When Comcast first agreed to purchase NBCUniversal from General Electric in December 2009, it wanted absolutely nothing to do with theme parks, even going so far, industry scuttlebutt had it, to contemplate the possibility of spinning Universal Parks and Resorts off into an entirely separate company.
The grand opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade in June 2010 changed all that. Suddenly, what was a slowly dying (and thoroughly embarrassing) division became the golden child of NBCUniversal; Hogsmeade made back its $260 million budget in an astounding four months. The project was a game changer, and Comcast immediately wanted in in a major way.
In September 2013, after it had finally obtained full ownership of Universal, the company made good on its intentions: it announced in an investors’ call that it was going to spend some $500 million each and every year for the immediate future on all three of its American parks (at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort), getting them up to snuff to take the venerable Walt Disney World head-on. That translates into at least one new attraction opening up each year for most of the decade – a thoroughly unprecedented feat.
While this resulted in easily-leaked developments in both 2013 (Transformers: The Ride – 3D and The Simpsons’ Springfield) and 2014 (The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley, Cabana Bay Beach Resort, and the CityWalk expansion), 2015 has long looked decidedly barren, partially due to the fact that Universal, as is its wont, has been even more tight-lipped than ever before, even internally.
This situation is slowly starting to change, and in a major way, thanks to brand-new construction walls going up (yet again) in Universal Studios Florida this past week, substantiating a rumor that’s been whispered for over the past year. Indeed, with work finally starting to pick up, it’s time to take stock of just what the new year will bring for the ever-changing resort.
1. Royal Pacific Resort expansion
Location: Royal Pacific Resort
Current status: Confirmed
Opening date: Fall
Royal Pacific Resort is Universal Orlando’s third on-site hotel, the final one to be a deluxe property (meaning it both provides complimentary water taxi transportation to the parks and offers free unlimited Express Passes to every guest), and, arguably, the most popular overnight destination at the resort, although the recent addition of the value Cabana Bay is certainly giving it a run for its money.
One of the most popular demographics for the hotel, it turns out, is conventioneers, who are just as eager for a stay in the South Pacific as they are for getting free front-of-line passes (Royal Pacific is the largest and most inexpensive of the three deluxe resorts). And it looks like Universal is keen to attract more and more of them, as the only officially confirmed development for this year happens to be an expansion (the first for a Universal-owned venue) of the hotel’s meeting space: the already sizable 85,000 square feet of convention rooms will be getting an additional 56,330 square feet tacked on sometime this fall.
The move may not be particularly exciting for the average guest, but it is nonetheless an important – and telling – one. With Cabana Bay firmly going after the budget-conscious tourist, maximizing Royal Pacific’s appeal to the convention crowd is the next logical step in filling Universal Orlando’s 4,200 hotel rooms – and, thus, ensuring more foot traffic and cash flow to subsidize the next wave of rides, shows, and restaurants. (The fact that this new meeting area will connect with the upcoming fifth hotel, Sapphire Falls Resort, is just icing on the convention cake.)
2. Universal Studios Florida Museum
Location: Universal Studios Florida
Current status: Unofficially confirmed
Opening date: Summer (rumored)
On June 7, 1990, Universal Studios Florida – the theme park that started Universal’s Orlando empire – will turn 25-years-old. While the company has never before shown a willingness to celebrate either its theme park history or commemorate such milestones (not even when Universal Studios Hollywood turned the much-more-impressive 50 last summer), this time just may be different, if only to help realize Comcast’s annual attraction mandate.
The rumor that had been making the rounds for roughly the past year went a little something like this: Universal would take the long-closed Garden of Allah Villas building, which last housed the AT&T at the Movies walk-through attraction way back in 2001, and transform it into something of a museum, showcasing props and memorabilia from the park’s long list of former attractions, ranging from Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies to the recently-shuttered Jaws.
Although the company still(!) hasn’t made the new development official, it did erect the now-ubiquitous construction walls around the Garden of Allah just this past week, thereby signaling to the world that something, indeed, is going into this neglected corner of the park’s Hollywood section.
Despite the long-lived nature of the rumor, what exactly will be awaiting guests once those walls go down may still end up being something of a surprise. Various permutations on the original museum “leak” have cropped up over the past several months, including the possibility of Universal adding on an additional experience to the walk-through in the form of a “preview center”-type area that would display concept renderings and miniature models of future attractions and developments, including the new King Kong ride and on-site water park. (Universal last did this in the late ‘90s, when the next-door Islands of Adventure was being built.)
Another possibility? That there won’t be a museum component at all and the new attraction will essentially be a resurrection of the AT&T at the Movies concept – or, even, the How to Make a Mega Movie Deal attraction before that, which featured various exhibits, games, and videos about how films get produced in Hollywood.
3. Twister’s replacement
Location: Universal Studios Florida
Current status: Rumored
Opening date: Summer (rumored)
In a park that is quickly replacing all its older (and lower-quality) attractions for newer, bigger-budgeted versions that can live up to the standard that the Wizarding Worlds have erected, Twister… Ride It Out, which is shoved into a tiny corner of the New York backlot, sticks out like a sore thumb.
Even longer-lived than the USF Museum rumor is the whisperings of Twister finally being put out to pasture and replaced with – well, something that is more immersive, at the least, and more impressive, at the most. The trouble with such a scenario, however, lies with the older attraction’s massive space limitations: with a small(er) show building to begin with, and with the nearby Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit careening through its second story, there is barely any space left over for any kind of experience other than standing in front of a fake tornado forming in front of audiences.
Enter the rumors. The older and more-repeated one has NBC’s legendary production facilities at Rockefeller Plaza making their way to the park, either in a more general studio tour – not unlike the one already featured in New York City – or specifically honing in on The Tonight Show, which has not only scored newfound popularity since Jimmy Fallon took over the reins in February 2014, but which also visited Universal Orlando last summer to much success and fanfare.
The newer – and far more contentious – one, which was just broken last month, posits that not only will Twister be scraped, but so will that entire section of the backlot to make room for Fast and Furious, a film series which only seems to grow in popularity with each and every passing year and which will famously be unleashed on USH this summer.
In this scenario, a Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit-esque track will be laid out throughout that entire corner of the park and will be surrounded by large 3D screens to simulate the, well, fast and furious nature of the franchise’s car chases and other over-the-top action sequences. Should this replacement prove to be the real McCoy, expect its opening date to be pushed back from this year to next, at the very earliest.
