It hasn't been a particularly surprising week for the Walt Disney Company's theme parks division, for two specific reasons. First, it launched a pilot program called the Lightning Lane Premier Pass, which allows a guest to skip all the major attractions at Disneyland or Walt Disney World… as long as there's a few hundred extra dollars per person per day per park. Then, Universal Studios confirmed the rumors online: its new theme park in Orlando, Epic Universe, will open on May 22, 2025. Epic Universe, to be clear, is not Islands of Adventure or any new land added by Universal Studios . Florida; It's a brand new park with some dedicated areas aligned with large areas of IP under the Universal banner. Now, while Epic Universe's impending arrival is no secret, its transition from being a solid reality for guests to a job that's just seven months away makes it a solid (and scary) reality for its competition.
In April 2023, Disney celebrated the 25th anniversary of its fourth theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom. However, Walt Disney World celebrated the latest opening of a new theme park in the 43 square kilometers it covers. It's not that Disney has been dormant for the past 25 years, but comparing the timelines of two competing theme park resorts in the intervening period shows how much you've come to love Disney. Until Universal and not the other way around. A year after Disney's Animal Kingdom opened, Universal's Islands of Adventure opened and never stopped stealing the spotlight from Disney. It's true that Disney opened “Star Wars” and “Avatar” themed areas in the 2010s, but those sections came only after Universal introduced The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at its Florida and Orlando resorts. Universal has opened Volcano Bay, a new water park that is often considered the best in the United States.
Epic Universe, at least as advertised now, has many memorable franchises that Universal has been unable to effectively include in its current parks, leading to the opening of new spaces. In addition to creating a third land themed after the “Harry Potter” franchise, there will be a Dark Universe centered around Universal's monster movies (and hopefully more successful than Universal's mid-2010s cinematic effort to create a Dark Universe); An episode related to the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies; and a Super Nintendo World, which will offer expanded attractions beyond the already much-loved Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge. Of course, there's no guarantee that guests will like the new attractions Universal offers or that there won't be changes in the future. However, the company tends to get off on the right foot more effectively than Disney. Consider Disney's only new theme park in the 21st century, which has had to be remodeled several times.
A blessing of magnitude
When it opened on February 8, 2001, Disney's California Adventure collapsed. The idea of having a new theme park in the Anaheim resort made a lot of sense because the Disneyland theme park had been on its own for over 45 years and was successful enough that a new park would logically work well. But the types of attractions within DCA are either established classics (like the Twilight Zone's Tower of Terror), generic amusement park attractions that feel very different from their smaller siblings, or truly confusing attractions that are guaranteed to fail like Superstar. A limousine where guests ride in a cartoonish version of Hollywood filled with creepy-looking celebrities. (The brilliant Soarin' in California was the only exception). As the decline in travel following the 9/11 terrorist attacks subsided in the mid-2010s, Disney had to get to work restructuring and doing it again. California Adventure (which has now lost that apostrophe in the first word of the name). You can trot out Walt Disney's old quote that Disneyland is not a museum, making sure it never stagnates. But the way Disney needs to rethink the TCA is that it is not effective in allocating resources to Orlando.
Even when Disney announces changes, those changes often don't materialize (or materialize much later than expected). One of the later attempts to adapt TCA occurred in what fans understandably thought was Pixar's “A Bug's Life” themed area at the Avengers complex, which showcased the various heroes and anti-heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. . One of the main attractions is Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!, a remastered version of the aforementioned Tower of Terror (and therefore originally part of a different earth). Aside from some clever dining options, the real new attraction is Web Slingers, where a version of Spider-Man played by Tom Holland has guests fend off an attack of replica spider robots destroying the facility. As part of the recent D23 Expo in Anaheim, Disney announced two new locations for the US version of Avengers Campus. Both will feature the return of Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark (don't get bogged down in logic here, or you'll get a headache). But at the previous D23 exhibition before the Covid-19 pandemic, it also announced big new attractions, such as a major attraction where guests could ride a Quinjet.
Since these notices do not materialize, a park extends beyond a piece of land. (Disney Die Hearts may also recall the promised “Mary Poppins”-themed attraction at Epcot's World Showcase in the UK Pavilion, which also didn't happen.) And it's not for lack of space. As Walt Disney once said, Orlando would provide his company with the blessing of scale, and Disney continues to remind its guests just how big Walt Disney World is. (At 43 square miles, it's twice the size of Manhattan.) Disney has plenty of space to use even if it eliminates any land designated as a nature preserve, but it seems unwilling or nervous to do so while charging guests as much as humanly possible for attractions and experiences that don't perform well. or all.
dark universe
In an ideal world, Disney and Universal wouldn't just be rivals, they would be jockeying for position all the time. Disney has more theme parks than Universal in Orlando and has more space to work with. (Walt Disney World has four theme parks and two water parks, meaning Universal would still be two behind its rival.) But Disney's limitation is that it waits longer than necessary to generate successful ideas. Take one of the biggest and most anticipated announcements from this summer's D23 Expo: A Villains Land is coming to Magic Kingdom. While Disney tries not to scare their younger visitors too much, having a villain-themed land will have big appeal for any fans who are attracted to the scary. It's time to face the present. But if you know Disney history, you'll know that Beastly Kingdom was right at the end of Disney's Animal Kingdom, which may have had an animal theme, but also focused on the villains of Disney animation. The reasons it never materialized are almost irrelevant; The truth is that it didn't happen, and even now it remains an idea rather than a reality.
Sometimes those ideas are driven by real-life events (see the 9/11 attacks and the pandemic mentioned above), but Universal has had no problem adapting to the same events. Disney, like Universal, has a century of material inspiring theme park attractions and has room to compete. Their ads at this summer's D23 show were compelling to varying degrees, like Tropical America. The segment is at Disney's Animal Kingdom. But when you look to the future and realize that Universal is so close to launching a new theme park, it's enough to wonder if Disney is anything like the victims of those monster movies, and that the Dark Universe will be at the center of the new epic universe. Park: He moves too slowly and can't avoid danger. Disney must outrun the lumbering beast, or it may take second place in the future.
