A lot can change in ten years.
Don’t believe us? Just flashback to summer 2013 and you’d find yourself in a very different Orlando… There, you’d marvel at the brand new MagicBand, daydreaming about Disney’s promises of how it’ll eventually personalize the Parks to you; you’d fill your day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios with The Great Movie Ride and The Backstage Studio Tour, wondering what Disney might do with its brand new, $8 billion acquisitions of Marvel and Lucasfilm.
If you visited Orlando in summer 2013, you’d wander through Camp Minnie-Mickey at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, wondering why – three years after announcing it – Disney hadn’t begun construction on its land themed to James Cameron’s Avatar. You had never heard the song “Let It Go,” much less imagined that the upcoming movie Frozen might replace EPCOT’s Maelstrom. And you’d be far too busy with the #LimitedTimeMagic campaign to wonder what Disney would do for its 100th Anniversary a decade later.
Oh, and in 2013, it’s likely that you’d callously spit in the eye of Disney’s generous gifts of Magical Express, FastPass, Extra Magic Hours, and resort transportation to book yourself an Uber to that other theme park resort up the road… After all, Universal Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter isn’t just the talk of the town; it’s the project around which the whole themed entertainment industry has reoriented itself. The age of the “Living Land” has arrived… And as a construction site at Universal Studios Florida begins to take the shape of Diagon Alley, the battle for Orlando doesn’t seem as clear-cut as it once did… “Could the momentum finally be behind Universal and not Disney?”
Catching Up
Ten years ago, that’s the cliffhanger we were left dangling on. And back then, as a college student and freelance writer, I tried to express that moment in a mini-series I wrote here on Theme Park Tourist called “Universal Rises”. Naive as parts of it may seem now, that article makes for an interesting time capsule as we all wondered what the future could hold… So now, a decade later, it’s worth wondering whether Universal seized the moment, where the momentum in Orlando resides now… and what another ten years may bring…
There’s no question that part of the stories of Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando can be measured by the metric of their attractions over the last decade. But a list of rides alone don’t really tell the story of where Disney and Universal have been, or where they might be going. So to understand where we’re at – and how Mickey Mouse and Mario might finally face off – we have to see the bigger picture and how it plays out in the battlefield of the theme parks…
Disney’s Decade of Highs, Lows, and Bobs (2013 – 2023)
The Walt Disney Company has been in a continuous state of transformation since the appointment of Bob Iger as CEO in 2005. While his predecessor (Michael Eisner) began Disney’s evolution into the international media giant it is today (though the acquisitions of ABC / Cap Cities and ESPN), Iger’s era was marked by even more radical acquisitions right out of the gate.
In 2007, the still-new CEO gambled big, acquiring Pixar for $7.4 billion. Two years later, Disney purchased Marvel for $4 billion. And of course, back in our decade-ago timeline, Disney bought Lucasfilm for another $4 billion.
With the astounding catalogue of Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars assembled, Iger had demonstrated an almost prophetic understanding of the decade that followed: the so-called “Content Wars,” wherein already-giant entertainment companies are gobbled up by competitors in multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, all in the name of bolstering IP collections and streaming services.
Unsurprisingly, that corporate vision has had a major effect on Disney’s theme parks in several key areas since the last time we checked in on the state of Orlando…
1. Disney went all-in on the Parks-as-Products philosophy
And Disney has not been shy about positioning its theme parks as battlegrounds in that larger war of entertainment giants, arming them with those blockbuster IPs. As our look at each park’s most recent, IP-free major attraction demonstrates, Disney has pretty firmly entrenched its position: IP, all the time, with few if any exceptions.
If you ask us, it’s part of a philosophical shift wherein Imagineering and Disney Parks are viewed not as generators of new stories, settings, and characters, but as (to quote Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro’s bio) “…the global hub where Disney stories, characters and franchises come to life.” As evidenced by the theme parks’ 2018 restructuring into the “Parks, Experiences, and Consumer Products” division, Disney’s resorts are now seen less as producers of new content and more as endpoints for content produced by the studios; brand showcases where Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars can be ridden, eaten, bought, met, and lived.
That’s reflected in the race to get Disney’s highest earning properties into the parks as soon as they prove themselves as viable franchises – sometimes without much care or long-term-thinking… Our friends at Park Lore dove into the age of the “Disney+ Park,” where Disney’s parks are decorated differently, but otherwise have no real message or theme to differentiate them. Moana and Zootopia seem equally as likely to be at Magic Kingdom as EPCOT; Hollywood Studios as Animal Kingdom.
