It’s not always easy, but fans of themed parks try their best to expect the unexpected. After all, themed entertainment projects – especially those orchestrated by industry giants Disney and Universal – tend to evolve in secret. As the last year alone has shown, you never know when Disney will quietly launch a meet-and-greet, announce a new theme park land no rumor blogs one had even rumored, or even fire its CEO just weeks after extending his contract.
Even still, we doubt that any fans’ Bingo cards would’ve contained Universal’s surprise announcement in January… Even with massive new projects under development at its resorts across the globe and a brand new, full-scale theme park in Orlando (the first destination park in the U.S. since 2001’s California Adventure), Universal announced a new project that left theme park fans in a frenzy: a totally new, family-scaled theme park coming to Frisco, Texas.
Obviously, we dove into everything we know about the new park in a standalone feature… But one of the most talked about elements of this new kind of park is a topic some Disney fans aren’t too excited to consider: shouldn’t Disney have done this kind of thing first? Today, we’ll dig into our thoughts and ask for yours as we consider whether Disney will regret letting Universal gain a foothold in a new model of park…
The Concept
First, it’s important to understand what Universal is going for here…
We know that Universal’s parcel of land in Frisco amounts to about 97 acres, meaning that the entire property that Universal plans to develop is about the size of Magic Kingdom or Disneyland. However, keep in mind that that’ll include a large surface parking lot, a hotel, and additional expansion pads in addition to the park itself. Plans suggest that the park itself will occupy just 30 acres to start – roughly the size of Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland and Hub space (including all affiliated showbuildings).
Though Universal hasn’t officially confirmed anything beyond the single piece of concept art, it’s not difficult to distinguish that this park will likely be themed entirely to DreamWorks Animation (which Universal purchased outright in a $4 billion deal in 2016, mirroring Disney’s purchase of Pixar in 2007). It’s not difficult to “see” lands themed to DreamWorks’ biggest franchises – Shrek, The Secret Life of Pets, Trolls, and the animated Jurassic World spin-off series, Camp Cretaceous. If the artwork is to be believed, we can also imagine that this family park will largely be made up of decorated flat rides, playgrounds, splash pads, and entertainment. (Only the most optimistic imagine there will be a dark ride or simulator, though we’d love to be proven wrong.)
To be sure, this is not a concept Universal invented. The U.K.-based Merlin Entertainments had hit a home run with its LEGOLAND Parks which dot the globe, with a dozen destination resorts built around family-scaled, mid-tier theme parks (and often built-out with hotels, water parks, and complementary Merlin attractions like SEA LIFE aquariums). SeaWorld Parks is also in this space with its regional Sesame Place parks (themed to PBS’s Sesame Street), not to mention dozens and dozens of independent parks that primarily target families with elementary schoolers, like Pennsylvania’s Idlewild, California’s Gilroy Gardens, and self-contained Nickelodeon Universe parks at several high profile malls.
Why It Matters
So even though this model of theme park isn’t entirely unique, Universal’s entry into the genre is interesting for a few reasons…
1. It finally secures a ‘regional’ tool for the major park operators.
During Disney’s ambitious expansion period in the ‘90s, the company tried some weird, wacky ways to bring Disney closer to home. It wasn’t just highly-stylized experiences like the Disney Store… In fact, Disney launched an entire division called Disney Regional Entertainment, with projects like ESPN Zone sports bars, Club Disney family entertainment centers, and of course, the Declassified Disaster: DisneyQuest – an indoor, multi-level, immersive arcade once envisioned as an urban attraction that would be duplicated to downtowns across the country.
What Disney could not find is a medium for connecting with people within a few hours of their home that was sustainable. Think of DisneyQuest, which required high-cost downtown real estate, continuous financial investment due to its technological basis, and couldn’t convince people they needed to come back time and time again. It’s sort of funny that the only thing Disney didn’t try to build to attract a regional audience is the thing people want from them: theme parks. Maybe it’s that Disney wanted to keep its Orlando and Anaheim destinations “special;” maybe it’s that they feared a regional park would siphon off guests…
But here, Universal’s entry into the regional family park model proves the brilliance of the strategy. Forget about this specific park with this IP in this place for a moment and just think about the model of a regional, family-oriented park itself…
Acquiring undeveloped land outside of a major metropolitan area is much simpler than buying a building downtown. In the LEGOLAND vein, expansions to a park like this one can be as simple as new flat rides, or as elaborate as an add-on waterpark. And best of all, a focus on drawing “families, within the region, with children aged 2 to 9” means that your audience is always refreshing (as new kids are born) and eventually, repeating (as kids become parents themselves and want to share a place where they were born and raised). This is a park that will be powered by Annual Passholders; a place where families return, spending summers; a place where they retreat for “staycation;” a place that will convince parents to bring the family along for their convention in the city so they can sneak away to a world-class, major park operator’s niche, narrowed IP park in the afternoons…
Finally, we see a major theme park operator enter the regional market with a theme park. It’s really not that complicated! And despite Disney Parks loyalists dismissing it as a side project with little chance to change anything significant, we’ve got a few other reasons that Disney should be jealous that Universal entered this space first… Read on…
2. It activates a new region of the country with a right-sized offering.
In the ‘60s, Walt Disney himself considered building a new, mid-sized, indoor Disney attraction in St. Louis, Missouri. In the late ‘80s, Disney toyed around with a permanent World’s Fair style experience in Texas. But frankly, a globalizing world meant that the company began to look elsewhere, expanding to France, Hong Kong, and China instead. Universal’s done the same, with resorts in Singapore and Beijing. Why? One need only know that China’s population is four times that of United States’ to understand why operators have much more incentive to build there than there.
