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Universal Plans Early Summer Launch of New Park With Marquee Harry Potter Ride
Wizard-battle attraction is expected to be a major draw as Universal takes on Disney
By
Robbie Whelan and
Jacob Passy
Oct. 15, 2024 - 9:35 am EDT
Universal is readying its attack on Disney’s theme-park stronghold in Florida.
The company is planning for its 750-acre Universal
Epic Universe park to be fully opened as early as Memorial Day weekend of next year—earlier than expected—with tickets on sale as soon as this month, according to people familiar with the matter.
If successful, Universal’s new park could be a major broadside in the theme-park wars, which have intensified in recent years as live entertainment has become more central to generating growth at big media companies like Comcast—Universal’s parent company—and Disney.
Universal said it hasn’t yet confirmed an opening date. The timing of the planned opening could change.
Meeting that Memorial Day target would enable Universal to take advantage of a full summer-vacation season and would be a coup in the company’s long-running rivalry with nearby Walt Disney World. Universal had long said the park was likely to open in summer 2025, though fans and theme-park-industry watchers grew worried earlier this year when the company rolled out a series of updates that listed the opening date as simply 2025.
In the early stages of the park’s opening, Universal plans to require that visitors purchase multiday passes in order to enter Epic Universe, travel agents briefed on the plans said. Those passes would also include admission to Universal’s other Orlando parks, including Universal Studios Florida, these agents said. Ticket holders would be able to spend only one of the days at Epic Universe, in part because demand is anticipated to be high and the company wants to avoid overcrowding, they said.
The approach could prod visitors into spending multiple days at Universal’s properties and make it harder for some visitors to justify buying passes to Disney’s parks during the same Florida trip, which is a common move for many families.
Universal Epic Universe could snatch about one million visitors from Disney during 2025 and 2026 and boost overall attendance at Universal’s three parks in the area by more than eight million, according to estimates made this year by MoffettNathanson.
“They want people there for more than a weekend,” said Jennifer St. Gelais, owner of Practically Perfect Vacations, a Massachusetts-based
travel agency that has received updates from Universal about ticketing plans.
Both Universal and Disney have reported slowing growth in their theme-park divisions after an explosion of pent-up demand following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Revenue and income at Universal’s theme parks both fell in the second quarter from a year earlier, as many tourists were choosing to travel internationally or go on cruises instead of to theme parks, said Michael Cavanagh, president of Universal parent Comcast.
One of the most ambitious elements of Universal Epic Universe is a new Harry Potter-themed area set in the 1920s Paris of the Fantastic Beasts movies. The area is slated to include full-scale replicas of street facades.
The section is anchored by a new attraction based on the Ministry of Magic from the Harry Potter movies—a Capitol-type building of sorts for the wizarding world. Guests visiting the attraction, known as Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, will ride in multidirectional elevator cars and watch as Potter and his wizard pals battle villain Dolores Umbridge and her allies, the Death Eaters, according to preview videos released by Universal and some of the people familiar with the plans.
The attraction is one of the most technically complex Universal has ever built, and seeks to compete on quality with the best rides in the world.
The Ministry of Magic ride is aimed to be what is known in the industry as an “intent-to-visit” attraction—a ride that visitors consider to be worth the price of admission just on its own—said Jim Hill, who runs a theme-park-industry publication and hosts several theme-park podcasts.“It’s a moonshot,” Hill said.
Epic Universe, which Comcast announced in 2019 and was delayed more than a year by the pandemic, is set to include Super Mario Bros. and How to Train Your Dragon themed areas in addition to Harry Potter. Two other areas will include attractions based on new characters and story lines: Celestial Universe—which has an outer-space theme—and Dark Universe, based on monsters from classic movies like “Frankenstein” and “The Wolf Man.”
Universal is hoping that tourists at Epic Universe will be drawn in by large-scale, marquee attractions, like the Donkey Kong roller coaster in Super Nintendo World. That area builds on the success of Universal Pictures’ and Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which was last year’s highest-grossing animated film, earning $1.36 billion at the global box office.
In August, Disney announced a slew of new rides and expansions to its Florida theme parks that theme park chief Josh D’Amaro described as finalized ideas that would all eventually be built, rather than “blue sky” ideas that are still in the conceptual stage. He described one such expansion as the biggest “in the park’s entire history.”
More recently, Disney has announced promotions at its Florida parks that extend through the early part of next year’s summer season, including a low-price water park pass and $200-a-night hotel discounts for visitors who buy park passes in packages that include stays at Disney-owned hotels.
Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said at a May investor conference that when Universal expanded in the past, it brought more visitors to Orlando.
“It’s not something that should be distracting to us or anxiety-provoking,” Iger said of Universal’s new park.
Write to Robbie Whelan at
robbie.whelan@wsj.com and Jacob Passy at
jacob.passy@wsj.com
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