Ouch!
From Bloomberg.com
"Universal Studios Japan Visitors Fall 30% in Second Year
By Ian Messer
Osaka, Japan, April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Universal Studios Japan Inc., a movie theme park affiliated with Vivendi Universal SA, attracted 30 percent fewer visitors in its second year of operation.
The amusement park, which opened in March 2001, drew 7.64 million visitors in the twelve months ended yesterday, it said in a faxed release. Visitors fell short of the parks' own lowered target of 8 million customers. Its original target was 9 million. "
This doesn't bode very well for them. Still a very decent attendance level, but to see a drastic drop like that can't be very good for Universal. Maybe it could be because DisneySeas opened to such huge attendance levels (???).
I wonder if this will affect Universal's decisions on building a park in China. I think they should figure out what went wrong here and fix the problems the entire company is in right now before expanding. Hopefully they can turn things around!