It’s been an unusually busy week in the theme park industry. On Tuesday we saw three separate announcements coming from Disney covering everything from new fireworks shows to major new policy changes at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Then on Wednesday, Universal made an even bigger announcement when they revealed plans for two new themed entertainment locations in Texas and Las Vegas. For those of us that cover the industry, it’s been a lot busier than usual, and even the Universal Orlando Twitter account gets it.
We didn’t really expect an announcement on Wednesday of the size that we got from Universal Parks & Resorts. The company is already in the middle of building a massive new theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe, so you’d think that would be enough for now. Instead we learned that a small family focused park is now planned for Texas, and a smaller location dedicated to horror is on the way in Las Vegas. Those are both exciting plans, but at two very different extremes, sort of like the ups and downs of a roller coaster. Universal Orlando Resorts' Twitter put it like this.
What a ROLLER COASTER day of announcements.January 11, 2023
There’s a lot that we still don’t know about these new locations. The Texas locations will include a small theme park and a hotel and will be geared toward families with younger children. It sounds, and in concept art even looks, a lot like a Legoland style park. But we don't know exactly when Universal is looking to open it.
The Las Vegas horror facility is much smaller, and thus will likely open much sooner, but we are missing many details there as well. Horror and Universal go hand in hand, as Halloween Horror Nights is the most popular event at the Florida and California parks, and this new facility sounds like it will be a sort of permanent installation of a Horror Nights like experience, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
And honestly, the roller coaster of theme park news has continued since then. Yesterday we learned that Disneyland is planning to create Tiana’s Palace restaurant, an updated version of the existing French Market, as part of the park’s re-theme of Splash Mountain. This was then followed by a soft opening of Universal Studios Hollywood’s Super Nintendo Land. The land isn’t set to open officially until next month, but the warp pipe opened on a technical rehearsal, allowing guests to experience the land, with the caveat that things may not be working at 100% quite yet.
And all these announcements in the theme park sphere are just the beginning of what is going to be a busy few months. In addition to the official opening of Super Nintendo World next month we will see Disneyland open a completely refurbished Mickey’s Toontown in March, though the land’s marquee new attraction, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, is set to open in just a couple of weeks. If the rest of 2023 is anything like this month is shaping up, it’s going to be very exciting, and very busy.
