Universal Exec remembers having thought of Wicked ‘Set “was a theme park waiting to perform”
Three months after its great opening, Epic Universe beats the internal forecasts and the park has a lot of space between its five current lands to extend them or fix new ones, said the president and chief executive officer of Universal Destinations & Experiences, Mark Woodbury today.
Asked at a press conference on a possible Wicked earth, he said. “I think I have to stir this pot. When I saw the Wicked sets, [I] said it was a theme park waiting to happen. “”
“If you fly over Epic or watch Google Earth, you will see how we planned the park, and you will see a green construction space between the existing worlds. And this is strategically positioned to give us flexibility to develop the world or create a new world,” he told investors at the Bofa Securities Media, Communications & Entertainment conference. “I have nothing to announce specifically in the form of attractions, but I can tell you that there are several in progress attractions, not only at Epic.”
The first new American themed park in 25 years opened at the end of May with Super Nintendo World, the Wizard World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, how to train your Dragon – Isle of Berk, Celestial Park and Dark Universe.
As much as analyst Jessica Reif Erlich has produced, Woodbury refused to give a number of all kinds for epic post-launch. “We are very happy,” he said.
We “do not give up specific advice on EPIC, but I can tell you that performance on food and drinks and goods considerably exceed our expectations, and that the EPIC front door is a premium compared to the other two parks. And then when you look at the additional growth of attendance in the complex, and combined with those by caps, this is a fairly large start. ” He thinks that Epic will increase the Orland theme parks on the whole as well as to increase the Universal market share. The largest rival Walt Disney is also investing.
A new park in London is the next thrust of large tickets with an opening scheduled for 2031. Universal is in the consultation process, after having submitted 10,000 pages of documents to the government to support the project. His own reasonable diligence and tests showed 93% support for the project in the community, he said. “We asked 18,000 people to register on our application to come and work for us, 2,000 suppliers on the market who want to be part of this development. Our hope is therefore that this process will go very well. But parks are complex organizations and it takes infrastructure, in the form of rail expansion and highway ramps and things like that.
Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, which will be 25 years old next year, seems ready for a good ride, because the Japanese government is putting pressure to increase the country’s tourism by 50%, to around 60 million people per year. Woodbury said that a seven tourist in Japan Visit Universal Studios.
Meanwhile, the Comcast division is expanding its horror imprint as well as with younger children and on the local markets to bring the universal brand to new audiences. This includes the opening of universal horror all year round in Las Vegas next week – an extension of seasonal popular Halloween horror nights at Orlando and Hollywood – and Universal Kids Resort parks in Frisco, Texas, targeting children from three to eight and relying on a younger intellectual property pipeline.
Frisco “allows us to segment the public and segment our property portfolio and, in doing so, build a regional product which is in a way a rite of passage for families, and much more accessible for young families in a regional form. They can arrive at this park from all over Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas. ” He will open next year with a 300 -room hotel.
The next unleashed horror is scheduled for Chicago in 2028, Woodbury said.
