articos
Well-Known Member
Mark Schirmer
-
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Spirited News & Observations II -- NGE/Baxter
- Thread starter WDW1974
- Start date
articos
Well-Known Member
Not quite correct to call Universal Hollywood a resort. NBCU's "Evolution Plan" has been an ongoing evolving master plan they've been fighting to get thru the County, City and neighbors for years now. The new master plan involves the Studio, which takes up the majority of the property, the theme park and CityWalk, hotels, office space and back of house. The Evolution Plan has more to do with the Studio property than the park, although it does include some major changes to the park and CityWalk, including 2 new hotels on the hill. Re: WWOHP USH, the centerpiece is Hogwarts, with the same ride as FL, but the rest of WW USH is unique to USH due to the space limitations.
articos
Well-Known Member
Iger and Rasulo when it comes down to it. @Lee and others here are correct. Disney did chase HP and they went pretty far down the road with JK. To be fair, Warner and JK met with multiple entities over the possibilities of HP within a theme park setting. Disney was a front runner. There were concepts presented, but JK's requirements for control were not within Disney's comfort, and they felt nervous about the amount of the check they were looking at writing to create what she felt would be up to her standards. There was also a great deal of nervousness over trying to meet her requests while not ing off existing corporate relationships who would want to be included in the HP deal. They decided the difficulties would outweigh the benefits of making the deal, and they passed. When they passed, Universal knew there was an opportunity, and Universal smartly took a risk and gave JK carte blanche. Iger has since privately admitted he made a major mistake. There was no coordination of any sort between Disney and Universal - each presented separately, and all discussions were exclusive of each other. Universal did have some moments where the budget kept blossoming due to JK's demands, and everyone was nervous about whether they made a good decision...and then they looked at the bridge by Margaritaville opening day...
alphac2005
Well-Known Member
Exactly where did I state that? Nowhere. Make an addendum: Those multinationals in most other western countries do exactly what you said and what I said. And lets be honest, charity by corporations in this country are generally done for tax advantages, not out of the common good. That's reality.
alissafalco
Well-Known Member
Well, as it stands now both parks and city walk ARE already linked together. You can walk between all of them and when Hp 2.0 opens you can ride back and forth. As for the 3 rd gate not sure...
ParentsOf4
Well-Known Member
According to TEA, the year before WWOHP opened (2009), IOA attendance was 4.627M. The first full year after it opened (2011), IOA was 7.674M. By any measure, 66% theme park attendance growth in 2 years is phenomenal.
Over the same period, total WDW attendance was flat.
Take WWOHP as it was built, plop it in the middle of DHS and, IMHO, DHS would have leapfrogged to become the fourth or perhaps third most popular theme park in the world.
Disney had a chance to bury Universal with HP and blew it. All because Disney management thought they knew better. Executives are fired over less costly mistakes. But not at Disney. Rasulo is part of the inner circle. Now Disney is fumbling around with Avatar, an IP no one is excited about, while Universal undergoes the growth that WDW experienced in the 80's and 90's.
jt04
Well-Known Member
I agree that Disney could have buried Universal, Sea World etc. They choose not to. Get back to me when you have that story because I would love to know the details.
And plenty of people around here have expressed excitement about Pandora. I'd rather see other IP's developed but there is no doubt there are plenty of Avatar fans out there. Especially within Disney's main target demographics.
alphac2005
Well-Known Member
Adding to what we're already taken off the rails
, but makes for very interesting conversation, with the system where for-profit "universities" (e.g. Kaplan, University of Phoenix, ITT, etc.) are owned by private equity and their main vehicle for profit is to funnel nearly 90% of their students into federally backed student loans that in-turn have a repayment failure rate of somewhere hovering around 45%, which is infinitely higher than students at public and private establishments. So, as taxpayers, we're helping private equity make a small fortune and then are on the hook for bad loans. Not to mention that there is a negative connotation to the true value of those degrees by employers. More money is spent on marketing than on the education materials, professors, etc. in those for-profit outfits.A good friend of mine graduated from an ivy league university back in '00. The tuition including room and board was a rather pricey $32k/yr, fast forward to '13 and it's $62k/yr. That isn't because of increased costs with faculty, property upkeep, etc. It's another example of a systemic problem making college unaffordable to the masses again. Your point about technical schools is on the money. People have stigmatized for so long that tech schools are for dummies, worthless, etc., and that's so far from the truth. Instead of this nonsense that everyone is going to be rich and a top one percenter while seemingly ignoring that we now have one of the worst rates of social mobility in the western world's economies, the truth is that not everyone is cut out or wants a standard college career. There are so many industries where you can make a terrific income with technical degree.
We actually have a rather high rate of unfilled jobs in the country because we have so many unskilled trade workers. It's funny that for the most part, the guys that I know that are skilled workers today do vastly better than the ones that I know that are office workers.
alphac2005
Well-Known Member
Plenty of people around here are desperate for nearly anything new to be built. There isn't a chance in the world that Pandora is some game changer and long term attendance building machine for AK.
misterID
Well-Known Member
It definitely won't be a game changer the way it's being described now.
jt04
Well-Known Member
If it has been scaled back then I think it will compare with Antarctica. If it is full land than it will depend on content.
Disney acquired Lucasfilm since the Pandora decision so I think anything is possible this decade. I am sure priorities change on almost a daily basis. We will know more either today or in August. I am still optimistic.
Darth Sidious
Authentically Disney Distinctly Chinese
i would say the best thing to do is wait until we get details..it might be getting scaled back so DAk can also have a night time show of some sort... i hate getting in the avatar debate again because its old but if done right it will definitely increase DAK's attendance
IHeartArt
Active Member
Isn't it already beginning to suffer from the "economic model" philosophy of paring back from blue sky phase already?
Screamscape just said that they're possibly announcing a new ride for Epcot today. Anybody heard anything about this?
alphac2005
Well-Known Member
I think that you can easily make the case that Avatar will increase Animal Kingdom's attendance, but the odds are that it'll be within the pool of people already coming. I skipped over all the Avatar threads, so I don't want to expand much since you noted its been talked about big time. I just don't think many people are going to book trips to WDW just because they can visit the world of Avatar, which would be the polar opposite from what has happened to Universal with Harry Potter.
Darth Sidious
Authentically Disney Distinctly Chinese
Isn't it already beginning to suffer from the "economic model" philosophy of paring back from blue sky phase already?
Screamscape just said that they're possibly announcing a new ride for Epcot today. Anybody heard anything about this?
http://www.clickorlando.com/news/lo...small/-/1637132/19879412/-/we8tl/-/index.html
The 'big' announcement is a play on Monsters Inc. I doubt they have anything of great substance.
Edit: it does seem that day 2 is an Around the World event. I still wouldn't expect much.
There's the proverbial rub.....