Originally posted by Testtrack321
Oh, so this is my thread. I'm that pivatal 'teen' group that Disney is aiming for now and people said Universal 'owns' already.
I can say, with extreme amount of confidence, that this statement is false. I have talked to many kids of differing backgrounds, ages, and opinions, and found that nearly ALL perfer Disney to Universal. But what gets them going to Universal is the coasters. Simple as that. They love Disney, the dark rides, the themeing, everything. But they only go to Universal for the coasters. They would stay at Disney if it had more big time thrill rides. Simple as that. And Disney knows that.
Now we go to Universal vs. Disney dark rides. Simply put, Cat in the Hat sucks. It is boring, it has nothing in it besides paint and pictures, and tons of boredom. Compare this to Pooh, opened around the same time, and as you can see, Pooh wins.
Then as Scoop keeps saying, Disney has the buffer. The monorial. The TTC. Everything. Universal has a 6 story parking deck that throws out more advertisements than a DTV Disney movie, and then dumps you into a night-club district.
Yeah, Universal creative really had caught up.
I also know a lot of teens who would disagree with you. There are a lot of comparisons on quality of rides which Universal Creative made better than Disney, and many have already been listed:
MIB vs. Buzz Lightyear
Bilge-Rat Barges vs. Kali River Rapids
Spiderman vs. Anything
Even the old E.T. ride is up to par with Peter Pan IMO.
Maybe when you rode the Cat in the Hat it had technical problems(assuming you actually did ride it), because, I have so much fun spinning it's not boring at all to me, and there is a lot of different elements to the ride, besides "paint and pictures".
But the trend is not favoring Disney if they keep coming up with mediocre attractions every few years.
The initial question, I think people are missing, is that Universal is quickly catching up to provide a good experience for all types of guests, and that has nothing to do with attendance figures.
Now if a certain park left a certain demographic completely disappointed when leaving, then that's an issue, not what the attendance figures are.
I mean, let's face it, MK opened in 1971, IOA opened in 1999, and people say IOA isn't as good, but to me only because it doesn't have 28 years of marketing behind it?
I'm going to use another movie analogy here. Let's say they decided to make a Titanic sequel and all the people that went to see it the first time and loved it, went back years later to see the sequel, but hated it. The ticket sales would be there, but, naturally, it would be really crazy to try to make a sequel on something like Titanic and expect people to like it.
That's what Disney is beginning to face, as the parks get lower and lower quality attractions replacing classics, not to mention all other aspects of the "experience" going down, people who don't know will still come until they realize that things aren't the way they used to be. If the trend continues, and more and more people get word of mouth and realize that there's "another game in town" then we'll keep seeing different trends in UO's favor. Maybe not right now, but in 5 to 10 years, it could be a very different story, if both resorts have 4 theme parks and several hotels.