So today, we finish up our news stories for the month of October.And last week, I thought we would have a lighter episode today.
But no, we've had a number of announcements and revelations over the past week, which has created a chunky and layered episode with many interesting stories. We'll take a look at both the Florida and California resorts.
We'll even touch down briefly into one story now percolating up around the Beachfront Disney Resort in Hawaii.
And we'll look at the opening timeline for Epic Universe and how Universal is using fan interest in this new park to leverage guests away from the Disney Resort and into their parks and hotels.But before we get to all of that,
I have another round of Bandcamp subscribers that I need to thank.We're an ad-free listener-supported podcast, so these here are the people who keep this whole enterprise going.Gratitude today is going out to Stanley Lewis.
Callum, Chuck, Steve, and Jesse.Thanks to each of you and to all of our Bandcamp subscribers for keeping this podcast going.And now we've got a lot to cover, so let's kick in to the show. Let's start with this, lightning lanes.
We've talked about this issue before, but the constantly changing rules and products associated with lightning lanes at both Disneyland and Disney World make the experience of using and booking the attraction reservation service very difficult for the average tourist.
To put it this way, let's say that you went to Disney World last December for your annual vacation.
If you were to go back there this coming December, you would find that not only the rules, but also the names for various Lightning Lane products have all changed in some way since your last visit.If you're at a Disney park every couple of months,
You've probably followed these changes just fine, but if you're in the largest group of Disney World tourists, that is people who go every couple or three years, Disney is asking for you to learn a new set of rules each time you go, which feels a little like unnecessary homework for a vacation.
Or to put it another way, the manuscript for most annual guidebooks to Disneyland and Disney World are turned into publishers in spring, then are published in August or September.
That is, right now, various 2025 guides to Disneyland and Disney World have just been published.
But the changes to various Lightning Lane products are so frequent that none of the 2025 guides will have fully accurate information on 2025 Lightning Lane options because another set of changes was announced between the point at which these manuscripts were all turned into the publishers and the point that these guides are supposed to go into effect, which is January 2025.
This past week, Disney presented another set of changes to the Lightning Lane experience.It will still have Lightning Lane Multipass, which is one fee for a set of rides in each park.
It will still have Lightning Lane Single Pass, which is a per-use fee for one or perhaps two highly desirable rides in a single park.But it now has added Lightning Lane Premier Pass.
Lightning Lane Premier allows users to visit each of the various Lightning Lane attractions in one park once.This includes both multi-pass options, such as Big Thunder, and single-pass options, such as Seven Dwarves Mine Train.
You don't need to pick a time, you just show up to the attraction and walk through the Lightning Lane entrance.From a business standpoint, I believe this new option is designed to accomplish two large goals.
First, it's designed to compete with Universal Express.The function of Lightning Lane Premier and Universal Express, right down to the rules, is nearly identical. The pricing also is mostly in line with the Universal product.
In Orlando, the cost of Universal Express for one park ranges from $90 to $290 per day, depending on the day of visit.At Universal Studios Hollywood, which admittedly has far fewer rides than Disneyland, it ranges from $75 to $165 per day.
The Disney pricing model seems to be scaled loosely off of the long-standing Universal Express model.At Animal Kingdom Park in Florida, Lightning Lane Premier will range from $129 per day to $199 per day depending on when you visit.
At Epcot, $169 to $249 per day.At Hollywood Studios, $269 to $349 per day.And at Magic Kingdom, the most popular park in the world, $329 to $449 per day. Out in California, at Disneyland, there is only one option that includes both parks.
For this service, the cost ranges from $300 to $400 per day.Disneyland has already announced that all available dates between now and January 1st will be at that $400 per day marker.
These are, without doubt, astronomical sums for a skip-the-line service.In some cases, if your party is large enough, it may be more advantageous to book a VIP tour, which also allows everyone to skip the line at any attraction you like.
And on a Disney VIP tour, you can likely re-ride certain attractions more than once, which you can't do with Lightning Lane Premier. No doubt Disney will make some money off the Premier Pass.
VIP tours may also lose some money because now there's a viable alternative to a VIP tour which allows your party to walk onto some rides at will at a significant cost savings for small groups.
But I think the real benefit here for Disney is something else entirely. This is a way for Disney to manage the upcharge narrative and to recontextualize how basic Lightning Lane products are viewed by the public.
