nickys
Premium Member
1. That’s the initial plan.
2. London is close by, with thousands of hotels and millions of hotel rooms.
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Universal UK
- Thread starter Robbiem
- Start date
2. London is close by, with thousands of hotels and millions of hotel rooms.
Sorcerer Mickey
Well-Known Member
No SLoP in Minions because it's getting its own land on the left-side of the concept art. Check out the coaster, "Secret Life of Pets: Max Speed".
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
By all means, that was Eisner’s folly with Euro Disneyland.
But we’re talking 500 versus 5800. It strikes me as an insane reduction or extreme caution. I’m just surprised there’s no 1000 bed value.
Interesting, I really do hope they have some British themed areas and attractions unique to the park. A middle earth land would be great and help fill the potter gapNo indication of how reliable the source is here, but it suggests LotR and Bond could already have contracts signed.
James Bond and Paddington could star at Universal UK
Lord of the Rings and 007 – but not Harry Potter – are expected at the Bedfordshire theme park.www.bbc.co.uk
nickys
Premium Member
And if not LotR then Wicked is also an option. More kid orientated though.
A rough back of a beer mat sketch of medium term plots; red in existing parks. Yellow hotels. Green 3rd park.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Universal Kids Resort has a 300 key hotel. That should be telling about the scope and scale of this project.
nickys
Premium Member
The park is less than an hour from London. The vast majority of visitors will stay there, or in Oxford, Cambridge etc and travel to the park. And I put money on more hotels springing up nearby to attract those who want to stay overnight nearer to the park.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure that's really a strong counter -- there are tens of thousands of hotel rooms in Orlando where people could stay and yet Universal keeps building more on-site hotels.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
I was going to trot that out, but you know the response I get when I try to conceptualize how small of an investment that is to the broader forum. And to be fair, I expect this investment is still many, many times larger.
I think running this against Shanghai Disney (1220), Universal Beijing (1200) and minorly though the market is different Epic (2250) invites fair comparison.
Though I don’t think this indicates the park is inferior by that order of magnitude like it does Universal Kids. But rather it’s a soft vote of cost containment and caution upfront. Which will likely lead to one or two further cut backs in the final product. Ironically I don’t see how Waterworld jives with the claim the park is only 4 lands plus the hub.
How is this meaningfully different than every other park built adjacent to major tourist cities? It’s actually further away.
I think this speaks towards they are aiming for a more local one day park (or day trip) initially and we’re in for a bit of a longer journey until it’s more of a destination resort requiring rooms.
More Universal Hollywood (even though it’s styled after Beijing).
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
I’m well aware of its location. This isn’t going to be a huge park.
Correct, it’s not that small but it’s still aiming to be more cost effective than Beijing or the South Campus. Even the announcement indicates they expect it to do less business than Universal Studios Hollywood.
nickys
Premium Member
I think the problem here is you are all thinking way too big here. This is not Orlando! UK visitors go to Orlando for 2-3 weeks in the sun. There they visit theme parks a lot of their time.
Universal are deciding to open a park in Europe. And thanks to some deals on infrastructure they’ve settled on Bedford, some 60 miles from London and right in the middle of 2 other tourist magnet cities.
The U.K. have theme parks already! Alton Towers at one point had more rides than Universal Orlando. But they too only have around 510 hotel rooms on site. Because the vast majority of U.K. visitors go for the day. It’s a day out. Schools take kids there after exam time. Families head there for the day. When it’s nice! Even if they stay nearby they seek out a cheap hotel room at a Travelodge, Premier In or Holiday Inn and drive to the park for the day.
Could it possibly be that Universal have studied the ways of U.K. visitors to theme parks and are thinking they’ll follow the same pattern here? But also obviously looking to be an international destination so catering to those that want to stay onsite. As numbers grow they may build further resorts of their own.
Like I said though, I fully expect every hotel chain to be opening at least one hotel near by. And Universal are probably banking on that. Rather than over- building on resorts only to find the cheap-skate Brits are staying at the Travelodge at £50 a night.
