News Villains Land Announced for Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom

[Andrew C]

who said it would be all villains all the time though? We have rides in Fantasyland and shows throughout with the good and the evil characters in them...the focus is however on the good and the happily ever after.

Are you telling us that Ariel is going to take over Villains land like Belle took over the France Pavilion?

 

[GhostHost1000]

Are you telling us that Ariel is going to take over Villains land like Belle took over the France Pavilion?

I was thinking maybe Figment

 

[BrianLo]

I feel like we kept seeing the same comments about Super Mario. Was that been a game changer for Universal Hollywood?

USH grew attendance 15% in 2023 when Mario opened. Hollywood's Super Nintendo World is noticeably smaller than Tokyo (no Yoshi), and I wouldn't be surprised if many US or Europe-based families who wouldn't make the trek to Japan have just been waiting a couple years for the much bigger iteration to open in Orlando

Actually yeah it has done very well for Hollywood and that’s with the land being significantly reduce in size and scope from its Japan and Epic counterparts because of Hollywood’s extreme special restrictions.

I could be wrong but i believe they are still charging $$ to get an early entry into Nintendoland, which leads me to think the land is still very busy & they are making extra coin off an upcharge (an upcharge that people are paying & not complaining about as far as we know too!).

So gamechanger-ish. I'm sure merchandise is HUGE now with the IP and will be as well.

Maybe a slight asterisks on this one. Comcast has now reported attendance and revenue declines for both of the last two quarters and they are also calling out USH. Which I find a bit odd.

I guess it depends on what we consider a game changer. It's now doing significantly worse than Radiator Springs, Pandora and Potter. All of which went into parks with somewhat similar pre-attendance figures and bumped their parks by far larger margins. All of which continued to build their attendance further into the second/third years of their projects being open.

By the way, I think Super Nintendo World is a great product, but USH got a phoned in small version. Perhaps what Coaster Cowboy is saying though, I'd definitely now be holding off on Epic for the complete product. Oddly Epic, for now, is hurting Comcast significantly more than Disney.

 

[Brer Panther]

Just like it was wrong to not include Dr. Facilier in TBA, it’s wrong to dedicate a narrative (rides, stores, restaurants) to nothing but villains.

Speaking of which, do you think Dr. Facilier is considered off-limits for this land if he was off-limits for Tiana's Bayou Adventure?

 

[britain]

Speaking of which, do you think Dr. Facilier is considered off-limits for this land if he was off-limits for Tiana's Bayou Adventure?

I have no idea what they consider off-limits, what they call “offensive” all seems ridiculous to me.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Speaking of which, do you think Dr. Facilier is considered off-limits for this land if he was off-limits for Tiana's Bayou Adventure?

You presume he was off-limits for TBA. Which is not the same thing as chosing not to use.

Facilier has his own song and dance at the castle for Halloween parties. He's obviously not off limits.

 

[Mike S]

I once again serve notice that villains land is a bad idea. Just like it was wrong to not include Dr. Facilier in TBA, it’s wrong to dedicate a narrative (rides, stores, restaurants) to nothing but villains.

This whole concept was driven by marketing, driven by fan sales of villain merchandise. Not by expert storytellers. Villains LOOK cool, but WDI is going to find themselves tying themselves in the same knots they tied themselves in with Tiana’s. In that case, they’re trying to tell a satisfying story without any threat. It’s impossible. Similarly, they are going to try to tell satisfying stories without any good guys. Good luck! All villains, all the time is going to be wearying and one note, even if you bounce back-and-forth between funny and scary villains.

The only possible way I can see them hitting the right emotional harmonies is if there’s some part of the whole land that hasn’t been mentioned yet, like maybe a secret “YOU are the hero that needs to thwart the villains” aspect to it. Rebel Spy style.

Hmmm. You bring up a potentially good point. Even in Monsters Unchained Victoria Frankenstein and her Monster are seemingly the “good guys.” “You are the hero” is likely what Disney will go with. Now the question is will we thwart the Villains or merely escape them?

 

[TheDisneyParksfanC8]

On a side note, how likely would it be the Villains land gets cloned to DLR, either in the Sitich lot for DL park or maybe even in the Simba lot for DCA if the park changes its name post Avatar?

 

[Jayspency]

Going back to that original point I think everyone here can agree that Villains shouldn’t be as intense as Dark Universe is being advertised as.

My fear is that even with that being the case Disney still won’t hit the bar that they should with this but I’d be glad to be proven wrong.

Also small tangent is anyone else on mobile getting an annoying Oscar Meyer ad that keeps popping up and taking over the whole screen no matter how many times you close it? Anything you can do @wdwmagic?

I think villains land should be similar in tone to something like HM where its spooky, but not scary.

