News on the 5th park

[lockedoutlogic]

So how many 'gates' has Universal opened now then?

Ouch...excellent move

 

[jerseyduke]

Right now there is some pretty major work going on down there, or at least ramping up. RCID does have land allocated for a 5th major theme park in it's current land usage plan.

But with Shanghai opening, AvatarLand, StarWars Land, ToyStory Land and the disney springs work, they is going to pretty much kill the budget. Not to mention, EPCOT needs some love.

Eventually they will have to do something to increase capacity there however. The population is not shrinking!

Orlando Hotel occupancy goes up every year. Eventually Disney is going to need or want more hotels too. Maybe they will complete AoA to their original planned capacity. Maybe a new gate with new hotels.

Does anyone know how the Marvel licensing works? That is a pretty big piece of intellectual property that Disney owns but can not use.

Perhaps Mr. Iger's successor will also have a different long term plan.

 

[Eoghann]

Does anyone know how the Marvel licensing works? That is a pretty big piece of intellectual property that Disney owns but can not use.

This one comes up a lot and there are a few grey areas in terms of exactly which characters are covered by the license. Broadly though the license is in perpetuity east of the Mississippi assuming Universal cares to continue paying the license fee. The characters covered by it include the Avengers, X-Men and Spider-man "families". There might be some wiggle room about who exactly is in each family (I mean by this point pretty much every Marvel character has been a member of the Avengers in the comics) but I doubt either side really wants to play that game.

Basically the only ones seen as safe right now are Guardians of the Galaxy but even that is mostly speculation because no one is saying publicly.

Long story short. Not happening any time soon.

 

[Aurora0427]

I mean I wasn't doing much more than watching cartoons and coloring when 9/11 happened but isn't it true that 9/11 did cause a decrease in travel for a while?

The biggest reason was the economy. You had the world com scandal, and the mothership- Enron collapsing. Stock market fell apart. Job losses. I think it had more to do with the economy than 9/11 itself.

 

[DanBoris]

This one comes up a lot and there are a few grey areas in terms of exactly which characters are covered by the license. Broadly though the license is in perpetuity east of the Mississippi assuming Universal cares to continue paying the license fee. The characters covered by it include the Avengers, X-Men and Spider-man "families". There might be some wiggle room about who exactly is in each family (I mean by this point pretty much every Marvel character has been a member of the Avengers in the comics) but I doubt either side really wants to play that game.

Basically the only ones seen as safe right now are Guardians of the Galaxy but even that is mostly speculation because no one is saying publicly.

Long story short. Not happening any time soon.

.. and Fantastic Four.

 

[DanBoris]

Right now there is some pretty major work going on down there, or at least ramping up. RCID does have land allocated for a 5th major theme park in it's current land usage plan.

But with Shanghai opening, AvatarLand, StarWars Land, ToyStory Land and the disney springs work, they is going to pretty much kill the budget. Not to mention, EPCOT needs some love.

Eventually they will have to do something to increase capacity there however. The population is not shrinking!

Orlando Hotel occupancy goes up every year. Eventually Disney is going to need or want more hotels too. Maybe they will complete AoA to their original planned capacity. Maybe a new gate with new hotels.

Does anyone know how the Marvel licensing works? That is a pretty big piece of intellectual property that Disney owns but can not use.

Perhaps Mr. Iger's successor will also have a different long term plan.

Actually the Master Plan does not really allocate space for the park. The plan simply allows for up to 5 major parks, but it doesn't say where or even if the 5th park will be built.

 

[Kimly]

They need to build more hotels before they even think of a new gate.

 

[Josh Hendy]

But since you brought it up...it's a myth that 9/11 caused a travel stop For Disney...it started 6 months before.

Someone should track down the people who didn't travel to WDW from March-August 2001 and find out exactly what they knew and when they knew it ...

 

[LovingDisney2012]

.

 

[rteetz]

I "heard" that the area behind Camp Minnie Mickey, and Rainforest is part of the expansion for Avatar Land.

This thread is 15 years old so avatar wasn't in the works then...

 

[lockedoutlogic]

Someone should track down the people who didn't travel to WDW from March-August 2001 and find out exactly what they knew and when they knew it ...

Well...watching the other people not show up...here's what I can tell you:

There was such a letdown after the big globey Wandy celebration ended...and the economy was WEAK after the arrival of our "fearless leader"...it just slowed down. Low hotel occupancy rates...very low attendance.

 

[Josh Hendy]

Well...watching the other people not show up...here's what I can tell you:

There was such a letdown after the big globey Wandy celebration ended...and the economy was WEAK after the arrival of our "fearless leader"...it just slowed down. Low hotel occupancy rates...very low attendance.

The fearless leader had pretty low attendance that summer too ... I heard ...

All that aside, I would expect that the gradually building tsunami of park attendance in the 15 years since '01 has not exactly been a symptom of organic recovery, but more like a Federal Reserve stoked misallocation and misalignment of wealth and financial priorities on a breathtaking scale. And the clincher is that the growing attendance did not cause the building of a 5th gate, or completion/expansion of existing parks, or a lot of new hotels and restaurants in proportion to the growing attendance and revenues. Instead it coincided with a lot of stagnation and decline in 3 of 4 parks, and a lot of "innovations" related to ride rationing and crowd cramming.

 

[LovingDisney2012]

This thread is 15 years old so avatar wasn't in the works then...

Oops, didn't see the date. They definitely didn't have the Avatar area in the works then lol.

 

[TommyJK]

... misallocation and misalignment of wealth and financial priorities on a breathtaking scale.

It's interesting that the mass increase of people flocking to theme parks in Orlando has increased at a seemingly similar rate to US household debt. Look at the graph below. Overall household debt has doubled since ~2001 at an ever increasing pace. More folks taking expensive trips they likely can't afford (among spending on other things they can't afford). I'm not saying it's a direct correlation but IMO likely somewhat of a factor....

 

[goingthedistance]

This thread is 15 years old so avatar wasn't in the works then...

Can we close this thread since it is 15 years old and there are other, more current threads on the hypothetical 5th gate?