There’s no question that Iger, then Chapek, then Iger again have been unapologetic in their pursuit of Disney Parks-as-brand-loyalty-checkpoints. And given Disney’s $100 billion in acquisitions over the last 20 years, who could blame them? From Seven Dwarfs Mine Train to Toy Story Land; Frozen Ever After to Runaway Railway; Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind to TRON Lightcycle / Run; and of course, both Pandora: The World of Avatar and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge – each a landmark “Living Land” anchored by a best-in-class E-Ticket…
Even if fans would do anything to see more balance brought to Disney Parks in terms of Imagineer-made stories and characters, there’s no doubt that the last decade has been both transformative and triumphant for Disney World in terms of investment… But of course, the last decade has also seen some major frustrations. If you could travel back in a time machine and tell your 2013-self about Disney Parks’ problems today, what would be at the top of your list of grievances? We’ll dig into those issues on the next page…
Whether you agree or disagree with Disney’s laser-focus on IP additions at its parks – even to the detriment of Imagineering originals and long-term strategy – you have to admit that on paper, the last ten years of Disney Parks have been transformational.
But even if 2013 – 2023 were filled with big, audacious, expensive new rides, that list of new things doesn’t really match with the strategy for Disney Parks going forward… After all, it looks like the story of Disney Parks in 2023 and beyond will diverge heavily from the growth we’ve seen up until now…
2. Disney banked big on Parks revenue post-COVID
If you traveled back in a time machine and told your 2013-self that within ten years, FastPass, Magical Express, free MagicBands, and more would all be a thing of the past, what would you past self have thought?
But the COVID-19 pandemic gave Disney an opportunity it couldn’t pass up: to finally end many lingering, pesky perks instituted in the decades prior. Whereas Disney was once willing to invest in “loss leaders” meant to lure guests into the “Disney Bubble” and keep them there, changing times left many of those sunk-cost perks as corporate nuisances that a COVID reset offered a much-needed excuse to cull.
In an era when Ubers make the “Disney Bubble” permeable even to those without a rental car, why should Disney underwrite Magical Express? And if people are going to rent a car, why not squeeze another $15 a night in parking fees from them? In the age of the smartphone, why offer free MagicBands to resort guests? And of course, with every other theme park on Earth turning line-skipping into an all-profit revenue-generator, why offer free FastPass just to maintain silly, old-fashioned “good will”?
Indeed, Disney seems set on sending post-pandemic guests home with fewer free mementos and far more stories of raised prices, slashed perks, and new upcharges. It’s a strange strategy, but one that aligns with Chapek’s quiet-part-out-loud assertion that Disney would be very pleased to have fewer guests, as long as they’re of the more “spendy” variety….
Of course, declining attendance estimates and alleged serious guest satisfaction issues may leave Disney’s C-suite wishing they’d been careful what they asked for… And indeed, though Disney Parks prices have always risen (and always will), Disney’s restriction of annual passes, its elimination of many guest perks, and the public’s seemingly-waning allegiance to its parks and brand mean that what we saw in the last decade in terms of investment and direction isn’t necessarily what we should expect going forward…
3. Disney as a whole seems poised for a retraction
Compounding with all of that, Disney looks to be entering a creative dry spell. Though Iger insists that the parks are a massive growth industry for the company, literally no new rides were announced at the 2022 D23 Expo, meaning that once Tiana’s Bayou Adventure opens in 2024, Disney’s list of announced projects-in-development goes blank. Especially given Imagineering’s laboriously long development timelines (typically 4 or 5 years from groundbreaking to opening), that means we should expect at least several years where shows, IP-based wraps, and popcorn buckets make up Disney’s promotional plan.
That may not be surprising given that Imagineering has reportedly seen its numbers fall from nearly 2,000 to just a few hundred – a consequence of Chapek’s (now-cancelled) mandated relocation from California to Florida (which was seen by many as an attempt to downsize the costly team of designers) apparently worked, leaving Imagineering with a skeleton crew. Allegedly, hundreds of Imagineers abandoned Disney (many of whom were rightly gobbled up by competing design firms… oops!). So is it any surprise that there doesn’t seem to be much on the schedule at the moment?
Sure, fans hope that Iger’s recent return will see the once-and-future entertainment king bestow another round of multi-billion dollar funding to sweep through Disney’s theme parks the way he did during his first few years in the 2000s… and Iger talks like it’s possible.