By 2030 when this has taken shape, I’m quite sure hotels will have been built all around the area with hundreds more rooms for visitors.
Universal are deciding to open a park in Europe. And thanks to some deals on infrastructure they’ve settled on Bedford, some 60 miles from London and right in the middle of 2 other tourist magnet cities.
The U.K. have theme parks already! Alton Towers at one point had more rides than Universal Orlando. But they too only have around 510 hotel rooms on site. Because the vast majority of U.K. visitors go for the day. It’s a day out. Schools take kids there after exam time. Families head there for the day. When it’s nice! Even if they stay nearby they seek out a cheap hotel room at a Travelodge, Premier In or Holiday Inn and drive to the park for the day.
Could it possibly be that Universal have studied the ways of U.K. visitors to theme parks and are thinking they’ll follow the same pattern here? But also obviously looking to be an international destination so catering to those that want to stay onsite. As numbers grow they may build further resorts of their own.
Like I said though, I fully expect every hotel chain to be opening at least one hotel near by. And Universal are probably banking on that. Rather than over- building on resorts only to find the cheap-skate Brits are staying at the Travelodge at £50 a night.
By 2030 when this has taken shape, I’m quite sure hotels will have been built all around the area with hundreds more rooms for visitors.
nickys
Premium Member
Compared to the other Universal parks, no it isn’t big. Compared to most European theme parks though, it seems like it might be double the size, even if they only use half the land they’ve purchased. Certainly they’re aiming to be the biggest.
The U.K. will never be Orlando. Nowhere in Europe will ever come close to the US parks.
Edit: the point being it doesn’t have to compete with the US parks. This is competing with DLP, Efteling and some others. DLP is easily accessible, Efteling is not unless you can drive there.
This is presumably aimed at the millions for whom a trip to the US is out of the question, ever.
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BrianLo
Well-Known Member
To be fair to them, if we’re going to talk about things that actually make me annoyed: the regionalizing of a Universal Beijing park is less bad than diminishing their brand with a cheap limited demo kid offering. This will eventually get better.
But boy am I fairly alone on that island - and damn if I wasn’t briefly hopeful the company had majorly pivoted and believed in actual theme park as an art form for a brief window 5-7 years ago. At least I get to experience that lovely window this Fall.
Maybe Nintendo can at least rattle the cage a bit and hold them accountable.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
You are correct of course.
But our complaint was never that it isn’t Orlando, but that it isn’t Beijing or Shanghai or Paris.
It seems to be more Hong Kong+… and I adore Hong Kong, but it took a while.
Alton and even Thorpe appear to be bigger. Alton of course has positioned itself as a destination resort.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
I’m not even really complaining or being cynical. Universal has done the thing so many complain about with Disney, they’ve announced very early in the design process and released surprising clear art. This looks similar to the Epic Universe art, and that was released nearer to the end of its design process. It also still lost offerings between then and now. It’s a lot of hype that doesn’t really align with the project.
Shanghai and Beijing are waytoo big of a template for the UK market. The amusement business seems to be going through some contraction and consolidation (all the more reason for Merlin to be worried).
Hong Kong Disneyland is probably the best similarity. The problem is that includes the whole package of trying to do a smaller, cheaper park that leverages existing concepts with expectations that don’t align to that scale.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
And Universal is expecting to do 3.6x the visitation of Alton Towers in their first year.
nickys
Premium Member
But other than “theme park fans” they probably aren’t going to attract Europeans to visit in the same way that Universal will.
Alton Towers is for rides, whereas Universal is going to draw visitors in with themed IP lands.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
Precisely. Hong Kong was modeled after Disneyland whereas this is modeled after Beijing…
Beyond which has better bones, my hopefulness was Universal would at least build something new-ish and bespoke. Like a Singapore. I never quite imagined the model was literally going to be Beijing.