While theme park fans may dream of Disney dropping a new resort in Chicago or Houston or New York, the reality is that in terms of bang for their buck, operators would be much wiser to look to high-population, high-density countries with emerging middle classes rather than just siphoning Americans away from Walt Disney World to send them to Disneyland Columbus. Obviously, the million dollar question for Disney and Universal fans has always been whether or not the companies would ever build a property from scratch in the United States?
That’s what made it jaw-dropping when Universal announced both a permanent Halloween Horror Nights-themed experience coming to Las Vegas’ Area 15 (above) and this new family park in Texas. The message is that not only is Universal entering its own era of experimentation with regional touch points, but that they’re willing to lean into their core business to do it. Universal is building beyond its existing resort capacity, and in the United States! It’s happening. The difference is that instead of double dipping into an existing audience, adjusting the tone, brand, size, and scale of these new projects means that Universal can activate new regions of the country without stealing visitorship from Universal Orlando or Universal Studios Hollywood. Just the opposite…
3. It creates a new pipeline into Universal Destinations & Experiences.
We mentioned that a park like this has an audience that returns (driven by local passholders), retreats (for “staycations”), refreshes (as new kids are born), and repeats (as those kids become parents themselves). But we can’t forget the most important: that this audience graduates.
Make no mistake: Comcast certainly hopes that their new DreamWorks Animation park won’t be your final stop with the Universal Destinations & Experiences division. In fact, they’re thinking that this park will be the first in a lifetime of brand touch points. Their hope is that a decade from now, a generation of Texans who’ve grown up (or watched their kids grow up) in a DreamWorks park will eagerly accept the resort’s invitation to graduate onward to Universal Orlando, where The Wizarding World, Transformers, Jurassic Park, Super Mario, and How To Train Your Dragon await. And best of all, a park that specifically gears its offerings toward children ages 2 – 9 is a park that’s constantly refreshed with new audiences, ensuring that for every kid who moves on to Orlando, another is born to take their place and begin the cycle again.
Right now, the entry point to that pipeline will be limited to the Dallas area, or maybe the wider Northeast Texas. But the point is that copies of this alleged DreamWorks park could conceivably pop up outside of Chicago, Cleveland, New York, or St. Louis next… And if not this park, then maybe an Illumination one. The point is that by jumping into the regional park pool, Universal now finds itself with a “brand loyalty” coup; a model designed to get ‘em while they’re young, anchor a generation’s memories to Shrek, Toothless, Puss in Boots, & the Indominus rex, and then point them onward to the Universal Orlando “mothership” when they hit double digit age.
Disney’s Loss
It’s clear to anyone who studies the themed entertainment industry that right now, Disney is in a state of contraction. Without the sturdy business foundation that Universal’s owner, Comcast, enjoys (trust us – no one canceled their Comcast phone and internet packages during the pandemic), Disney weathered the financial losses of COVID-19 only by way of its Disney+ streaming service. Now, Wall Street has come to call, requiring ever-increasing margins of profit forcing Disney to draw from its reserves to bolster the loss-leading platform, shoving billions of dollars into the furnace to keep #content flowing.
Of course, that’s meant that the profitable Parks division needs to step in, sending its cash flow to Disney+. For fans, that’s meant higher prices, slashed perks & new upcharges, and canceled projects across Disney’s parks. Short lived CEO and franchise flywheel fanatic Bob Chapek oversaw an era when Disney Parks projects were slowed, and when ambition, investment, and care were scaled down precipitously.
So if it feels like Disney isn’t worried about Epic Universe, you’re probably right. Disney’s attention is simply elsewhere. Even though returned CEO Bob Iger has expressed his belief that Disney’s theme parks are among the company’s most dependable, profitable, and well-loved assets, Disney can’t get those years back; nor can it win back the reported hundreds of designers, artists, and writers who fled the company’s already-slimmed-down, post-pandemic Imagineering division facing a forced relocation from California to Florida.
So it’s actually no surprise that Universal’s been the innovative one here, plugging ahead with not just a once-unthinkable new main gate in Orlando (2025’s Epic Universe) but with this new, unnamed, regional park allegedly themed to DreamWorks Animation that actually might change the game…
Should Disney have gotten into this business first? Probably.
Would a similarly-scaled “Worlds of Pixar” in Texas or Illinois or Ohio or Virginia or New York have been an incredible show of brand utilization and industry leadership? Yep.
Will Disney follow suit and plunge into the realm of regional, family-scaled parks itself? Maybe.
After all, Universal came to Orlando chasing Disney. Now, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Disney buy up a hundred acres outside of Dallas to try to head-off Universal, reverse engineering a family theme park equivalent of Orlando.
Universal’s new DreamWorks park may look like a blip on the radar for now… but we’d wager that this new experiment may see Disney and Universal – destination players and industry giants – find themselves in a whole new war waged not just in Orlando, but across the country… And trust us – we’d all benefit from that.