But this is a different Disney; one that paid $72 billion for 20th Century Fox (more than ABC, ESPN, The Muppets, Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm combined, and $20 billion more than its initial offer thanks to a bidding war with Comcast). To make matters worse, Disney found itself strangled by that substantial debt load just as COVID changed the entertainment landscape forever… and at least so far, doesn’t seem to really know what it can glean from its $72 billion acquisition. And if only debt were Disney’s only hurdle…
Whether Disney asked for it or not, it’s always been a company whose inner workings, important figures, acquisitions, and strategic moves are present in the public discourse. That was typically for the better.
However, the political right and its “culture wars” have taken aim at the company, with high profile political clashes between Disney leadership and Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In his short tenure, Chapek first earned the ire of Disney’s Cast Members by refusing to take a stance on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, then promptly made an energy of the political right by changing course. Those kinds of embarrassing public relations snafus with Chapek at the helm seemed likely to end with Iger’s return, but the steady leader’s tone-deaf responses to the 2023 writers’ and actors’ guild strikes have made Disney an opponent of both the right and the left all over again.
That’s a whole lot for Disney to shoulder, especially given the company’s short-sighted choice to put all their chips on streaming – a business that precisely no one has figured out how to make profitable. The result is that Disney has the cost structures of an entertainment company, but is measured on Wall Street like a tech company, chasing impossibly exponential growth in subscribers while being held to the continuous cutting of costs.
Even Iger’s triumphant Golden Geese – Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars – may have paid off their purchase prices in spades, but are all showing cracks in their once-infinite potentialities, leaving Wall Street worried… It’s a precarious position for a company that’s gone all-in on select, core brands, often at the expense of developing new characters. So it’s no wonder that Disney Parks are seen as a sturdy, stable, and needed revenue generator whose add-on, upcharge programs can help pad the company’s bottom line… even at the expense of decades of good will.
Disney, ten years later
In other words, both The Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney World today look very, very different than they did a decade ago. And as Iger extends his contract for another two years to weather the choppy seas ahead, much is unknown about how the parks will play in to Disney’s strategy… But we do know much about its number one competitor, and what that entertainment resort up the road has planned…
Ten years after we first saw the momentum in Orlando shifting, do you think that at last, “Universal Rises” to meet Disney World head-on? Read on as we explore the changes at Universal since 2013, including a major swap of ownership that changed everything…
Universal’s Comcast-Powered Decade (2013 – 2023)
Like Disney, the story of Universal’s Orlando footprint can’t be complete without looking at the wider happenings of the company who owns it.
1. The Midas Comcast Touch
Unlike The Walt Disney Company – which has been an independent business since its founding in 1923 – Universal Studios has had quite a few corporate overlords, having been bought, sold, and traded more often than a baseball card. After a brief, odd stint owned by French media company Vivendi, a majority share in Universal was purchased in 2004 by General Electric – the conglomerate that had long owned one of the three big television broadcasters, NBC. GE united their two media-focused subsidiaries into “NBCUniversal” before, in 2009, selling 51% of “NBCU” to telecommunications giant Comcast.
Known industry-wide for its cable television service, phone service, and poor customer service, industry insiders expected that Comcast would quickly strip NBCUniversal for parts, separating out the cable channels and music licensing core to its business and selling off the rest to private equity groups. After all, why would a telecommunications company want to own and operate Universal-branded theme parks?
Of course, it just so happens that Comcast picked up a controlling share in Universal just as the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened. Almost certainly as a result, Comcast pulled off one of the biggest twists in modern entertainment history: rather than selling off NBCUniversal’s theme parks, Comcast held on to them… and seemingly fell in love.
In 2013, Comcast bought out GE’s remaining 49% stake in NBCUniversal for $16.7 billion, turning the cable titan into a media giant and theme park Goliath, too.
So when I wrote “Universal Rises” in summer 2013, we only knew that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts was promising to “double down on theme parks.” At a conference with industry analysts that fall, he offered, “We think that there is a lot of ‘there’ there in the theme-park business for many years to come and that we have a low market share – and only one way to go.” If Hogsmeade hadn’t already proven it, then the 2014 opening of its sister, Diagon Alley, certainly did.
In the same breath, he noted that while Universal had over 4,200 hotel rooms in Orlando at the time, internal evaluation suggested the resort could support as many as 15,000. (Since then, the additions of Cabana Bay, the Aventura, and Endless Summer Resorts have more than doubled the resort’s hotel capacity to 9,000 rooms; far afield of Disney’s 36,000, but nothing to sneeze at.)