 

[Mike S]

I think villains land should be similar in tone to something like HM where its spooky, but not scary.

Clayton hanging scene confirmed?

 

[Disgruntled Walt]

Clayton hanging scene confirmed?

Oh great, now they're going to add that IP to Haunted Mansion...

...and I guess start with the end of the movie??

 

[LSLS]

Maybe a slight asterisks on this one. Comcast has now reported attendance and revenue declines for both of the last two quarters and they are also calling out USH. Which I find a bit odd.

I guess it depends on what we consider a game changer. It's now doing significantly worse than Radiator Springs, Pandora and Potter. All of which went into parks with somewhat similar pre-attendance figures and bumped their parks by far larger margins. All of which continued to build their attendance further into the second/third years of their projects being open.

By the way, I think Super Nintendo World is a great product, but USH got a phoned in small version. Perhaps what Coaster Cowboy is saying though, I'd definitely now be holding off on Epic for the complete product. Oddly Epic, for now, is hurting Comcast significantly more than Disney.

This is the bigger question I have with the parks in general. A big reason they are seeing such declines is Universal Hollywood is because of Nintendo. Last year, they rose 15% in attendance. Now it's dropping right back off. Is it because it just wasn't as well done as expected, or is it the price is just too much to be able to constantly keep going for a lot of people? I think this is a concern for Orlando as well. You will see an initial large rise (especially because if I had to guess, Orlando is seeing down numbers as well since people are saving up for Epic), but what will sustain? Is it really just people didn't think Hollywood did as well as expected, or is pricing an issue? Personally I'm really buying into the high prices curbing repeat business. Which is why I don't think Universal getting a large increase is going to translate well to Disney. And will Disney suffer the same thing? Is the opening of say Cars land going to be lower because people are saving for Villains? Or could Villains be less because people spent all their money going to Cars and Tropical Americas openings? And even if they have spikes in attendance, is that going to fall right back off the next year?

 

[Ichabod Crane]

Maybe a slight asterisks on this one. Comcast has now reported attendance and revenue declines for both of the last two quarters and they are also calling out USH. Which I find a bit odd.

I guess it depends on what we consider a game changer. It's now doing significantly worse than Radiator Springs, Pandora and Potter. All of which went into parks with somewhat similar pre-attendance figures and bumped their parks by far larger margins. All of which continued to build their attendance further into the second/third years of their projects being open.

By the way, I think Super Nintendo World is a great product, but USH got a phoned in small version. Perhaps what Coaster Cowboy is saying though, I'd definitely now be holding off on Epic for the complete product. Oddly Epic, for now, is hurting Comcast significantly more than Disney.

I can’t speak for the others but I was largely referring to the financial performance of the land itself. Specifically I’ve heard that the power up bands alone have made back the money spent on the land and the park had to build Nintendo merch and food stands outside of the land because Toadstool Cafe specifically is frequently booked to capacity.

As for attendance, that itself is a bit of an asterisk in general. Theme park attendance is down nearly across the board this year for a variety of factors so USH’s 2023 figures (SNW’s opening year), which did see a spike in Hollywood’s attendance, might be a better indicator for SNW’s performance than this year, which is just a down year across the board and wasn’t going to be reversed by a very scaled back SNW with only one ride and restaurant. Now if Hollywood doesn’t start to recover while other domestic parks do and SNW becomes a ghost town over there then there’ll be some real cause for concern on that front.

 

[Bocabear]

I would hope Facilier would have a decent presence in the new Villain's Land... Even doing a speakeasy aduly cocktail bar based on his Voodoo shop in PATF... that would be amazing and a beautiful space....and also extremely popular if they did it right...

 

[BrianLo]

As for attendance, that itself is a bit of an asterisk in general. Theme park attendance is down nearly across the board this year for a variety of factors so USH’s 2023 figures (SNW’s opening year), which did see a spike in Hollywood’s attendance, might be a better indicator for SNW’s performance than this year, which is just a down year across the board and wasn’t going to be reversed by a very scaled back SNW with only one ride and restaurant. Now if Hollywood doesn’t start to recover while other domestic parks do and SNW becomes a ghost town over there then there’ll be some real cause for concern on that front.

The Orlando market is down across the board. Which Comcast actually called out cruising finally for. Universal attendance has dropped more than Disney (from its 2022 high), but we all strongly believe that's a large halo effect for Epic trip deferrals. Disney has never actually recovered to its 2019 peaks to begin with, so is experiencing less of a recession than Universal.

But USH was actually only up 5.6% on 2019 attendance. Now it seems like this year will have retreated below 2019 levels. Similar to Islands and Studios significant pull backs last year. On the flip side, USJ is obscene. Which I think is good evidence that the more complete SNW was able to significantly move the baseline there.

