities? How are they different from those at traditional amusement parks?
HJ: First, I should explain that this first phase of upgrades was not planned completely from scratch. The site itself came with many objective constraints. Many especially novel or cutting-edge formats and pieces of equipment could not be implemented, so the range of options was limited. But even within those limits, we insisted on creating our own differentiation.
We are not a company that makes amusement equipment, and we should not make content to serve the rides. The point is that all rides and technologies should serve our IPs and the experience. That is why we chose equipment that fits the attributes of the IPs.
For example, Labubu is cute, eccentric, and a little mischievous, so the corresponding amusement rides were matched to that temperament. Dimoo, meanwhile, lives in the Kingdom of Clouds and has a dreamy, romantic tone, so the corresponding rides also fit that dreamlike atmosphere.
Second, when we made our choices, we were considering the overall experience.
Let’s start with the drop tower. When designing the landscape, I needed a high point, so we chose a tall piece of equipment. In traditional parks, drop towers emphasize weightlessness and thrills, but that is not our approach. Very early on, I was optimistic about the surrounding lake view, castle, and forest, so we deliberately chose a rotating drop tower. In essence, it is more like an observation tower. It has both the romance of sightseeing and the thrill of falling. It is very conflicted and contradictory, and also very Labubu-like.
Take the carousel. From the beginning, I made it clear to the team that we could not treat the carousel as just an ordinary amusement ride. It had to be a scenic device that serves photography and videography. So we adjusted the exterior design countless times, and the mold-making process was extremely complex. The color palette and even the amount of glitter on the surface were repeatedly tested under different lighting conditions, all to achieve that dreamlike feeling. Yesterday, we were still adjusting the operating speed on-site, from 45 down to 35, because we were worried that if it moved too quickly, it would be inconvenient for people to take photos and videos.
Together with exclusive background music, the overall romantic atmosphere has improved significantly compared with the initial version.
The pirate ship ride also fits Labubu’s state particularly well. We needed a project that leaned more toward thrills, and the pirate ship may be the most thrilling among them. Its packaging took us a lot of effort. From the outside, it looks like a warm and cute Labubu-themed pirate ship. But once it starts running, visitors discover a strong sense of contrast. It is much more thrilling than expected, and the experience is especially intense for those sitting on the two sides.
We also customized exclusive background music for it, incorporating fun Labubu-style chant effects. On-site staff will also work with the atmosphere to drive the rhythm and cheer visitors on. The scene is quite interesting: visitors on the ship are frightened and tense, while visitors below take photos and chant along with the rhythm. It is fun and full of contrast. That sense of appearing gentle on the outside while being mischievous and prankish on the inside is exactly Labubu’s character.
To be honest, there is nothing especially rare about these pieces of equipment. But we hope the overall design and experience can give them some differentiation.
Q: If you set aside the halo of the IPs, what capabilities has Pop Land accumulated since it opened in 2023?
HJ: Setting aside the halo of the IPs is very important. When we first started building the park, we had no experience at all. We were crossing the river by feeling the stones, and along the way, we took many detours and made many mistakes.
Now, the park has been built and operated for nearly three years. We have thoroughly figured out which issues need to be considered upfront during the design stage, and which should be left for optimization during operations. When we work on new projects now, we have mature judgment across site selection assessment, transport accessibility assessment, analysis of a site’s strengths and weaknesses, overall planning and layout, and tenant mix positioning. Faced with all kinds of imaginative design proposals, we can clearly tell which ones can be implemented and which lack the conditions for implementation.
We also know what kinds of partners we need to work with. The entire logic of planning, design, and construction has been run through and is now very mature. From here, we will only make incremental improvements on that foundation.
I said at the time that the most important thing about this project was to use the work to develop people. On one hand, our in-house team has been gradually upgrading. On the other hand, we have also selected and accumulated a group of strong industry partners.
I find the operations side even more interesting. Operations are about contact between people, and they are more important than hardware. All hardware should serve operations.
Pop Mart originally had mature offline retail operations capabilities. Over the past few years, we have gradually accumulated new capabilities: visitor service operations, food and beverage operations, routine live entertainment operations, visitor flow planning, crowd management, and other basic capabilities. Of course, objectively speaking, we are still in a gradual ramp-up stage. Capabilities related to professional amusement ride operations and large-scale themed live entertainment production and operations still need to keep improving.
Q: Pop Land closed the forest area for upgrades when Labubu was at the height of its popularity. What was the reason behind that decision?