Over the past three years, Lightning Lane charges have been largely viewed as an irritating upcharge compared to the previous Fast Pass Plus option.
But now there's a product on the other end of the Lightning Lane price spectrum that makes Lightning Lane Multipass and even Lightning Lane Single Pass look like a bargain.
So instead of families discussing how much Lightning Lane Multipass adds to the cost of a vacation, there's now a different way for Disney to frame that discussion.
Now Lightning Lane Multipass at the Magic Kingdom for $32 on October 30th looks like a tremendous bargain compared to the Premier Pass.
Even if you add in the $13 for the 7-Doors single pass and the $21 for the Tron single pass, it's still $66 with the multi-pass included.And to be clear, this is still a significant upcharge over what used to be there.
But the $66 option now gives you almost everything that you would get with the $329 Premier option. except that you have to book your ride times for each attraction.And that, I think, is what's genuinely in play here.
This is partly about the optics of the Lightning Lane experience.To make something that used to seem like an unwanted upcharge, now, from a slightly different perspective, rather surprisingly seem like a bargain. I will also offer this.
Though Disneyland is mostly immune to any large drop in visitation due to the 20 million or so people that live near the park, Disney World is about to face some stiff competition from Universal when Epic Universe opens next May.
And so I'm starting to wonder if Disney will start to bundle as a free add-on some of its Lightning Lane products into room or package reservations as a way to lure more guests into its hotel rooms next summer.
But to close up this section, I think that we are likely looking at a very low number of Premiere Pass sales each day.Universal limits their version so that it sells out almost every day.I expect the same to happen at Disney.
But the largest benefit here is not from revenue of the new Premiere Pass service.They will, of course, make some money off the Premiere Pass. But I also think they're going to lose a reasonable number of VIP tours because of this new option.
But rather, the main benefit to Disney here is how it reframes the general Lightning Lane add-on discussion to make multi-pass and single-pass now rather oddly look like a bargain.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about issues relating to the closure of Rivers of America at the Magic Kingdom and the creation of, for the lack of a better term, the proposed Cars Miniland inside of Frontierland at the same park.
These issues, somewhat surprisingly, were related to a stormwater management permit necessary for construction at the Magic Kingdom that was kicked back to Disney with 20 points of concern, some of which required additional permits, alternate plans, further review, and revisions to the initial proposal.
But there's also some unusual movement, or at least I think there is, on the other expansion area planned for the Magic Kingdom, which is the forthcoming Villains Land.Let me preface this section by saying this.
One of the things that confuses me about how the Disney Company presently operates is their lack of confidence in their own ideas.
During Walt's lifetime, at least in terms of Disneyland, so long as there was money available, wed artists and engineers simply built attractions that Walt believed the public would enjoy.
Walt believed that a bird-focused attraction would prove successful, and though it went through a couple of planning incarnations, the Tiki Room was eventually built with early plans being revised in-house by Walt and others.
Walt never assembled a focus group of likely consumers or sent out surveys to ask potential customers if they were interested in robotic birds being arranged into a musical review show.
And if they were interested, were they interested in seeing these robotic birds sing pop songs or old standards or Polynesian melodies or something else?
In terms of the parks, very little of that happened when Imagineers planned out a new attraction during Walt's lifetime. And, for the most part, this is roughly how I believe many high-functioning companies tend to operate today.
There is a visionary, or a set of visionaries, who are often able to understand what the public needs or desires long before the public understands these needs or desires themselves.
But this is not really where we are in the current incarnation of the Disney company.It's not really where we are in terms of many established American businesses either.
Disney and also Universal are companies deeply tied to surveys and focus groups. And I do wonder how many truly fabulous ideas have been sidelined because those being surveyed couldn't see the brilliance of a proposed attraction or show.
On the flip side, it's also likely that surveys and focus groups have helped Disney avoid a few terrible ideas as well.
That is, surveys and focus groups tend to produce reasonably good ideas, but not necessarily great ideas, and also probably not terrible ideas either.
That is, it's a road toward mostly good things that avoids either extremes, including very good options.
Almost surely without coincidence, a month after Villains Land was announced, Disney said that it would premiere a new villains-themed stage show in Hollywood Studios, which would take the space previously used by the sparsely attended Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy.
I've heard rumblings about the Racing Academy closing since early summer, but its replacement is almost surely a way, not only to create a show with higher attendance levels than the one with Lightning McQueen, but also to gauge the popularity of various villains, or rather how best to present certain villains as Imagineers work toward creating this villain's land.
