Legoland Shanghai Resort celebrates one year anniversary on July 5, 2026 photo: Che Xia/ GT

Colorful dance performances, live stage shows and a towering anniversary cake built entirely from LEGO bricks took center stage at Legoland Shanghai Resort on Sunday, as the venue threw a vibrant celebration to mark the first anniversary of its grand opening.

Over its debut 12 months, the landmark theme resort has drawn more than 2 million visitors, setting a record for first-year attendance among all Legoland resorts worldwide, serving as a powerful testament to foreign investors' robust confidence in China's resilient, expansive consumer market.

"The number of visitors is higher than we expected for the first year. We have 11 Legoland Resorts across the world and no other resorts have achieved this many visitors in the first year. It also ranked first across our 11 parks in guest satisfaction," John Jakobsen, Chief Strategic Portfolio Development Officer of Merlin Entertainments, told the Global Times on Sunday. "On that basis, we are very confident in the future."

Jakobsen noted that this robust growth momentum mirrors surging demand among Chinese families and that the group remains fully committed to its long-term development in the country.

"After one year operation, we've seen that Chinese families increasingly value quality time and stronger family connections," he said.  "LEGOLAND Shanghai is the single biggest project we have ever undertaken. Its continued success and expansion are a key focus for us. We see huge potential still for LEGOLAND Shanghai."

In addition to Legoland, leading global cultural tourism conglomerates have kept ramping up investment in China, making the country a favored destination for overseas investment.

In June Shanghai Disney Resort celebrated its 10th anniversary. It has welcomed more than 100 million visitors during its first decade and created 15,000 direct jobs. It unveiled details of its new Spider-Man-themed land and hotel expansion at the milestone event.  

Over in Beijing's Tongzhou district, Asia's first Ferrari World complex is set to be built. The complex will house the world's fastest roller coaster, an e-sports park, a Ferrari museum and exclusive club spaces. It is expected to receive 1.8 million visitors every year, the China Media Group reported.

The stellar performance of foreign-invested cultural tourism projects serves as a microcosm of robust domestic demand in China, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

In particular, the ongoing surge in cultural and tourism consumption this summer, backed by steady consumer demand and continuously upgraded consumption patterns, has kept drawing foreign investors to expand their presence in China, providing sustained impetus for the high-quality development of the country's domestic service and consumer markets, Wang noted.

Market data further mirrors a robust consumption boom sweeping China's summer tourism market. 

Chinese online travel platform Trip.com Group revealed that national family travel reservations for this summer climbed 13.6 percent year-on-year, marking steady growth in parent-child tourism demand. Separately, Fliggy's report recorded a more than 40 percent year-on-year jump in summer travel searches on its platform. Family travelers and college students serve as core driving forces, with their respective booking volumes rising by 31 percent and 58 percent compared with last year.

China's ultra-large domestic market underpins its tourism sector, backed by a population of over 1.4 billion. Surging demand for family trips and premium leisure guarantees steady visitor flows and profit potential for foreign cultural tourism projects, Wang said.

"Consumption upgrading brings sustained long-term dividends. Chinese families now favor high-quality, immersive family getaways over simple sightseeing, which aligns perfectly with the product strengths of operators such as Merlin Entertainments and creates solid room for their long-term development in China," Wang noted.

China's retail sales of goods and services, a major indicator of the country's consumption strength, increased by 2.8 percent year-on-year in the first five months of 2026, official data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

"As China's development stage evolves and consumption scenarios become increasingly diverse, demand for services is being unleashed at a faster pace and has become an important driver of consumption growth, making retail sales of services an important indicator for observing consumption trends," NBS Spokesperson Fu Linghui told the press.

Retail sales of services increased by 5.4 percent in the January-May period from a year earlier, while that of goods rose 1.2 percent, the NBS data revealed.

China saw 25,297 newly established foreign-invested firms in the first five months of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 5.3 percent, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce.

Actual foreign direct investment in May alone rose 5.9 percent year on year, the data showed.