HJ: When we made this revamp, we did not consider whether something was hot or not. In our eyes, if the work is not good enough, it has to be optimized and adjusted.
Let me first talk about the original intention behind the revamp. This was planned from the beginning. It was not purely driven by commercial logic. If we only calculated the commercial account and looked at return on investment, the park’s operating data over the years was already very good. In theory, we could have kept things as they were.
But we regard the park as a Pop Mart work, not an ordinary project. At the beginning, because of time, site, and other objective constraints, we ourselves were not satisfied with the effect of the first version. It was as if the answer sheet had not been completed, or had not been answered as well as possible. So we kept iterating.
Q: When the park opened, you mentioned that its iterations would be driven by user feedback. Which key pieces of user feedback did this revamp mainly absorb in determining the direction of iteration?
HJ: From the consumer’s perspective, we did collect a lot of genuine feedback. The two most concentrated points were that people felt the overall park was relatively small, and that its playable content was not rich enough.
In fact, midway through the revamp design process, when quite a few projects were cut, I was already very clear about these issues. Combined with user feedback, that further strengthened our determination to upgrade.
For a park like ours, located in the urban area and subject to multiple constraints, there is no exact benchmark case. We could only explore our own path, so we place particular importance on user voices. At the same time, our understanding of playability has also changed. We no longer think only amusement rides count as playability. When visitors stroll through the park, check in at photo spots, dine, eat a dessert cake with a sense of ceremony, watch performances, or feel the atmosphere, all of these are part of the visitor experience.
Q: What kind of IP is suitable for a theme park? What are the screening criteria? In moving from trendy toy IP to real-world offline park settings, what do you think is the hardest part?
HJ: Let me first explain why we chose the IPs we did for the first phase. The first phase is an urban renewal project, not something drawn on a blank sheet of paper. The site originally had woodland, buildings, and a natural lakeside environment. We could not alter the forest, so we could only match suitable IPs to the character of the site.
Among our IPs, the one that best fits it is Labubu, because Labubu comes from the forest. The castle is very suitable for Molly, and the lakeside was left to the very dreamy Dimoo. That is the logic of the first phase.
In principle, all of our IPs can be adapted into theme park settings. But which one we choose is related to the group’s development plan. For example, the second phase has selected Twinkle Twinkle and Skullpanda, and those choices were finalized after many rounds of communication with the IP team.
Let’s talk about Twinkle Twinkle first. The first time I finished reading its picture book, I felt that this IP had to become a theme park. At that time, the complete picture was already in my mind: character costumes would need to be developed systematically, and programs would need to be choreographed. Even now, I can imagine the overall fairytale atmosphere and visual texture of the Twinkle Twinkle area after the second phase opens. Those images had already taken shape when I was studying the picture book, and our team has spent a long time refining them.
By contrast, something like Skullpanda is actually very difficult to execute according to traditional theme park logic. The IP’s creator is very philosophical in expression and does not want to be confined to any single form. The artistic expression is very diverse, and the styles of each series differ greatly, so adapting it is extremely challenging. Yesterday afternoon, we were still in a meeting, going through again how to build those castles. It will be very interesting. There may not be a second park anywhere in the world that looks like that one. Many of the methods are not commonly used in theme parks, which is also something that makes us very excited.
Q: Is there anything during park operations that makes you anxious?
HJ: Recently, there has been heavy visitor traffic. As soon as we officially opened, traffic was heavy, and that really was a challenge. The current soft opening is preparation for formal operations, but could there still be things we have not thought of? Of course, there may be. We will just work hard to operate the park well.
Q: Pop Mart is making a movie. Will there be some kind of tie-in with its own park in the future?
HJ: The movie is in the planning stage. Once the script becomes more solid, I believe there will definitely be deeper connections in the future.
Q: What role does Pop Land play in the group’s overall strategy? Is there a specific timeline dividing the short term and the long term?
HJ: In the short term, the more important role of the park is still to empower the IPs, turn the IPs into standouts, and make more people like them. That is the most important thing.
The group has two strategies: internationalization and groupwide integration. The park is a very important part of groupwide integration. In the long run, we hope the park can provide more support for the group’s revenue.
Q: Can you disclose anything about Pop Land’s operating income?
HJ: I probably cannot share specific revenue figures. To put it intuitively, it is pretty good.
KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Li Xiaoxia for 36Kr.