Inside a darkened room at iQiyi’s new theme park in Yangzhou, a city in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, five visitors pull on VR headsets and enter a battlefield from Jeffrey Lau’s 1995 “Journey to the West” spin-off, “A Chinese Odyssey.” As the Monkey King and the Bull Demon King fight above them, the floor vibrates beneath their feet.

“We were riding on a flying cloud while they fought right above us,” recalled Lu Qinyang, one of the participants. “At the very end, the Bull Demon King suddenly grew enormous. It really scared me.”

The battle, based on a 1995 Hong Kong fantasy comedy adapted from “Journey to the West,” was one of several VR experiences Lu tried during a five-hour visit. Opened in February, the park turns iQiyi films and television dramas into immersive attractions.

The park is part of a wider push by Chinese entertainment and consumer brands to turn intellectual property into offline attractions, from screen-based stories to collectible characters and brand mascots.

The projects range from drama-based attractions by Tencent, the tech giant behind WeChat, and a Labubu-themed park area by toy company Pop Mart, to a planned theme park by beverage chain Mixue Bingcheng and reported talks around an attraction by Genshin Impact developer MiHoYo.

The new attractions are designed for younger visitors seeking a lighter, more social outing, rather than full-day theme park trips. Operators are betting they will keep spending once inside — on photos, games, merchandise, and add-on experiences that send the characters and stories back online.

Pocket universe

Ge Qiusha, 25, visited the park with a friend around the Spring Festival holiday, looking for somewhere new to spend the day.

She had been to larger attractions before, including Shanghai Disney Resort and Songcheng Ancient Town in the nearby city of Hangzhou. But iQiyi’s park was in her hometown, and it was built around dramas she already knew.

“When stepping into the same scene from dramas I’ve seen before, it feels natural — like I’ve already known the place,” Ge said.

Instead of relying on roller coasters or large mechanical rides, iQiyi’s most popular shows are broken down into sets, performances, and character encounters.

In the section based on “The Knockout,” the anti-corruption drama that became one of iQiyi’s biggest hits, visitors can walk through recreated locations including the protagonist’s home, with furnishings, street details, and visual cues meant to evoke a small Chinese town in the late 1990s.

Other areas draw the horror detective series “Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty” and the romance drama “To the Wonder.” Ge’s favorite stop was a live adaptation of “Mysterious Lotus Casebook,” a 2023 wuxia mystery series.

“It feels surreal to watch scenes from the screen come to life,” she said.

In the performance, actors leaped through the air and dropped into close-range combat as bursts of water and red lighting cut through the haze. Elsewhere in the park, Ge sang with a costumed performer playing one of the story’s characters, then danced to earn points for small rewards.

Zhang Hang, senior vice president of iQiyi and general manager of its Experience Business Department, said the company chooses stories that can hold together once translated into physical space.

“The IP has to be a complete universe — somewhere with its own geography, rules, and characters that feel alive,” Zhang said. “Otherwise, it stays something you watch, not something you can step into.”

He said the appeal also depends on whether viewers want to remain invested in a show after the original viewing ends. “People don’t come here just for novelty,” he said. “They come because they still want to stay with the story, to meet those characters again, to hold on to that feeling a little longer.”

The format is also designed to be easier to modify than a conventional theme park. With VR tools, modular design, and digital systems, Zhang said, “these spaces can be reconfigured for new IP at lower cost if old ones lose momentum.”

Toy story

At Pop Land, Chinese toy company Pop Mart is testing the same idea through Labubu, its wildly popular collectible toy, in a more compact park format.

That was part of the appeal for Mary Mao, a theme park fan more used to the towering sets, major rides, long lines, and full-day planning of Universal Studios Beijing.

“The ticket price actually feels affordable,” she said. “It’s a smaller park with fewer attractions. Like a more affordable alternative for theme parks like Universal Studios.”

Set inside Chaoyang Park in downtown Beijing, Pop Land covers about 40,000 square meters, roughly one-hundredth the size of Universal Studios Beijing. Tickets start at 88 yuan ($13), or 228 yuan with ride access and carnival tokens; Universal Studios Beijing tickets range from 418 to 748 yuan.

Mao’s favorite game was Wobbly Hoof Derby, a carnival race in which visitors roll balls down arcade-style lanes to move miniature Labubu-topped horses around a track.

What stayed with her more was the atmosphere. In the forest-themed Labubu area, wooden cabins sit among trees, forming a storybook village drawn from Pop Mart’s “The Monsters” universe, where visitors linger, wander, and take photos.

“I really enjoy the vibe here,” Mao said. She was already planning a second visit.

For Yuan Ding, a lecturer at the Shanghai Institute of Tourism at Shanghai Normal University, Pop Land shows how newer attractions are narrowing their focus. Rather than trying to serve the broadest possible audience with large rides and spectacle, they are aimed more directly at younger visitors already immersed in pop culture.

“The focus has shifted toward social interaction and creating ‘check-in’ moments or influencer-style content for social posting,” Yuan said.

The smaller format also lowers the risk for companies. They can test whether visitors will pay to spend time with their characters offline without first building a full-scale theme park. One industry report estimated China’s immersive theme park market at 150 billion yuan in 2025.

Yuan said lower ticket prices help attract visitors, while merchandise, games, and add-on experiences drive much of the revenue. “At places like Pop Mart,” he said, “secondary spending can account for as much as 70% of takings.”

Yuan said homegrown franchises have an advantage because familiar stories, characters, and settings require less explanation for local audiences. “Unlike Western stories and films that require an introduction to their worlds,” he said, classics like “Journey to the West” and everyday local stories are already “part of everyone’s DNA.”

That familiarity also changes what visitors are expected to do inside the park. “Consumers are encouraged to co-create content, whether it’s videos or viral moments,” Yuan said.

Editor: Apurva.

(Header image: A performer dressed as a character from Pop Mart’s popular Labubu series dances for visitors at Pop Land in Beijing, July 16, 2025. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images/VCG)