I'm sure Disney knows which villains are most easily recognizable and most popular.But the emotional tone in the presentation of those characters inside a theme park is another question entirely.
Up until now, villains in a Disney park are almost always presented as the nemesis to Disney heroes or heroines. In a ride, for example, Captain Hook is almost always rendered as the antagonist to Peter Pan, battling with him with a sword and so on.
The Queen in Snow White is almost always pictured as the person pursuing or threatening Snow White.But in the movies, there's a whole lot more nuance and range of expression.
In Peter Pan, for example, Hook is sometimes presented as a straightforward villain intent on killing Peter and the Lost Boys with a bomb, while other times he's a foppish, humorous villain who sings comedic songs with his crew.
Even for the 1953 Disney animated feature, there were two different lead animators who presented Hook in these two different modes.
The animator Frank Thomas tended to animate Hook more as a menacing villain, while the animator Wooley Reitherman animated the more comedic scenes. And this duality of personality applies to many Disney villains from various animated features.
There's the elegant Maleficent versus the enraged Maleficent.There's the befuddled Queen of Hearts versus the temperamental and explosive Queen of Hearts.
And in this I'm guessing, or at least I'm hoping, that this is what is actually being tested as the character lineup for Villains Land in terms of popularity should be fairly clear.
A permit has been recently filed on the theater space where Lightning McQueen recently resided, as Lightning McQueen has kachowed out of there as of October 7th.
In this show, Lightning McQueen was a sophisticated animatronic that could easily be reused elsewhere, such as, say, a preview center for the forthcoming Cars area at the Magic Kingdom, assuming all of the issues with stormwater management get worked out.
If the entire river area is eventually closed at the Magic Kingdom, I can imagine some sort of preview center being built there simply to explain to typical guests what is coming on the other side of those construction walls and also to excite guests about a return trip to Florida when this new area opens.
This type of previewing of major attractions was once a significant part of the Disney playbook.It faded away in the 90s and early 2000s, but has recently started to come back a little.
When I was a kid, these preview areas were a key way that Disney built guest excitement for return visits, and they were very effective in doing this.
The space that recently housed the Lightning McQueen show was initially arranged as a black box theater with an eye toward productions being easily swapped in and out of there.
Based on concept art, the theater for the new villain show appears to retain much of its current structure from the Lightning McQueen presentation, including the semicircular screen that hems in the stage.
The new show will feature various villains presumably singing or being featured in a musical production number, which sounds a little like the Frozen sing-along set up, with, of course, moodier characters and darker moments.
But unlike Frozen, which tends to skew toward younger audiences, the popular Disney villains tend to attract a slightly older audience, largely because the popular villains tend to come from older features.
More recent Disney features can present a villain as someone who is misunderstood, a person who is confronting some type of social or family pressure, or reacting to an earlier experience in which they were harmed.
I'm pretty sure that characters that fall into this bucket, like Prince Hans, Te Ka, and Yo-Kai, aren't appearing in this particular stage show, nor are they coming to Villain's Land over at the Magic Kingdom.
The most popular Disney villains include Jafar, Cruella, Scar, Captain Hook, Queen of Hearts, Ursula, the Queen from Snow White, and Maleficent, all of whom first appeared in movies that premiered at least 30 years ago.
So this means that the audience here should skew slightly older and that Hollywood studios can't simply Disney Junior its way through the production and expect it to do well.
I know there's always the possibility that this might turn out to be a hastily assembled show, but I don't think that's the case for a handful of reasons.Beyond the issue of audience demographics, I have a few more reasons to add to that.
First, this show is proof of concept for the much larger villain's land at the Magic Kingdom.If this show isn't a draw, accountants will start to question the financial viability of a whole villain's land at the Magic Kingdom.
And I don't think anyone either in entertainment or at WDI wants that. Second, I do suspect that this show will function as a type of focus group for how Disney should present villains in that upcoming land.
If this show is not engaging, that is, if half the audience is simply scrolling through their phones or looking up lightning lane options for later in the day, this show will fail in providing actual guidance in how to best present each villain.
And lastly, third, this will be the only entirely new attraction at Hollywood Studios next summer, as Epic Universe opens across town.
Disney has also bumped the revised Journey of the Little Mermaid show from premiering this year to premiering mid-2025, but the new item here remains the villain show.
