BringMeTheHoriz
Well-Known Member
Owning properties is different than holding rights to properties. For Nintendo and HP, it’s the latter.
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Universal Epic Universe (South Expansion Complex) - Now Open!
- Thread starter Bob Harlem
- Start date
Owning properties is different than holding rights to properties. For Nintendo and HP, it’s the latter.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
That was my commentary. They have to look outside themselves for fandoms and seem a bit resistant to building it themselves. With the one exception that HHN has some sub culture behind it.
BringMeTheHoriz
Well-Known Member
Sorry I misread that!
Agent H
Well-Known Member
I would argue Jurassic Park is one more exception.
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
It's done on this way on purpose to slowly increase capacity til they know the attractions are running with little downtime. IMO it's a great idea.
I will last commentary like this and others is part where my disdain for what's happened to Disney. The Disney fandom is very snobby in that many look down at parks that aren't Disney.
MrPromey
Well-Known Member
I think they just gave themselves too much time to fill. Back in the olden days when every other park opened in central Florida, this was done on broadcast TV. They got what? Two hours tops (with commercials) to do this kind of thing, right?
This went for - wasn't it close to four and a half hours?
How the heck do you fill that much time and actually keep it interesting?
I believe the luxury of Youtube being able to remove all constraints was their downfall. I think there was a good two hours of solid stuff within that stream and if they'd only done two hours and focused on that substance, it would have played a lot better.
I get it. People in the company are excited about opening this after over 25 years of planning and speculation and they want to make sure every point of pride is known and interview every single person they can and point out every single thing they can think of, using hosts who display exaggerated excitement over the most uninteresting things - like the general merch - but it feels like they basically lost sight of their audience when setting this up.
Instead of live-streaming what must have been a five hour event meant for the people in attendance, they should have recorded it, edited it overnight and then played it on the actual evening it opened.
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Tom Morrow
Well-Known Member
Should it be concerning that almost every ride is a walk on and it’s the first Saturday of official opening AND it’s Memorial Day weekend?
I understand they capped the attendance low, but I get the feeling this is lower than even that.
I understand they capped the attendance low, but I get the feeling this is lower than even that.
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
Doesn't this happen with every new theme park?
People think it's going to be super busy which leads it to be ironically not busy?
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
It’s not the next six weeks, but rather the ticket sell through once they open up to 22k. It’s pretty interesting they are able to scrape how many tickets remain for sale each day. The park isn’t going to get remotely close to its 7.5-8M capacity for quite a while, if that’s predictive.
Though, as I said, I don’t really know theme park booking curves and maybe they tend to be very close in.
Shanghai was pretty busy. Other than opening day, which started at noon and was definitely capacity limited. This seems to be a capacity limitation issue, I wonder if they’ll just open up more sales. There’s little point in it being “sold out” and running walk on lines.
On the flip side, maybe they are caught off guard that Ministry is suddenly working.
EricsBiscuit
Well-Known Member
Been on it today twice and it does feel smoother than during the previews.
It kind of reads like you are creating a darned if they do, darned if they don't. They let the creative side of it introduce the firework and drone as a night time ribbon cutting.
Much like Spielberg with the film cutting strip and VIPs in 1990
Or Spielberg and the inflatables and Spidey from Chopper for early in 1999
This WAS a very Universal tradition kind of pre ceremony.
I think it is great that Universal is willing to be transparent and let the creative makers be a bit of a voice. Woodbury may not be well known name, but ultimately, people make the park happen. So it was kind of a nice dedication. And again, it was a red carpet kind of night that as a courtesy was broadcasted. It was not really an open to guests kind of deal.
They did a lot of that for that with the vignettes and Special moments the morning of showmanship, which if we want to talk about if that is enough, that is a different discussion altogether.
So it is not likely they did NOTHING creative for opening on the actual day.
If Joe Rhode got to introduce Animal Kingdom to a select night of guests before Animal Kingdom's opening day, no one would think much of it. Disney is just not typically that transparent. Mark Woodbury was completely in the lead for Epic's creation. He only moved to exec of Parks and Resorts just over 3 years ago.
The sales are in higher numbers as the days continue. In the next weeks people will be jealous of what these first attendees got. The park has opened as the most tested theme park of all time and things are going fairly well for now as tweaks continue.
Shanghai of course was busy because it was one of the largest populations anywhere no matter what time of year. Memorial Day kick off here had many preview days before it where the vloggers and hype have already occured.
Also every person there is paying full or near full price admission and having a great GSAT, which is great for the company.
