“How high is up?”
When Mark Woodbury became Universal’s theme park chief in 2022, he pressed his lieutenants to answer that question. The former architect was not referring to a roller coaster incline.
Universal’s parks had already become a surprise growth engine for NBCUniversal, but Mr. Woodbury saw an even bigger opportunity to lift the business firmly out of Disney’s shadow. “How do we become the destination of choice in each of the markets that we operate in and in all of the markets that we choose to expand into?” he said in a recent interview.
Mr. Woodbury, 67, is starting to unveil the answers.
This week, Universal unveiled theming for a new park in Texas aimed at families and an opening date for an attraction in Nevada focused on horror fans. Those come on top of an expansion in Los Angeles and a massive theme park development in Orlando, Fla., that will open this spring. It’s considering “Wicked” attractions and a major park for Britain, too.
Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, has not disclosed budgets for the projects, but analysts say the Orlando project alone cost roughly $7 billion.
As businesses, theme parks come with numerous risks. They are vulnerable to swings in the economy. Visitor safety is a constant battle. Attractions require costly upkeep. Escalating labor costs threaten margins.
But those challenges are outweighed by the potential for added profit, Comcast has decided. “I could not be prouder of the trajectory and growth strategy,” Mike Cavanagh, Comcast’s president, said in an email.
Some of the projects are designed to bring Universal-style thrills to audiences in new markets. On Wednesday, the company announced that a year-round attraction called Universal Horror Unleashed will open in Las Vegas in August, with tickets priced from $59 to $149. The 100,000-square-foot attraction will include four haunted houses pegged to movies like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Exorcist: Believer.” It will also serve alcohol.
On Friday, Universal announced that its first Universal Kids Resort — focused on children ages 3 to 8 and under construction near Dallas — would offer rides and play areas themed to movie franchises like “Shrek,” “Trolls,” “Minions,” “Puss in Boots” and “Jurassic World.” The 32-acre “starter” park is expected to open next year.
“We’re going to roll these out across the country and the world,” Mr. Woodbury said. (They’re relatively cheap; Mr. Woodbury said at a 2023 conference that the first Horror Unleashed and Universal Kids Resort would cost “several hundred million” combined.)
On April 25, Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles will introduce Fan Fest Nights, an evening-hours, separately ticketed event built around “Star Trek,” “Back to the Future” and Dungeons & Dragons cosplay that runs until May 18. It represents another of Mr. Woodbury’s growth strategies: Find ways to make older Universal parks work harder. Tickets start at $74 and reach $373 for a V.I.P. offering.
And then comes Epic Universe, a 750-acre development in Orlando that includes a theme park and three hotels. When it opens on May 22, Epic Universe will become Florida’s first major new park in a generation — and, Universal hopes, a property that will reverse a longstanding business dynamic with Walt Disney World to the south. Mr. Woodbury wants families to view the Universal Orlando Resort as a weeklong destination and not just a one- or two-day add-on to a Disney vacation.
“We want people to think of us first,” he said. The Universal Orlando Resort currently includes two theme parks (Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure), a shopping and dining district, and a water park called Volcano Bay.
The park will attract roughly 10 million visitors in its first full year of operation, according to MoffettNathanson.
So far, Epic Universe tickets for the general public have been sold only as multiday packages; the least expensive option for non-Floridians is $352 to $521, with the cost fluctuating based on the calendar, and provides one-day entry to Epic Universe and two days at the older parks.
Disney has watched Universal’s insurgency with a clenched jaw. In 2014, when the Universal parks broadened their focus to families with young children — Disney turf — Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, questioned whether Comcast was serious about the theme park business.
“I think the jury is still out to see just how much they’re willing to invest and what kind of creativity they have to invest in,” Mr. Iger said at the time.
In the years that followed, Comcast spent billions to open a park in China, expand in Japan and add attractions in Florida.
More recently, Disney has dismissed the threat of greater competition from Universal in Florida, contending that a rising tide lifts all boats. “The Universal guys will gain a little bit of share, but we’ll see more category growth than we see share loss,” Hugh Johnston, Disney’s chief financial officer, said at a December conference. “Net-net, it sort of works out OK.”
MoffettNathanson estimated that Epic Universe would siphon a million visitors from Disney World from mid-2025 to the end of 2026.
In 2023, the most recent year for which attendance numbers were available, Universal parks attracted about 61 million visitors worldwide, a 70 percent increase from a decade earlier. (Disney parks had 142 million, up 7 percent.)
Universal’s momentum has come, in part, from closer collaboration with a corporate sibling, Universal Pictures.
In 2023, Universal Studios Hollywood opened a major Mario Bros. attraction in lock step with the release of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” by Universal Pictures. Epic Universe will open in May with rides themed to the “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise. Universal Pictures will release a big-budget “How to Train Your Dragon” reboot in June.
“We’ve cultivated a creative and commercial shorthand across our teams, and that ease and comfort with one another allows us to pull levers across the company to amplify our respective strategies,” Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios, said.
Mr. Woodbury has still-secret plans for significant attractions themed to “Wicked,” another Universal movie. “When I saw it, my first reaction was, ‘This is a theme park waiting to happen,’” he said.
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