So if Disney wants to peel a few families away from the Isle of Burke and the Ministry of Magic and into Hollywood studios, this better be good and not a half-hearted musical show that is largely sought out for its air conditioning.
But I do think, at this point, Disney is likely keyed into these concerns.The Disney stock price, which is still languishing under $100, has been negatively effective because of revenue concerns related to the American parks.
This has made Disney far more attentive to issues now affecting the American resorts. But again, we won't really know exactly how well this show works until next year.
This show is a way to test out how Disney might present the villains in a park production, in which these villains aren't simply antagonists related to our hero or heroine, and try to understand how these characters can best be presented on their own to interest fans.
Do they become sympathetic complex villains, as they are in some recent Disney novels and comic books?Are they menacing figures, which might give this space the feel of a family-friendly Halloween Horror Nights?
Or are they comic villains who darkly joke with the audience?These questions are some of the issues that I believe that this stage show is designed to explore and hopefully answer.
Our next section is about the new resort area that is quietly being built at Disney World.Over in Fort Wilderness, tall cranes are now up at the old reflection site.
It's hard to hide 200 foot cranes, but this is one project that Disney isn't yet officially talking about. What's being built now is a version of the DVC resort that was announced pre-COVID for this area.
A multi-story tower structure with IP theming related to Pocahontas, Bambi, Brother Bear, Fox and the Hound.Essentially most Disney animated features that take place in the woods or the forest. This resort would have two fireworks viewing locations.
It was also going to be one of the DVC resorts that included a handful of what back in 2019 were called pod-like rooms and are now called Duo Studios.
Essentially 250 square foot rooms with a murphy bed that you can pull down at night and these small rooms intended for one or two people would of course be in addition to the more familiar studio one and two bedroom options.
There was also an indoor table service restaurant that opened with wide windows onto Bay Lake and there was a set of waterside cabins somewhat in the style of those presently over at Wilderness Lodge. This project was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID.
There has been no official announcement that the project has been revised.But there's clearly site prep work going on right now along with a small stack of filed permits for a 10-story tower structure.
There has been some speculation that perhaps this project has changed somewhat in the intervening five years since it was first announced.
But ground clearing indicates that the future shape of construction matches perfectly the proposed reflection project from back in 2019.
It's very possible, I would say even likely, that some of the IP theming might have changed, slanting towards more recent Disney film projects.But with the cranes erected there now, this project is definitely moving forward.
As we've previously mentioned, we think it's pretty likely that Disney is not calling attention to this project so as to keep DVC sales focused on the Polynesian Tower that, even with the recent hurricane, is still likely to open on December 17th.
This new Reflections Project, or whatever the old Reflections Project is now being called, sits on the site where once River Country once stood and is situated roughly between Wilderness Lodge and Pioneer Hall, which is where the hoop-dee-doo plays every night.
The development would open walkways from the lodge down to the settlement area in the campgrounds.
Since the ground prep is arranged to accommodate the initial resort plan, at least in terms of structures, there's still the possibility that the lazy river concept might return for this construction as well, creating a mini water park area, something like Stormalong Bay over at Beach and Yacht Club.
Construction on Disney's Riviera Resort Tower took about two and a half years.This project here looks to be a little bigger.I would guess that opening would be somewhere around 2028.
That is, the opening would be timed to take advantage of guests' interest in new lands coming to the Magic Kingdom.The DVC, that's Disney Vacation Club, sales pitch would be something like
Hey, if you want to bring your family back to see the Cars area and then a year or so later to see the Villains area, you can buy a DVC contract at Reflections and simply take the boat over to the Magic Kingdom each morning.
And as long as we're on the topic of DBC, there's one more thing that maybe some of you want to follow.There's a new Hawaiian law that may make it more difficult to rent out DBC points for Alani. which is the Disney Resort on Oahu.
The law is primarily directed at short-term rentals like Airbnb, but the wording of the law may make it more difficult for rental agencies or even individuals to rent out points at Disney's Aulani.I bring this up because now,
There's a reasonable chance that resale prices in the Alani market are going to shift down in the next few months, in case any listeners are interested in owning a resale contract there.
And let me very briefly explain that you can buy direct contracts from Disney, The price there likely won't change, but there are other places that you can buy resale contracts to stay at Alani each year as well.
I'm pretty sure at least one of the large corporate renters of Alani Points has already started to sell their contract holdings en masse.
