Is attendance really down at WDW this or…

[Vegas Disney Fan]

At Christmas we were talking about taking a family trip and my nieces and nephews are most excited about Nintendo, my brother and I most excited about monsters, my gf and Sil most excited for Dragons, we’re all excited for potter… I think Universal did a great job of picking a variety of themes that will appeal to everyone.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

At Christmas we were talking about taking a family trip and my nieces and nephews are most excited about Nintendo, my brother and I most excited about monsters, my gf and Sil most excited for Dragons, we’re all excited for potter… I think Universal did a great job of picking a variety of themes that will appeal to everyone.

We are thinking of doing a trip late summer 2025 for Epic Universe - kids are definitely most excited for Nintendo land ... HP stuff to some extent. That is about it - they've never seen any of the monster movies or how to train your dragon (maybe the first one years ago)

I am mostly curious about how a new theme park built now, with all they learned with the HP lands and even stuff they learned during the pandemic, etc will function

 

[TheMaxRebo]

I saw mostly Mario costumes! The next was a witch or wizard. I think Mario Land is going to be BIG!

definitely saw a good amount of Mario and Peach ... I think the costume I saw the most was Wednesday Adams though

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

definitely saw a good amount of Mario and Peach ... I think the costume I saw the most was Wednesday Adams though

Such a good show, probably my favorite streaming show of the entire year.

 

[Splash4eva]

I was at the party on 12/19 and all the wait times were 10m than actual. I recorded all my times of enter, merge, load. Consistently across all headliners. Only ride i didn't go on was Space.

But comparing party wait times is meaningless right? No genie and only bolsters the case they are intentionally inflating wait times during the day…

 

[el_super]

But comparing party wait times is meaningless right? No genie and only bolsters the case they are intentionally inflating wait times during the day…

Looking at https://www.thrill-data.com/, at the moment there seems to be a good mix of Disney and Universal attractions in the top wait times:

Knowing that overall, Disney attendance edges out Universal, wouldn't it make sense that Disney's attractions have slightly higher wait times?

Or is the implication here that Universal is also exaggerating their wait times? Is that just an industry norm?

 

[Grimley1968]

Looking at https://www.thrill-data.com/, at the moment there seems to be a good mix of Disney and Universal attractions in the top wait times:

View attachment 761770

Knowing that overall, Disney attendance edges out Universal, wouldn't it make sense that Disney's attractions have slightly higher wait times?

Or is the implication here that Universal is also exaggerating their wait times? Is that just an industry norm?

Hard to believe this is "at the moment" when Cedar Point is closed until May.

The rest of the list is 5-2 Disney versus Universal, with one Disney ride being 3 time zones away from the other Disney/Universal rides. It's hard to draw any conclusions from that.

 

[el_super]

The rest of the list is 5-2 Disney versus Universal, with one Disney ride being 3 time zones away from the other Disney/Universal rides. It's hard to draw any conclusions from that.

So Hagrid is posted at 135. Flight of Passage 130. The implication seems to be that Flight of Passage is horribly exaggerated, but if Universal's numbers are to be believed (and i have no reason to doubt them) then wouldn't Flight of Passage actually be in line with what it should be?

Velocicoaster is also at 130 so ... is that accurate or not?

 

[GhostHost1000]

Looking at https://www.thrill-data.com/, at the moment there seems to be a good mix of Disney and Universal attractions in the top wait times:

View attachment 761770

Knowing that overall, Disney attendance edges out Universal, wouldn't it make sense that Disney's attractions have slightly higher wait times?

Or is the implication here that Universal is also exaggerating their wait times? Is that just an industry norm?

A lot of it depends on ride capacity and number of attractions within each park as well. Plus factoring in downtime throughout the day can bottleneck things as well

 

[_caleb]

Mix this with the fact that Dreamworks and Illumination are the strongest animation brand trust for kids and families right now,

Huh? Where are you getting this?

 

[seabreezept813]

Funny you say that because my GF daughter (6) is a huge fan of Mario/Luigi as is her son (4). My daughter (10) a fan too. This year during Halloween i saw more Mario costumes then i did as a kid when it became popular. I truly feel that IP is going to draw real attention to the kids and will be telling mommy & daddy. Hey i wanna go there. If Uni is smart they will hype and advertise the new park and anchor it with the Mario IP as the headline to get kids buzzing.

We never talk about Universal and my 5 year old has already asked. Because we watch ride POVs on YouTube before Disney trips she’s found videos of the Mario rides at Universal’s other parks. It looks pretty immersive too.

 

[GhostHost1000]

We never talk about Universal and my 5 year old has already asked. Because we watch ride POVs on YouTube before Disney trips she’s found videos of the Mario rides at Universal’s other parks. It looks pretty immersive too.

I personally think those rides look cheaply made, but I'm sure kids will enjoy them.

I guess I'd rather have more rides like that at Disney than no new rides coming at all

 

[Touchdown]

I personally think those rides look cheaply made, but I'm sure kids will enjoy them.