But as you mention, intrinsically this isn't the fault of Super Nintendo World. More that its attractiveness and revenue bump from the land itself is not able to cover up the rest of the attendance and revenue decline the rest of Universal's domestic parks have experienced. It seems more that the parity we thought we were seeing was not in fact a public shift to Universal as a product, but had more to do with their softer pandemic attendance measures.

We'll of course see how Disney looks shortly, but the revenue declines out of Universal have been rather steep. Which comes back to my thesis that Universal is being hurt by Epic deferrals and has obviously much more to gain from Epic. Disney will basically see much smaller downside and upside risk on both ends than a lot of people predicted. This really isn't a good year for domestic Uni parks though and they are incredibly fortunate to have something lined up next year to tackle that.

 

[Timothy_Q]

My problem with a Villains land is that Disney villains are quite varied in nature. Most of them are very different from each other, and they're also from wildly different settings/IPs.

I struggle to see how it can be done without the land feeling like it was designed around one specific villain and then most or all of the others are just thrown in.

I imagine the overall land design won't be directly based on any specific villain, but will *feel* like any villain could be roaming around.

Like a dark Fantasyland, which is also the approach of Dark Universe

 

[Ichabod Crane]

The Orlando market is down across the board. Which Comcast actually called out cruising finally for. Universal attendance has dropped more than Disney (from its 2022 high), but we all strongly believe that's a large halo effect for Epic trip deferrals. Disney has never actually recovered to its 2019 peaks to begin with, so is experiencing less of a recession than Universal.

But USH was actually only up 5.6% on 2019 attendance. Now it seems like this year will have retreated below 2019 levels. Similar to Islands and Studios significant pull backs last year. On the flip side, USJ is obscene. Which I think is good evidence that the more complete SNW was able to significantly move the baseline there.

But as you mention, intrinsically this isn't the fault of Super Nintendo World. More that its attractiveness and revenue bump from the land itself is not able to cover up the rest of the attendance and revenue decline the rest of Universal's domestic parks have experienced. It seems more that the parity we thought we were seeing was not in fact a public shift to Universal as a product, but had more to do with their softer pandemic attendance measures.

We'll of course see how Disney looks shortly, but the revenue declines out of Universal have been rather steep. Which comes back to my thesis that Universal is being hurt by Epic deferrals and has obviously much more to gain from Epic. Disney will basically see much smaller downside and upside risk on both ends than a lot of people predicted. This really isn't a good year for domestic Uni parks though and they are incredibly fortunate to have something lined up next year to tackle that.

Yeah I think an unfortunate truth about USH is that the park is just simply not that good as a whole and that a severely scaled back Nintendo World wasn’t going to fix that for most people especially when they know that the full product will be opening on the other coast in six months time.

As for Disney I agree, I think they’ll largely stay stable with the minor drop this year and a bit of a bump next year but nothing drastic.

It’s going to be very interesting to see how the later 2020’s shape up for each park. I tend to agree with the notion that Disney cleaned Uni’s clock from 2017-2023 (Hagrid’s and Velocicoaster are good rides but they can’t stack up against Disney slate of Pandora, Toy Story, GE, Tron, Guardians. MMRR, etc and the rest of Uni’s slate in this time period suck) so if Uni wants to remain in the conversation they’re going to have to not only continue to add new attractions to counter Disney but the quality of the attractions they add are going to have to increase substantially from the likes of Fallon, Villaincon, and Supercharged.

 

[UNCgolf]

I imagine the overall land design won't be directly based on any specific villain, but will *feel* like any villain could be roaming around.

Like a dark Fantasyland, which is also the approach of Dark Universe

That's kind of the problem, though.

The Disney villains are so disparate that the kind of land you might expect to see Maleficent in doesn't really work for, say, Captain Hook or Gaston (at least IMO).

There are certain collections of villains that would work in a similar setting, but I don't see how they can really make a Villains land that works as a catchall for every Disney villain without some feeling out of place. Maybe it just features Maleficent, Chernabog, Ursula, Hades, Scar, and Jafar? They feel like they could all work in a similar setting, other than Scar being a talking lion.

 

[Timothy_Q]

The Disney villains are so disparate that the kind of land you might expect to see Maleficent in doesn't really work for, say, Captain Hook or Gaston (at least IMO).

I dont really see the problem
These 3 characters already all coexist in Fantasyland

A dark medival/gothic village would feel correct for villains even if they wouldn't all individually fit the time period

Dumbo takes place in 1940s USA and the ride is in a medival european land

 

[Ichabod Crane]

For how many villain crossovers Disney has done over the years I’m surprised that people are still hung up over the idea of them all sharing a land together.