And if point rentals through third-party agencies are more difficult or complicated at Alani, I would expect other rental companies who own their own contracts to follow as a way of mitigating risk.
This is not to say that point rentals will not be possible at Alani, but depending on how this new law is implemented and enforced, It may become more complicated to rent points used at the Alani resort.
Anyway, if you're a DVC person, and I realize that this is only a small segment of our audience, this might be something to follow as it plays out over the next few months.
Conditions just might align to make these Alani resale contracts somewhat of a bargain.
The bloating of Alani contracts on the market has just started this past week, so you might need to wait a little bit before resale prices for Alani actually fall, but it looks like things might just be moving in that direction.
there are a number of DVC contract aggregators, that is websites that automatically collect resale contract information and then list them on a single site.
I'll put links to a couple of those aggregator sites in the show notes for today in case anyone here is interested in following how this goes. And now we have a section on many things that are happening over at the Disneyland Resort in California.
At Disneyland over at the back of Rivers of America, some of the last big projects are now nearing completion.The Haunted Mansion enhancements project is moving forward, work is still progressing on the new queue area,
And at the ride's exit, the new and somewhat large carriage house is now framed in and roofed in.This is going to be the location of a mansion-themed store somewhat in the vein of Memento Mori over at the Magic Kingdom in Florida.
The roof to this carriage house, which is taller than in concept art, now screens off the peak of the old Splash Mountain from New Orleans Square.
And conversely, once you're over in the newly named Bayou Country, the roof of this same carriage house partially screens off views of the mansion from those standing beside Tiana's Bayou Adventure.
It's hard to say how well this new structure will match the existing mansion.It's nowhere near finished.The roof presently is plywood over a metal frame, and most of it is behind a tall green construction wall.
But the number of buildings and peaks in this area does feel a little packed and busy now, but maybe that feeling will improve once the walls are down.
Over at Tiana's Bayou Adventure in Bayou Country, the construction walls are now down revealing the queue area.
The queue space for this same ride in Florida has a more ornate and refined feel than the queue area here in California, which leans a little more toward the rustic. As in Florida, there's now a folk art mural above the entrance area.
With the opening of the queue area, the attraction is now primed to open to the public with even enough time for an extended pass holders preview over the next month. Previews will happen on most days between October 21st and November 12th.
For the first week and a half, previews will happen between 3pm and 9pm, but starting on November 1st, previews will begin at 9am.
Almost surely all of these previews for Passholders are being arranged as a managed capacity training experience for cast members as they learn their new attraction roles here.Mixed into the same period will also be a set of cast member previews.
I'm pretty sure that the press preview will take place on November 13th and the ride will then open to the public on November 15th of Friday. The adjoining areas will all open individually ahead of the ride.
This coming Friday, the slightly re-themed Hungry Bear Restaurant will open as the Hungry Bear BBQ Jamboree, a quick service option.
Much of the menu here seems to have been inspired by the Regal Eagle Smokehouse over at Epcot, right down to the meals being served on small rectangular metal trays.
I should perhaps have said that most of the menu here feels inspired by Regal Eagle, minus the beer and cocktails that are available at Epcot.
Some of the walls of this restaurant now have portraits of the Country Bears, characters whose attraction left Disneyland some 23 years ago.
I will point out again that their inclusion as a centerpiece IP in this restaurant would make a whole lot more sense to me if Disney was also quietly thinking of somehow reviving the Country Bears elsewhere at the resort, perhaps with a ride or an attraction or a show.
But nothing like that has leaked out at least yet from Glendale.
Then, a couple weeks after the BBQ Jamboree opens, on November 13th, just two days before the grand opening of Tiana's Bayou Adventure, the Princess and the Frog gift shop near the ride's exit will open.This store is called Lewis' Critter Club.
The staggered openings of area attractions in Bayou Country is almost surely a way to maximize both traditional media exposure and exposure on social media sites.
Instead of omnibus articles and posts about the rethemed area, there should be now a set of articles and posts about the restaurant, Then another set about the gift store and unique merchandise.
And then finally a set about the new re-themed attraction.As we've mentioned on previous episodes, the California version of Splash Mountain had a different track course and a slightly faster flume flow than the version of this same ride in Florida.
And I am interested to see if the faster ride time, even though the flume length is nearly identical, solves some of the show issues with the Dead Space and the Florida attraction.
Regardless, this here will be the last big project to open in California for years until those projects recently announced at D23 can be built. The Cocoa Boat Ride seems to be the least complicated of any of those projects announced in August at D23.
