I wonder if they could offer subsidized Disney park ticket as part of a flex ticket. Like spend a week with us and purchase 3 days or more admission to Universal and we'll give you a day at Disney for $50. Not sure how smart it is to do something like that in regards to a competitor, but it would certainly be legal...and interesting.
In California there's the flex ticket with
Disneyland, Universal Hollywood, and SeaWorld. Seems to be a good bargain if those places were on your "to do" list!
45 pages into this thread... and I still don't know what Batman was doing in Diagon Alley??? I would hope they would keep the character appearances in their appropriate parks!!!!
I wholeheartedly disagree that Universal doesn't resonate with people emotionally.
I agree with your disagree-ment.
But I'm affected while walking up to IOA. I have been known to stop and sit before I get to the gates to listen to the music, which does something on some level to me. It sounds a LOT like some music Imagine Dragons has used in a song, and I will stop and listen to that part of that song if it comes on. As I enter the Port of Entry, I slow down. I don't want to rush, I want to experience the beauty and the sense of, I don't know, peace I get.
Walking up Main Street (especially Disneyland) I get a good feeling too, but not as deep as at IOA.
Hogsmeade gets me on many levels, and I bet Diagon is going to do it more. I've experienced HP-the-books-and-movies on many levels, too. Was in my late 20s when the books came out and I ignored them for awhile. Was working
Amazon customer service and didn't want to be a part of the madness, the insanity that I was being shown on a daily basis by the fans. Seriously, the fans were bananas in '99, and it caused me to ask to move to the team that supported electronics, tools, and software (the latter not being all that fun because there were NO returns unless it was actually damaged, and people don't respond well to no returns!) just to get away from the Rowling readers. But finally I started reading them. Then started seeing the movies along with Lord of the Rings, and that whole period of my life (which also found me meeting my now-husband, courting, etc) has layers of emotion and meaning to it. Then we had DS, then later we started showing him the movies, etc, now it's the
Lego Harry Potter videogames that my son and I bond with... Layers! And that ALL comes up at Universal.
You would think I would have similar stuff with Disney, but I don't. I cried during the re-release of Cinderella in the 70s, cried and freaked out so much my mom had to leave the movie with me. (those stepsisters!) I disliked the other princess stories. I NEVER liked the characters at disneyland and still don't much care for them. There are a lot of Disney movies I still have never seen. Then in my early 20s I hated big corporations and Disney was, eh hem, the big cheese of 'em all.
Didn't start understanding why a parent always had to die in Disney movies until my mom died just as I turned 30. (there's no story until that happens...a parent's death makes your life turn in a way it doesn't turn before)
So Disney doesn't do the same thing, doesn't have the same ooomph for me!
Wow that was long, even for me!
Today's parents did not read HP as children. But the HP generation is in their early 20's. Pretty soon it will indeed be about nostalgia and being a child again for them.
Philosopher's Stone came out in '97. Let's say a kid was prime HP age, 11, when that book was read by them. That kid is now 28. Depending on how early that person started their family, they could absolutely have a kid of that same prime age right now. And even if the child isn't 11, heck, most kids have started experiencing the stories WAY younger than that.
Many of today's parents read HP as children. It's just hard to think about how LONG the books have been out!
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