No TMs or APs allowed to enter gratis is what you are seeing the result of. Everything to plan on that front anyway.
I mean 3/5ths (and arguably Illumination holds interest in Mario's success but I won't count that) is Universal owned when it comes to EPIC.
Not too far off of DHS when you consider that up until recently MGM/DHS was about the same situation. Disney had yet to own Star Wars, RnR had an artist they no longer owned the catelogue for, Great Movie Ride was filled with others including generic horror scene and CBS with TW Zone, all while playing the Superman and Potter themes from WB in park's music loop. The rides created did not suffer though. (we could go back even further to where Pixar and Muppets were partnerships)
All this being said, it is not a competition in park specific of who owns what completely, but how well things are done and sell, and Uni is fine giving 40 cents for every Butterbeer to WB or 7 bucks for every band to Nintendo.
Walt was not above partnerships himself either. He tried for a lot that would not sell and of course some are famous ones like deals with PL Travers.
flynnibus
Premium Member
The ticketing is also highly constrained in this stupid limited park visiting and mandatory add-on model.
You're not going to get normies to jump through all those hoops without a huge drag on their conversion success.
I think it is much like Disneyland with SWGE - they put up so many constraints and hurdles that they didn't just tame the demand.. they outright nerfed it.
I mean it's better to run light than to blow up and fall over completely... but they need to make the park more accessible to the gen pop to see big add-ons and pull through IMO.
BringMeTheHoriz
Well-Known Member
Excellent reminder that everyone in there is currently paying full freight. $180 x 13,000 =$2,340,000.00. Multiply that by 30 days and that’s $70M before you get into food and merchandise. Obviously there’s massive costs with running a park but clearly Universal has made the decision to ensure that for the full price guests are paying they are in turn provided a great experience. Something to be said for a company not trying to max out capacity right out of the gate when they easily could.
I do agree that Ministry working with the adjustments has caught them off guard. But with it seemingly working more reliably they must feel confident in adding more tickets day of without it having a negative impact on GSAT.
Overall I think what we’re seeing is Universal trying to control how this park is launched and so far everything is going how they want it to.
As the ole saying goes, if they are not waiting in line, they have more opportunities to spend money.
The guest spending here has been healthy.
About two weeks ago more park day tickets were added when the park's operations were going smoothly. This is what has resulted in some ticket avalibility for the few days after opening. You will notice June dates are selling out again.
Hotel bookings are also very healthy and from what I can tell above projection, which is part of the major goal of the park as well. So many of the people paying near full freight also have spent time in the other property parks.
Look at the Express sales still. Because of operations more were unlocked but you will notice most days in June are also very sold out for express even with added availability.
As for the complicated method proposed argument from some. Not really. If you want more than Just Epic, You can book a package, if you want just Epic, you buy a ticket. Nothing really complicated about it and is kind of funny when you consider how booking things can get complex and tiered these days. If days and express passes are selling out, then it is not too complicated.
And soon HHN based ticket packages will be out to keep the bookings healthy.
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flynnibus
Premium Member
Wow man.. can you take the blinders off?
It's constrained.
Is it the same as the other UNI parks? NO
Can you goto Uni on a multi-day ticket and visit Epic as much as you want like the other parks? NO
Can you goto Epic and get discounts for visiting more? NO - you have to buy multiple single day tickets.
Can I book a room package and just buy the epic days I want? No.. you gotta go full ala carte.
Can you get around these constraints? Yes, as long as you are willing to just pay your way at full price on top of everything else.
None of this is how the rest of the parks run. It's not the same as visiting the other parks, and is variations customers have to account for, or show up naive and get severely disappointed.
Constrained(which is a funny word choice, but really its controlled, but we will go with it) does not equate to complicated.
Its working and earning money.
It is not like they are selling Annual Passes that include the park and you are playing a guessing game of when you are good to go or not.
People really hate that this is working huh?
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
They likely would not be breaking even in this range. Let alone be getting a stellar return. We know operationally from a lot of Disney parks what the operation margins are. Perhaps the ticketing pricing helps, but sub 5 million guests wouldn’t cut it. We’re talking half the money that Disney brings in on after hours events here, which they are double dipping on an operational day.
But again, it’s not now that I care about - It’s July/August when they aren’t even selling through 10k tickets. Like I said, I don’t know the booking curves and will be watching them. I actually do really want this park to do well for the sake of the industry. The other thing we don’t know is how much redistribution is occurring from their other gates and the evidence seems to suggest a moderate amount so far.