And even with that, I doubt the Cocoa Boat Ride can be finished before 2027 at the earliest.
But at least for now it'll be nice to have construction over or at least partially over in this section of the park because for the last year this whole section has been one continuous construction wall from Pirates of the Caribbean all the way over to the entrance path to Galaxy's Edge.
A couple more things here about Disneyland before we push on.First, after a seven-year hiatus, the Paint the Night Parade will return to the Disneyland Resort.
Exactly which park it's going to return to hasn't been confirmed, but it will be on property for the resort's 70th anniversary. This does seem like the type of announcement that should have come out two months ago at D23.
And presenting the announcement now makes me wonder if some of the other planned elements for the 70th have now fallen away. Disneyland clearly needs a popular anchor around which to frame advertisements next summer at the D23 event.
The one single element that was announced for the 70th was the Walt Disney animatronic, which would be installed in the Lincoln Theater, which then led to backlash from Walt's family and some fan groups.
I have no confirmed information about this, but I do see the possibility here that the Walt animatronic may have been delayed or reworked, likely for family approval, which then led to this late announcement about the Paint the Night parade as a new anchor for the resort's 70th anniversary.
Or maybe Paint the Night is simply being added to what has already been announced.I do think it's a little unusual that we've heard nothing about the Walt Disney animatronic since August.
But that in itself doesn't mean the project is being delayed or retooled.But more than once, I've wondered about the viability of that project after one of Walt's granddaughters came out very forcefully against it.
And at the back of Disneyland, there's now a permit order to arrange the Fantasyland Theater into a holiday themed area with a Santa meet and greet.
From the Festival of the Lion King to Pixar Fest to this new holiday inclusion, the theater is now functioning as a black box theater area that can be easily rethemed for upcoming events.
I sort of expect this plan to stay in place, especially as Disneyland sadly continues to cut back on large-scale entertainment due to the labor costs. One last thing here.
On a recent Sunday episode, we suggested that Disney was likely about to raise ticket prices at the American resorts.We said that this was specifically more likely at Disneyland than at Disney World.
And then a few days later, Disney did raise ticket prices and Magic Key prices at the California resort. It's possible, as we pointed out back then, that due to lower attendance, Disney wouldn't raise prices this year in Florida.
But also, the target day for the price increases, which was Wednesday, October 9th, was also a day that Disney World was closing down due to Hurricane Milton.
It's possible, I think I should point out, that Disney World may still raise prices, only to do so during a hurricane closure wouldn't have been the best look for the company.
So, there's a chance that those hikes are still coming to Florida, which means you might have a reason to buy your tickets now for an upcoming vacation, but as we've said all along,
price hikes this year early in October were far more of a surety in California than they were in Florida due to current visitation patterns there.And this leads us, rather nicely, into our last story of the day.
Our last segment today is on Epic Universe and Disney's response out in Florida.The battle between Universal, Orlando, and Disney World is now moving into high gear.
Up front, I will say that I like the vibe and the endless bubble of the Disney Resort more than that of Universal.
But Universal has done a masterful job with its Epic Universe rollout, releasing information bit by bit, and now arranging ticket sales in such a way as to move guests who might stay over at Disney over to Universal for multiple days.
Epic Universe will officially open on May 22nd, 2025.That's the Thursday leading into Memorial Day weekend.
I've also heard that it's going to be a stretch to finish the Harry Potter section of the park, specifically the Ministry of Magic, with its full-sized show areas, inventive animatronics, and unique ride system by opening day.
Even if that ride is able to open with the park, that ride relies on complex ride systems and unique animatronics combined with sophisticated show stages which may take some time to be fully functioning all day long.
One only needs to look no further than Rise of the Resistance, Disney's extremely complex but extremely impressive attraction, to have a sense of how down time might go over at Epic when it opens.But the opening is still seven months away.
And in the world of theme parks, it's amazing how quickly projects can be completed if you just throw a whole lot of money at them. even if completion doesn't always ensure smooth operations once the park opens.
But the Potter attraction is one to watch in terms of completing the initial park.Still, Universal's goal here, with now three theme parks and one water park, is to create a multi-day destination resort to better compete with Disney World.
and Universal is leveraging interest in Epic Universe to shift Orlando tourists away from Disney and into their resort.
