Fascinating news! And good news for the American theme parks, to be sure. Although it will take at least 3 or 4 years for anything to bear fruit in the parks from this deal.
Tomorrow is Halloween (obviously), and my Villa Park, California neighborhood is inundated with kids from 2 to 22 in costumes. I literally get between 200 and 300 trick or treaters at the door between 5PM and 9PM each year, and I love to see the costumes. I am willing to bet that I will see dozens of Star Wars costumes on kids not even born in 2005 when the last movie came out. And yet each year at Halloween for the past two years I look for someone, ANYONE, to be dressed up in an Avatar costume. The Avatar costumes never show up, although Mom would need to make it for the kid because Target and toy stores don't sell or offer any Avatar toys or merchandise, let alone a Halloween costume.
That's my unofficial an unscientific poll on whether or not Avatarland was the right decision for DAK. The kids don't seem to care about Avatar, and I've never seen anyone dressed as an Avatar blue alien at my door on Halloween. But I still get Chewbaca and Darth Vader and Stormtroopers at my door 35 years after they showed up in theaters.
