Sadly for her, Mickey and Minnie at the new Lantau park don't speak Putonghua.

In fact, none of the characters in any of the park's three shows speaks the mainland's main tongue and the props and voice-overs on all but one of the rides are in English.

Putonghua is used only by the Jungle Cruise tour guides and for safety announcements on all the rides. This might partly explain why the park is running below pre-opening projections on attendance by mainlanders.

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Disney, while acknowledging there is a language disconnect, insists it is only part of the new park's teething pains.

"We are in the process of evaluating language needs now that we have some operating history," said corporate communication director Alannah Goss. "Future plans include dedicated shows in [Putonghua]. We are also looking at sprinkling more [Putonghua] into our overall program where it makes sense."

A breakdown released by Disney last month revealed that the proportion of mainland guests is just 26 percent of the one million visitors since opening.

Before its September 12 opening, the park estimated that its visitors would be split almost equally from Hong Kong, the mainland and overseas.

When Disney announced its attendance figures, including days open to the public during its August free-trial period, the park averaged about 11,000 visitors per day, about 4,000 short of the projected average attendance of more than 15,000.

"I couldn't understand what they were speaking, but guessed what they did by their gestures," said Huang, after watching the Lion King stage show.

In the Broadway-style extravaganza, the songs and most of the dialogues are in English; only two monkeys speak Cantonese.

Seven-year-old Jiang Yun-jie, from Taipei, walked out in the middle of Mickey's PhilharMagic 3-D show, complaining that she couldn't make out the songs.

Mickey and Donald, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and his girlfriend Jasmine, and Simba from The Lion King all sing and speak in English.

In Golden Mickeys, a live-action musical, Mickey, Minnie and the announcer speak in Cantonese and the songs are in English. The only Putonghua is the "ni hao" - "hello" -at the beginning of the show.

This upset 5-year-old Li Xing-yan who came to the park from Shenzhen last weekend with her parents.

"We watch Disney cartoons in [Putonghua] at home, so we are not used to the characters speaking in Cantonese or English," her father explained. "Disney should add [Putonghua] conversations or Chinese subtitles, if they really want to tap into the mainland market."

While the majority of the 500 Disney performers are from Hong Kong, eight nationalities are represented in its performing ranks, including mainland Chinese. About half of Ocean Park's four million visitors last year were from the mainland.