During the first phase of ticket sales, the only way to get a ticket to Epic Universe will be to purchase a 3, 4, or 5 day ticket to the Universal Resort with only one of those days being good for admission at Epic Universe.
There are also multi-day hotel packages, but again with only one day in Epic Universe.Beyond this, there are some additional multi-day ticket options available to some overseas guests, but once more with only one day in Epic Universe.
Essentially, Universal is saying that if you want to see their new park when it opens, you'll likely need to book a minimum of two more days in their existing theme parks to do that.
This strategy will not only increase overall revenue, but it should significantly increase hotel occupancy at Universal.
If you have a three or four day ticket to Universal, you're probably better off staying at Universal, which has less expensive rooms on site compared to those at Disney.
Clearly, one overall goal here is to shift some tourist visitation patterns from Disney to Universal.
Hotel packages that include a multi-day ticket with one day's admission to Epic Universe will also include early entry to Epic Universe on that day as well.The one carve-out for the early phase packages will be for annual pass holders.
Unlike Disney, the vast majority of annual pass holders over at Universal also live in or near the Orlando area. Two days after ticket packages go on sale to the public, pass holders will be allowed to purchase a single-day ticket for themselves.
Multi-day ticket packages go on sale Tuesday, October 22nd.Single-day tickets for current pass holders go on sale two days later on Thursday, October 24th.And at this point, Universal is in the driver's seat for summer 2025.
Due to extremely poor planning during the Chapic years at Disney, Disney World now has no new projects of meaningful size to entice crowds over to its resort next summer.
So I would expect Disney to focus on hotel discounts, package discounts, and maybe even free dining offers to help fill its rooms.From what I've seen, the new Universal Park, it'll be lovely,
beautifully landscaped with large themed areas and rides with inventive technology that should widen the range of theme park experiences overall.
And over on the Disney side, Disney World has finally announced a closing date for the first section of Dinoland at Animal Kingdom to prepare for the new Tropical Americas area.
Though a number of people and ops believed that this would start early in December, the official date for the closure now is January 12th.
That is the final day to visit Triceratops Spin, some of the carnival games, and other Chester and Hester areas.The Boneyard and Restaurantosaurus will stay open for a few more months.
And honestly, this plan makes a lot more sense to me than the one that was floated earlier. I think most everyone who follows the parks knows that the winter holidays bring some of the largest crowds for the year.
But beyond this, the Walt Disney World Marathon also brings one big wave of people to the resort early in January. Though if you aren't in the run Disney crowd, this might not be on your radar.
This typically happens the second week of January, which is true for this year.Disney tends to leave up most of its holiday decorations until the marathon event is over, and then everything comes down.
So the January 12th closure date now gets the resort through the winter holidays and the marathon weekend.
I suspect one of the main reasons for Disney's initial plan to put up construction walls at the start of December before the big wave of winter tourists arrived was to demonstrate to investors that work was visibly moving forward on large improvements to the Florida parks.
What I believe, however, has been actually demonstrated over the past two months is this.Institutional investors are no longer swayed by announcements of forthcoming improvements.
Investors like Vance have seen too many projects canceled, amended, or cut back over the past 20 years.
I think Disney will need to have the goods nearly in hand, with believable near-future projections for increased attendance, before these improvements affect the stock price.
I actually suspect that the opening of Epic, with some crowds shifting over to Universal, may actually further depress the Disney stock price next summer.
even if construction is visibly moving forward at Animal Kingdom, possibly at Magic Kingdom, and possibly in Hollywood Studios, though the location for that Monsters Incorporated door coaster remains a mystery, likely because Disney hasn't yet fully agreed on a plan as to how the Muppets will be integrated into the Florida resort moving forward.
And with this, 2025 promises to be an interesting summer to watch out in Florida.I'll be back next week with a new episode.Lastly, as you know, we're an ad-free, listener-supported podcast.We do just two things.
Deep dives on stories related to the history of the Disney Studio and the parks, and news and analysis of current events as they relate to the Disney company.
We are funded entirely by listener contributions, specifically by listeners who join us on Bandcamp as monthly subscribers.On Bandcamp you'll find over 200 episodes not available on iTunes or anywhere else.
But the best reason to join us there is to support the work we do here and to make sure that this podcast continues to exist.You can support us by becoming a monthly subscriber at dhipodcast.bandcamp.com.
I'll also leave a link down in the show notes.So, until next Sunday, this is Todd James Pierce.
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