Comcast was pretty clear that declines at Universal’s domestic theme parks were largely driven by Universal Hollywood having a bad quarter and Epic Universe opening expenses. Here’s an excerpt from their earnings call. Comcast President Mike Cavanagh is speaking:
“On theme parks, our first quarter results continued to be stable in Florida. We had preopening expenses for Epic Universe. But excluding that underlying trend stable in Orlando, and what we're seeing for advanced bookings, both ticket sales and hotel bookings are strong for the overall parks and for Epic.
So while I see the same headlines you're sort of seeing about airlines and the like, some of that might be outside the window of our booking windows. But what we're seeing continues to be tracking well. And to your point, some of that is definitely related to the excitement about Epic without a doubt, which -- where reviews and preopening buzz is very strong. And again, ticket sales and advanced plans are a little ahead of our expectations. And so we feel right now, what we see is continued steadiness in the backdrop for parks.
I think one thing that you have to -- our domestic parks do draw a lot of folks from the US and a lot of folks from markets in the South, in the case of Florida that are not necessarily hopping on planes to get there. So there may be a delayed effect between what the airlines are starting to report on and what we see. But like I said, no real sign of that in our business as we sit here now.
And then in L.A., it's all related to getting L.A. back to having the tourism industry broadly recovered after the wildfires. And I think the whole market is continuing to see, people staying away a little bit more than I think the leadership in L.A. broadly or us as a park owner in that market would like it to be. But -- so that's domestic parks. And international trends for Japan and Beijing stable as well.”
It seems like Universal Orlando’s attendance was essentially flat YoY. Both Disney and Universal are having a fine 2025 so far.
