Southeast Asia’s first Marvel Entertainment theme park is going out of business just seven months after opening.
Marvel Experience Thailand, a 20,000sqm theme park complex which cost 1 billion baht to build at Mega Bangna, will close Jan. 30, the company announced Monday.
Director Prachuap Ucchin of Demeter Corp. PCL, which owns 37.5 percent of the theme park, wrote in a Monday filing to the Stock Exchange of Thailand Monday that a majority of shareholders had voted to shut the park.
“Hero Experience experienced financial problems and project management that did not go according to plan,” Prachuap wrote in the statement.
Calls to Hero Experience and CEO Noppadon Chirasanti went unanswered.
The news was met with little surprised reactions online, where many cited the venue’s high costs of admission – 1,500 baht for adults and 1,350 baht for children – as a fatal flaw. Others noted that, whether due to licensing deal or choice, it was focused on Marvel’s comic books rather than the more popular film franchise.
The latent schadenfreude ran hot and cold.
“You had a good thing in your hand, and you drove it to bankruptcy, what a shame,” Wachira Mahothorn wrote in a Facebook comment that received more than 500 likes. “What were you thinking of with the high ticket fees for people to go in and buy stuff? The rides weren’t memorable enough to be viral. … You flopped due to the high prices and undetailed sculptures.”
The quality of the sculptures of comic book characters which were placed throughout the complex were ridiculed heavily.
“Think of the 320 baht daily wage of Thais when you set the ticket prices. I’m a true Marvel fan, and I can’t make myself buy a ticket to set foot in that place,” Nantapop Tiemkum wrote, “I’m also afraid the sculptures look like they came from a temple fair.”
Marvel Experience will remain open daily for one week until Jan. 29, with last admission at 6pm. The Marvel Experience launched in 2014 in the United States and opened in Bangkok on June 29.
“To all Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Marvel Experience Thailand had assigned you a mission to protect the world alongside the Marvel heroes,” read the announcement posted last night to the Marvel Experience Thailand page. “Today, the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization would like to announce that the mission is about to be complete.”