I guess I'd rather have more rides like that at Disney than no new rides coming at all

Cheaply made? You do realize that you are only seeing half the ride as the other half is VR based and very difficult to film. I haven’t ridden it yet and as such haven’t watched on ride videos other then a few seconds but I fail to see how they can be viewed as cheap. The queue is amazing, and better than any of Disneys recent efforts post Pandora, including MMRR at DLR.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

Cheaply made? You do realize that you are only seeing half the ride as the other half is VR based and very difficult to film. I haven’t ridden it yet and as such haven’t watched on ride videos other then a few seconds but I fail to see how they can be viewed as cheap. The queue is amazing, and better than any of Disneys recent efforts post Pandora, including MMRR at DLR.

I wouldn’t say cheap but I’m also not a fan of the look, everything in Nintendo world looks plastic and square to me, it’s accurate to video games but it’s just not something that’s appealing to me cosmetically.

Much of the land is also flat, similar to the backdrop in toontown, it’s painted mountains that don’t have any depth. It’s accurate to a video game, but if you aren’t a big video game person it does look kind of “cheap”.

 

[GhostHost1000]

I wouldn’t say cheap but I’m also not a fan of the look, everything in Nintendo world looks plastic and square to me, it’s accurate to video games but it’s just not something that’s appealing to me cosmetically.

Much of the land is also flat, similar to the backdrop in toontown, it’s painted mountains that don’t have any depth. It’s accurate to a video game, but if you aren’t a big video game person it does look kind of “cheap”.

that was my point...I know it costs a lot, but it's very toontown/fantasylandish dark ride looking... which is fine if they want to keep with the fantasy game look but when I first saw the mario cart ride, I admit I was extremely disappointed based on what things they could have done with that

 

[UNCgolf]

I wouldn’t say cheap but I’m also not a fan of the look, everything in Nintendo world looks plastic and square to me, it’s accurate to video games but it’s just not something that’s appealing to me cosmetically.

Much of the land is also flat, similar to the backdrop in toontown, it’s painted mountains that don’t have any depth. It’s accurate to a video game, but if you aren’t a big video game person it does look kind of “cheap”.

The aesthetic is really only accurate to the SNES era of games, which isn't surprising considering it's literally called Super Nintendo World.

They've referred back to that style in some newer games, so it's not solely contained to the SNES, but most of the main Mario titles from N64 on haven't really looked like that (similar in some ways, but quite different in others). I have wondered why they went with that specific era instead of going with something a bit newer, since that era is really targeted at people in their mid-30s and older.

As an aside, the Mario Kart ride looks abysmal. They really messed up there.

 

[James Alucobond]

The aesthetic is really only accurate to the SNES era of games, which isn't surprising considering it's literally called Super Nintendo World.

They've referred back to that style in some newer games, so it's not solely contained to the SNES, but most of the main Mario titles from N64 on haven't really looked like that (similar in some ways, but quite different in others). I have wondered why they went with that specific era instead of going with something a bit newer, since that era is really targeted at people in their mid-30s and older.

As an aside, the Mario Kart ride looks abysmal. They really messed up there.

It's truer to the New Super Mario Brothers referential facsimile of the SFC/SNES style than it is to the actual style of the games released on that console. It's basically the baseline "look" for the characters and environments that they use in all of their marketing materials, even if there is allowance for variance within individual franchises like Galaxy, Paper Mario, etc. Most other looks are treated as one-off or series-specific, so it makes sense that they went with the more persistent look that they did.

That said, I've always felt this was a weakness of Universal in general. Because many of the properties are licensed, they often have to be slavishly devoted to re-creating the look of something since the rights owner is understandably protective of their IP. This works sometimes when you have a property like Harry Potter, but it's less effective with things like Seuss, the Simpsons, or Mario, where I think it would be a lot more effective if they had the latitude to bring them to a cohesive "real world", as is more often the case with Disney's lands.

 

[seabreezept813]

I personally think those rides look cheaply made, but I'm sure kids will enjoy them.

I guess I'd rather have more rides like that at Disney than no new rides coming at all

Some might be from Japan which looks more in depth. I know we’ve seen one a few times where they ride around in Yoshis and there’s a lot set pieces and indoor/outdoor elements.

 

[JoeCamel]

Some might be from Japan which looks more in depth. I know we’ve seen one a few times where they ride around in Yoshis and there’s a lot set pieces and indoor/outdoor elements.

Right, it is the Japanese ascetic in animation. Hello Kitty is very much the same genre

 

[celluloid]

Speaking from a Japan visit experience, not Hollywood, Mario Kart dissapointed me a bit. It had some great tricks a few times and a few good gags that would give repeat rides even worthwhile.

Yoshi, I was more disappointed in as a family ride that my toddler could ride with us. Seats cramped and uncomfortable(that may have changed with Us designs) but the dissapointment was in the actual ride. I think Sky in the High Suess Trolley Ride actually offers more indoor and outdoor kinetic fun than Yoshi did. The interactive element attempt was kind of uneventful. Of cours very short. It felt like something that Legoland would have built, but they would have done it longer.

There was so much I loved about USJ, but Mario was not my cup of tea.

I am hoping iteration three fixes some of the quirks of things.