The Universal Orlando Resort has an extraordinary past, having succeeded in establishing itself as a viable player in the Orlando theme park market despite heavy competition from Disney and a disastrous opening period. It has an interesting present, with the debut of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley just months away. And it has an exciting future, with owner Comcast promising to invest billions in a series of major attractions and new on-site hotels.
With the resort now established as a huge success story, it’s easy to forget about its past struggles and the unusual story of how it evolved into the multi-day destination resort that it is today. Let’s take a look six unusual and intriguing facts about Universal Orlando, which help explain why it is such a unique (and popular) place.
6. It is what it is because of Disney
As Disney established itself in Florida with the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971, Universal’s then-owner MCA was looking on enviously. Even before Disney’s resort opened its gates, the chairman of the board of its Recreation Services Group, Jay Stein, had mooted the idea of opening a studio tour in Florida, to capitalize on the influx of tourists heading to Disney’s property.
In the early 1980s, Universal devised a plan for the Florida studios and began looking for investment partners to share the risk. The Florida tour was to be similar to the existing Universal Studios Hollywood, and would be built around a brand-new, working production facility. The plans called for a “front lot” walking tour, as well as a tram tour through the studio’s backlot. One set-piece, designed by Academy Award-winning art director Henry Bumstead, would see an enormous King Kong figure attack the tram as it passed over a New York bridge. Another, the “Hollywood Canyon”, would see a tram rolling onto a bridge in view of the Hollywood Hills. A massive earthquake would then strike, causing a dam to crack and a wall of water to pour down towards the tram, which would escape into an oil field in time for riders to witness a semi-trailer truck explode after crashing into an oil tank.
In 1981, MCA purchased 423 acres of land in Orlando on which to build its Florida tour. To the company’s frustration, though, none of the prospective partners came on board. Even worse, its plans to bring movie magic to Florida had roused the newly-competitive Disney into action. Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner, was not about to let Universal invade its turf without a fight.
Disney’s Imagineers had put together a plan for an entertainment-themed pavilion (dubbed the Great Movie Ride Pavilion) for EPCOT Center’s Future World area, which had not been pursued. By expanding this into a full-sized, studio-themed park, Eisner surmised, Universal’s plans could be blown out of the water.
Image © Disney
The initial plans for Disney-MGM Studios, announced in 1985, bore a striking resemblance to those for Universal’s tour. The main attraction would be a tram tour past four working soundstages, an animation building, backlot sets and post-production facilities. One of the set pieces to be included in the tour would be “Catastrophe Canyon”, during which an earthquake would shake the tram, cause fires to ignite, lead to an oil tank explosion and trigger a flash flood. The similarities to Universal’s proposed Hollywood Canyon were undeniable.
MCA was furious, but had no choice but to revise its plans for Universal Studios Florida. With Disney’s park set to open first, simply cloning the Universal Studios Hollywood experience in Florida would leave MCA open to accusations that it had copied Disney, and not vice-versa. Having finally secured financing for the project, it set about completely redesigning it.
The core concept of a theme park built around a working movie studio was retained, meaning that some overlap with Disney’s offering was inevitable. However, the tram tour – the signature element of Universal Studios Hollywood – was dropped altogether from the plans for the Florida attraction. Instead, the main set-pieces from the Hollywood tour, such as the encounters with Jaws and King Kong, would be blown up into separate, standalone attractions.
5. The entire resort is a backlot
The opening of Disney-MGM Studios in 1989 and Universal Studios Florida a year later heralded what many in Florida hoped would be the creation of a “Hollywood East”. The Universal property was equipped with a number of large soundstages, and immediately began to host television and movie productions. The streets within the theme park itself, designed to recreate New York, San Francisco and other well-known areas, were not just walkways for guests. They were intended to be part of a real, working backlot. The rides were housed in soundproof buildings so that filming could take place during the day.
The Hollywood East dream faltered. Disney soon began converting its own soundstages into attractions, with Disney-MGM Studios desperately short of ride capacity. Universal pressed onwards, but within a few years was hosting only relatively minor productions.
Despite this, Universal Studios Florida is still a working production facility. Though they are sometimes occupied for the theme park’s special events, the soundstages at the park continue to be available for production companies. So, too, does the backlot. Even Islands of Adventure, CityWalk, Wet ‘n Wild and the on-site hotels are advertised as potential shooting locations.
4. It has one of the world’s largest parking facilities
When Universal was working on the massive expansion that added CityWalk, Islands of Adventure and three on-site hotels to the resort in the mid-to-late 1990s, the first element to open to the public was seemingly mundane: a new parking structure. But it was some parking structure…
The enormous, concrete facility was the size of 14 football fields, and featured space for more than 9,000 cars. It was larger than the car park at nearby Orlando International Airport – and Universal increased its capacity even further with a second parking structure that added a further 10,200 spaces. This became the fourth largest parking structure in the world. To put the size in context, the largest single parking lot in the world is at West Edmonton Mall, and it holds 20,000 cars. So Universal Orlando is in the big leagues here.
In such a vast complex, it was likely that some guests would forget where they had parked – and finding their vehicle would not be easy. To help avoid this scenario, Universal sub-divided the parking structure into different areas, each named after a different character or movie featured in the theme parks (including Jaws, Jurassic Park and King Kong). Music from the films was piped in to help jog guests’ memories. To help guests to get around, the structure featured eight elevators, 34 escalators and 12 moving walkways.
