Disney Playing catch up with Universal... Potter Disney's biggest mistake in 20 years...

The Empress Lilly

The Empress Lilly

Well-Known Member
If WDW had been in the business of making world class themed environments, never mind developing itself into a vast uniformally functioning vacation resort, nobody would've talked about Potter having ended up at the competition. Who misses Potter at DisneySea?

There are a lot of great IP's, Disney didn't drop the ball by missing out on one. Even if it is one of the very best. It dropped the ball elsewhere. Sadly, the lesson Disney seems to have drawn from Potter is that theme parks consist of 'a collection of IP environments'. We might end up with Avatarland in DAK, Star Wars Land in DHS and Frozen Land in EPCOT.
 
Gomer

Gomer

Well-Known Member
The Crafty Veteran said:
Wasn't this article posted in the Spirit thread already? Besides I thought Yahoo news articles were garbage anyway?

By the way, had a trip in May, my Magic band worked flawlessly.
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Respectfully, whether yahoo/the article is garbage or not is irrelevant if it is being consumed by the public. The perception going forward by those who read yahoo news will be that Disney is falling behind Universal and that will impact how people behave whether it’s true or not.
 
MichWolv

MichWolv

Born Modest. Wore Off.
Premium Member
RandomPrincess said:
If Disney had gotten Harry what would it have looked like? I seem to remember that they were not planning on going all out like Uni has. I think there was dark ride and Character M&Gs.
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And I think that's the real thing here. Uni decided to make a Potter-land. Uni had first tried this on smaller scale with IOA, creating whole Islands around a franchise. Hogsmeade took that to the next level, and Diagon Alley even further. Uni adopted a similar view with transforming the Simpson's area. It's not just a ride and a store, but a whole land. So we've gone from attractions and shops about the IP to a land that puts you in the the IP. I

Disney has already taken that and ran with it, in Carsland, and had done it on smaller scale before with Bugs-land (whatever it's called). And of course, Disney had started the whole themed lands strategy with Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Mickey's ToonTown etc.

I expect Disney will indeed take it and run with it in Avatar-land and whatever Star Wars thing we end up seeing at DHS. It takes a special piece of IP to make this work. Star Wars clearly has the potential. I'm not sure whether Avatar does.
 
DisneyGentleman

DisneyGentleman

Well-Known Member
The Empress Lilly said:
If WDW had been in the business of making world class themed environments, never mind developing itself into a vast uniformally functioning vacation resort, nobody would've talked about Potter having ended up at the competition. Who misses Potter at DisneySea?

There are a lot of great IP's, Disney didn't drop the ball by missing out on one. Even if it is one of the very best. It dropped the ball elsewhere. Sadly, the lesson Disney seems to have drawn from Potter is that theme parks consist of 'a collection of IP environments'. We might end up with Avatarland in DAK, Star Wars Land in DHS and Frozen Land in EPCOT.
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Yes, it's not the "what" but the "how" that is failing!
 
M

Mouse_Trap

Well-Known Member
I'm glad it didn't go to Disney. Disney had nothing to-do with the creation of the Potter books and films and on that basis, they have no place in their parks.

I'm glad that Universal is doing well from the IP. Universal attracting larger and larger gates serves to bring more people to Orlando and so is also good for Disney.

The disappointment is that Disney did not seek to match Universal in developing additional entertainment options. Sure, maybe they just got wrong quite how big HP was going to end up being, but even since - they haven't really make any effort to up their game too match.

It almost feels that they have resigned themselves to not trying to compete on this, just wait and hope that it's a fad that blows away quite quickly.

Ultimately, if they had wanted to compete then we would have seen NFE on a much speedier timeframe, expansion on DHS - whether that would have been Cars land, Pixar Place expansion or other, Avatar for AK now nearing completion for this summer and maybe some love for Epcot.

It seems strange, that have some surefire IPs that they are sat on yet seem to being not really working them. It only suggests to me that they want to ride out the next Potter storm before committing to anything.
 
ABQ

ABQ

Well-Known Member
Tigger1988 said:
Yahoo seems to have several articles with conflicting viewpoints.
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That's no surprise, and I'm not knocking the "news" article at all. The vast majority of Yahoo's "news" and I put it in quotes is purely contributory. There's zero editing process and they accept pretty much anything they want. This particular video and text wasn't AP or Reuters or anything of the kind. Actually, it's pretty much just a blog, just as a number of the opposing viewpoint articles were. Like the one that deemed this expansion 1 ride and 7 shops or something along those lines.
 
WDWDad13

WDWDad13

Well-Known Member
nor'easter said:
A


Ok, so neither is a good fit, but you can see them doing cool stuff with Avatar. But they couldn't do cool stuff with Harry Potter? I don't understand your logic.
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easy... and @Lucky said it best "It fits better at Universal, and they needed it more"

HP doesn't "fit" really into Disney... one could however make a case for Avatar in Animal Kingdom considering
 
WDWDad13

WDWDad13

Well-Known Member
Mouse_Trap said:
It seems strange, that have some surefire IPs that they are sat on yet seem to being not really working them. It only suggests to me that they want to ride out the next Potter storm before committing to anything.
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that is a great point... and I think may be the case... and may be smart. Wait until all the hype dies down and then it's their turn. We all (should) know these things go in cycles anyways
 
draybook

draybook

Well-Known Member
Bairstow said:
See, I'm not sure if that's the case.
Universal has had tremendous success with Potter- they spent a lot of money and got a lot of money in return.

Disney, meanwhile, didn't spend millions of dollars on building new attractions and offerings... and still made a ton of money off of returning guests with nostalgia.

In fact, the argument could be made that Disney has made as much money off of Potter as Universal has: I'm sure a lot of families have vacations to Orlando specifically to see the new Potter expansion(s), but between the two Universal parks you can really only spend 2 days, 3 days max. To make a 5-6 day vacation, Disney seems like the obvious answer for how a family with kids will spend the other 3-4 days and justify airplane tickets to Florida.

Just because Disney didn't make the same move Universal did doesn't mean they made a mistake.
Universal and Disney might be competitors, but they're not playing the same game.
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Yeah, but Universal didn't spend billions on an IT based system for it's Express pass system and all of that jazz.
 
Acolli18

Acolli18

Well-Known Member
In relation to size, where would WWHP fit in WDW? I haven't really seen the size of the Harry Potter expansion, but it seems pretty massive. Could it fit within any park boundaries?
 
dgp602

dgp602

Well-Known Member
WDWDad13 said:
well I'll bite first... I completely disagree.... I for one am glad Harry Potter did NOT come to Disney..that's not to say they don't need to be doing other things though, just never thought HP was a good Disney fit

I'm not sure about Avatar being a good fit for them either...however I can see them doing some really cool stuff with it
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I have to agree with this. What park would HP had been jammed into? Maybe you could argue DHS... At least with AVATAR ( editor's note: I am not a fan of Avatar Land ) I can see the correlation with AK and how the conservational story line of Avatar fits with the mission of awareness that AK tries to deliver...
 

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