Hey team! I'm really excited to be working with all of you, I've obviously worked with
@Outbound a time or two and I'm familiar with
@Disneylover152, but other than those guys, I'm new to working with the rest of you, so it's an exciting prospect to be here with so many fresh faces, especially where so many of you have proved yourselves between SAVI and then the weekly challenges in this hype thread.
I just wanted to introduce myself to those of you who may not know me. I'm PerGron, but you can just call me Per if it makes it easier. I'm a zookeeper irl and many of my favorite imagineering projects have to do with animals (be it my Aquarium or the Laboratory Lavoratory back in SA V) but I also really enjoy tackling other topics (though I will shoehorn animals in whenever I can). Some other passions of mine are history, horror, and just film in general, so a lot of those projects are some of my favorites. As I'm sure you can imagine, my favorite Disney park is Animal Kingdom and I've only ever been to the Orlando resorts, but I will get to Disneyland one day.
Well enough about me, let's talk this project.
Well, if I can start us off, I do have a thought for something: what about anime?
Universal has used a variety of different media as inspiration for their theme park attractions and areas. Movies, TV show, comic books, and literature, for instance. They'll be dipping their toes into the world of video games soon with the Nintendo section of Epic Universe, as well. However, one medium that hasn't been really tapped into much is anime.
There's plenty of good material to work from there. So many fun and memorable characters and worlds, and the medium's popularity has been growing more and more. Not only that, Universal has had a little experience with anime. Over at Universal Studios Japan, they've been featuring an event called Cool Japan, where they set up some temporary attractions inspired by video games and anime. Just imagine what they could do if they built something a bit more permanent and major.
For the sake of narrowing down the options, I'd say to make an anime-based theme park section devoted to the work of Shonen Jump. That's a manga magazine that has been the source of plenty of popular manga and anime, such as Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and My Hero Academia.
So admittedly, I think this would be a neat and realistic idea for a theme park. However, unfortunately, I know almost nothing about anime besides Miyazaki's works, so I'd be pretty much useless on this idea. I see two other team members have addressed this as well, so unless we have some real anime fans, it may not be the best option.
If we were to utilize more of Universal’s animated properties, might I suggest Bikini Bottom from Spongebob or Duloc from the first Shrek film? There are many opportunities for Spongebob in the park (providing an immersive kids area) and bringing that huge world to life. Duloc fits into the layout of the area and brings more attention to the movie that made DreamWorks famous. Epic Universe probably isn’t about the amount of rides (the monsters area will only open with 1) but the immersion of the lands and these are awesome places that could be brought to life.
I actually really like the idea of Bikini Bottom as the allure of a real-life Krusty Krab alone is very strong. I feel like Duloc wouldn't really be a great choice as it feels very cold and boring. If we wanted to do Shrek, I may suggest Far Far Away as a potential location. However, I feel two Dreamworks properties in one park may be overdoing it, but I'd love to hear some other thoughts on that.
To throw out a few of my own ideas, Universal's list of IPs isn't the strongest in terms of theme parks. Sure, they have some great movies, but not many that actually translate well into a theme park, and the ones they do have are already present. For this reason, I think we look out of house for some properties while some Uni-owned IP can be considered. Here are some of my ideas.
-Back to the Future (Universal)
-Jaws (Universal)
-Lord of the Rings (Warner Bros.)
-His Dark Materials (Warner Bros.)
-Star Trek (ViacomCBS)
There are tons of other ideas, and honestly, we don't have to pick one on day one, so I'm excited to hear some more from everyone else as we file in. Either way, I'm very excited to get started working on this with y'all!