2. Recognizing parks’ potential
That additional hotel inventory has been needed since Universal has been as bullish in the theme parks as they have been around. Since 2013, Universal Orlando has added substantial new attractions and expansions, even outpacing Disney. We’re talking about The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley, Springfield: Home of the Simpsons, Skull Island: Reign of Kong, Race Through New York, Fast & Furious: Supercharged, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, Jurassic World VelociCoaster, and Minion Ave. to say nothing of the brand-new, from-scratch Volcano Bay Water Park (complete with an original, IP-free backstory, characters, settings, and more).
Comcast seems to have so much faith in their theme park division that in 2023, it got a major corporate upgrade. Universal Parks and Resorts was transformed into Universal Destinations and Experiences – a statement of Universal’s growing ambition (including its new family park in Texas and a standalone, year-round Halloween complex in Las Vegas). So even if there are certainly areas where Universal Orlando’s existing parks could use some refreshing, there’s no question that Comcast is as ambitious an owner as they are an unlikely one.
….Which also turns out to have been very lucky for Universal Parks. While Disney’s core businesses (theme parks and theatrical films) were essentially grounded by COVID-19, Comcast‘s core business (Internet and cable) served as a sturdy foundation, underwriting the theme parks and allowing them to recoup quickly. (Construction on Disney’s TRON Lightcycle Run began just weeks after Universal’s VelociCoaster, but a lengthy pandemic pause and slow re-start saw the TRON ride open two years after VelociCoaster did.)
3. An epic opportunity
Of course, there’s no question that all conversation about the Orlando theme park wars rests on a very large variable that – even in 2013 – few would’ve imaged was possible. But it’s true: well underway is the construction of Universal’s Epic Universe, a third main gate for the resort (and the first U.S. theme park by either Disney or Universal since Disney California Adventure in 2001).
We have gone deep on Epic Universe in articles across the site, but the most essential read is probably our “Universal Alignment” Special Feature, exploring Universal’s strategy and ambitions for this new park. Of course, we also spent time in that story trying to understand why – despite the imminent arrival of a new theme park filled with Mario, Monsters, cosmic coasters, Dragons, and still more Potter – Disney just doesn’t seem too worried.
At least as far as we can tell, the Mouse doesn’t have a retaliatory plan ready, meaning that if Universal Epic Universe turns out to be a smash hit that finally makes Universal Orlando a must-visit, multi-day experience tearing tourists away from Disney World, Disney will be years from having any real response. Whether Disney’s lack of alarm turns out to be brilliant foresight or a major miscalculation, we have yet to see…
Universal Rises… again?
Ten years ago, in “Universal Rises,” I made the observation that by all accounts, the momentum in Orlando seemed to be gathering not behind Disney, but behind its biggest competitor.
Make no mistake: there are areas in which Universal can never beat Disney, full stop. And as much bravado as Universal fans are feeling right now, it’s almost certainly true that theme parks are one of them. For a whole lot of reasons, Disney World is cemented in pop culture in a way that Universal Orlando can probably never match. (That said, AECOM’s 2022 estimates suggest that Universal’s Islands of Adventure surpassed EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom in attendance last year…)
But even if Disney World will always occupy an echelon of pop culture and tourism all its own, there’s still the question of where that momentum is centered. Will Epic Universe really shift the gravity in Orlando? Will tourists finally give Universal a chance as the multi-day, multi-park resort it is rather than just a day trip and pass-through to Potter? And if they do, will they like what they see enough to come back?
And even ignoring Universal’s newest park for now, think of the trajectory both Disney and Universal have been on (with both greenlighting massive expansions and E-Tickets over the last decade), passed through the lens of their corporate overlords (one bullish, one bearish), and try to see a decade into the future… What will Disney and Universal’s Orlando resorts look like? What do you hope and fear for each property?
When we left off our “Universal Rises” series in 2013, we could only imagine what the future might hold… and frankly, almost nothing that’s happened would’ve been on our BINGO card, so imagining where Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando may be in 2033 sounds like an impossible task.
Still, we’ve got to ask – How might the trajectories of Disney and Comcast trickle down to their theme parks? What do you hope will happen at Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando in the next decade, and what do you think really will? Will Mario finally give Universal its very own Mickey Mouse? And when we return to this series ten years from now, will we agree that the tide is changing in Orlando? We’ll just have to wait and find out together…
