Easy-access entrances blocked at pavilions

Some tourists pretending to be disabled to avoid long waits

SHANGHAI - Some pavilions have made changes to easy-access entrances and stamps on Expo passports in reaction to growing chaos among tourists in the Expo Garden.

"Due to the increase of tourists, serious disputes between tourists and our staff have occurred a few times over the easy-access policies in the pavilion. We've made the decision to shut down the easy access temporarily," Lynn Yang, communication director of Sweden Pavilion, said.

The Sweden Pavilion has cancelled the easy-access entrance for the disabled, elderly, pregnant women and babies early this week. According to the statistics, the average number of tourists for the Sweden Pavilion is 20,000 daily, and 20 percent of them take the easy access.

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Official statistics from the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination showed that the total number of visitors has exceeded 8.7 million, which is expected to exceed 10 million by the end of this week.

"Still, we will let certain tourists who really have difficulties for long-time queuing enter the pavilion via easy access. We just want the tourists to understand that we have the duty to maintain order in the pavilion," Lynn said.

Similarly, the Poland Pavilion has changed the target groups for easy access or VIP access according to peak and off-peak hours.

"The easy-access entrance won't be open to the elderly but only to the disabled and pregnant women during peak hours, considering the safety and security issues," said Li Jialiang. The operation manager of the Poland Pavilion promised that the longest waiting time for the pavilion wouldn't exceed half an hour.

Some tourists have fought with staffers and pretended to be disabled, which has been noticed by crews in the Expo Garden.

"Some people sit in wheelchairs when they approach the express entrance," said Su Tieshan, a gatekeeper at the express entrance of Australia Pavilion. "When they get into pavilion, they walk around as a normal person."

For certain tourists, the alterations on easy-access entrances annoyed them a bit.

"I came to visit the Sweden Pavilion with my 73-year-old mom, but they refused to let us take easy access. Although my mother is not old enough to use a wheelchair, standing in the waiting line for an hour is too tiring for her," Cao Yongbing from Liaoning province complained.

In addition to the changes on easy-access entrances, pavilions have restricted the stamps on Expo passports or even cancelled the stamping service altogether.

At the moment, only Norway Pavilion has confirmed that the stamping service has been called off.

For the other pavilions, the number of stamps one person could get is limited to prevent scalpers from earning money from Expo passports.

Both the Indonesia and Ireland pavilions have limited the number of stamps for each person to two, while the Poland Pavilion allows four stamps and Finland offers five.

"We've stopped stamping because our stamp was broken and we put the new one in use from today (June 3) again. We have to limit the number of stamps each person can get to two because we only want to offer the visitors who have been to the pavilion with stamps," said Amy-Yin Zhang, media officer of Ireland Pavilion.

"I felt a bit disappointed because I bought six passports to give as gifts to my relatives and friends, though I could understand their purpose to avoid scalpers making profits from Expo passports, " said a woman surnamed Zhou from Beijing.