With so many cars in one building, getting in and out could have turned into a nightmare. To counter this, Universal ensured that the structure was designed to allow up to 3,000 cars to exit within an hour. Separate entrance and exit ramps were installed for each of the five levels, enabling foot traffic in and out of all floors at once. The company even equipped the structure with emergency stations, from which guests could call a “command center” if they needed help. The first parking garage alone cost more to build than Terminator 2: 3-D, at some $65 million.
The presence of the parking structure highlights one of the resort’s biggest problems: a lack of space. That’s led to some innovative solutions, but it could all have been very different…
3. It could be MUCH bigger
Image via Jim Hill Media
Back in the late 1990s, Universal had ambitious plans for its Orlando resort. After a disastrous opening year, Universal Studios Florida had established itself as a popular destination for visitors to Central Florida. The company’s creative teams – who had never built a major ride before the Florida park opened – could now rival Disney’s Imagineers. Plans were announced for a second theme park, Islands of Adventure, as well as luxury on-site hotels and the CityWalk area. Walt Disney World – in the midst of building its fourth theme park, Disney’s Animal Kingdom – was about to have some serious competition.
Islands of Adventure would open in 1999. But Universal didn’t plan to stop there. It acquired 2,000 acres of land from Lockheed Martin close to the Orange County Convention Center, where it planned to install two 18-hole golf courses, 700 time-share units and hotels boasting no fewer than 13,000 rooms. A second CityWalk-style retail area was also part of the plans.
Most intriguingly, though, Universal Creative had also begun working on a third theme park concept for the land. One that, according to reports at the time, would be aimed at children (a market underserved by Universal’s current attractions). Universal was about to take on Disney at its own game, right in its backyard. It wouldn’t stop there, either – there were even proposals for a fourth theme park by 2010, bringing Universal Orlando up to parity with Walt Disney World.
Unfortunately, by 2004 Universal Orlando’s then part-owner, Vivendi, was struggling financially. Despite having spent an estimated $40 million on preparing the expansion site, Vivendi instructed Universal’s management to sell it. This they did, to Thomas Enterprises, a developer based in Georgia. Since then, portions of it have been developed, and a host of plans have been put forward (but not pursued) for other sections.
2. It pays a big chunk of its revenues to a famous movie director
In March 1987, with planning work on Universal Studios Florida well underway, MCA announced that Steven Spielberg, the director of Jaws, E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial and a swathe of other hits, had signed on as a “creative consultant” for the park. With George Lucas working on attractions for Disney, the pair – long-term friends, and collaborators on the Indiana Jones series – were now pitted in competition with each other. The announcement brought with it the first hint as to the actual content of the Florida park, with MCA revealing that attractions based on three Spielberg movies would be featured.
The deal that tied Spielberg to Universal was extraordinarily lucrative for the director. According to executives with knowledge of the arrangement, under the terms of the agreement Spielberg would collect two percent of the gross revenues from Universal Studios Florida (including tickets and concession sales), and this was designed to continue in perpetuity, such that generations of future Spielbergs would also share in the income.
The deal was renegotiated in 2009. While this meant that the director would still be entitled to a sizeable slice of the resort’s gross income, he would not now be entitled to seek a lucrative buyout until June 2017. In exchange, Spielberg would receive a stake in revenues from planned parks in Singapore and Dubai.
It may have cost a fortune, but the deal has arguably been worth it for Universal. Early rides based on movies directed or executive produced by Spielberg, including Jaws, E.T. Adventure and Back to the Future: The Ride, helped it stand out from Walt Disney World and become a success in its own right.
1. It could have been OWNED by Disney
Despite MCA’s bullish plans for Universal Studios Florida, the company did entertain the possibility of a truce with Disney. In June 1987, the firm’s CEOs met to discuss whether the two companies’ attractions could be combined into a single studios park. MCA offered to drop its plans, in exchange for a half-share in Disney-MGM Studios. Disney, though, was only willing to pay MCA a small royalty to use material from its films. MCA walked away.
By 2002, Vivendi was looking to offload its stake in Universal Orlando (along with Universal’s production operations). In those days, the resort was struggling to deal with catastrophically low attendance at Islands of Adventure, the shiny new theme park it had opened in 1999. On top of that, the September 11 terrorist attacks had struck a blow to the tourism industry, and Universal Studios Florida was suffering a major dip in attendance, too.
Incredibly, Disney was said to be interested in a takeover of Universal. “Any assets that are in our core business that come available, we would certainly take a look at,”, Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs told Reuters, when asked about a potential acquisition. “Our primary focus is our core business. To the extent we can do an acquisition that is not dilutive to the earnings or cash flow, we’ll take a look.”
Analysts speculated that Universal would have to be available at a bargain price to justify such a deal. “Owning more theme parks could make Disney even more cyclical because that’s a cyclical business,” said Katherine Styponias of Prudential Securities.
In the end, Disney didn’t pursue a takeover. At the time, Disney itself was under pressure, with its stock price at a 52-week-low. Walt Disney World was also suffering as a result of September 11 and an economic recession. Universal was sold at a bargain basement price, though, being acquired by General Electric for just $3.8 billion (Vivendi had originally sought around $14 billion).
Learn the full story behind Universal Orlando!
To learn more about the history of the Universal Orlando Resort and how its attractions were created, check out Universal Orlando: The Unofficial Story – the first book ever to document the resort’s creation and evolution, from its debut to the present day. The book is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in paperback and Kindle formats.
