Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << Maybe Universal is banking on visitor spending in the shops to help cover the cost of this expensive attraction. >> Except that J.K. Rowling gets a large chunk of revenue on anything Potter related sold in the stores. That's why Disney passed on the rights -- too much revenue going to the author and not enough revenue for the theme park even if it is wildly successful.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << And then there is the dragon attack scene with the big Dragon AA. >> When I saw the dragon on video, it didn't appear for more than a couple of seconds. The CGI film material seems to make up 90% of this attraction.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "Except that J.K. Rowling gets a large chunk of revenue on anything Potter related sold in the stores. That's why Disney passed on the rights -- too much revenue going to the author and not enough revenue for the theme park even if it is wildly successful." Interesting.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy Even more interesting is that Disney now gets a large chunk of revenue on anything Marvel-related sold at UO. So, if attendance increase and more merchandise is sold, Disney still stands to gain while UO still has to figure out how to pay off their debt.
Originally Posted By dshyates "Does anyone know what the budget for this attraction was? I'm curious simply because it seems like an extraordinary risk given that IOA has never broken any records attendance-wise. Maybe Universal is banking on visitor spending in the shops to help cover the cost of this expensive attraction." The only figure that has been mentioned is $265,000,000+ for the entire expansion. And Universal is really hopeing to and most likely will see a HUGE attendance increase. And as far a merchendising goes J.K does gat a chunk of the revenue, but Universal is also going to see a lot of merchendising sales. One of the smart things they did was create a ton of exclusive (as in, only availabe at Universal) Potter merchendise that so far appears to be VERY popular. And regarding the Marvel stuff, yes Disney does get a part of everything Marvel sold, but this agreement has been in place long before Disney bought Marvel. And Universal seems to do OK with it, and moves a lot of Marvel stuff. "When I saw the dragon on video, it didn't appear for more than a couple of seconds. The CGI film material seems to make up 90% of this attraction." You do only see the dragon for a couple of seconds. But it is only about four feet from your face and breaths "fire" (which is actually red lighted smoke and heat) right at your car. Being so close the AA is quite effective. I would say that the CGI screens are closer to 30% of the ride. The 2 longest scenes are the spiders and the dementors. The CGI scenes are very much like soarin' with a lot more motion of teh seats. But it does really give a great effect of flying. The motion of the seats is very smooth. The ride as a whole is a technological wonder. But most casual tourists are going to oblivious to that fact. To them it will just be a good ride. One coll thing is that for most of the ride you are close to 20 feet in the air but you never really get a sense that you are really that high up since you can't really see below you. This Sunday night at 7:00pm eastern there is going to be a special on NBC about the making of TWWOHP.
Originally Posted By dshyates Here is a totally spoiler filled blow by blow review of HPatFJ: <a href="http://www.insidethemagic.net/2010/06/spoiler-filled-review-harry-potter-and-the-forbidden-journey-ride-at-universal-orlandos-wizarding-world/" target="_blank">http://www.insidethemagic.net/...g-world/</a>
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt The only figure that has been mentioned is $265,000,000+ for the entire expansion. $265 million is an extraordinary investment for a small section of park that does not require a separate admission. That's the price of a small theme park. For example Legoland purchased Cypress Gardens for $23 million. It will be very interesting to see how 2010 pans out for attendance and guest spending at Universal Florida.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 IOA really needs the boost; despite being a good park, it's never drawn the numbers Uni was hoping for.
Originally Posted By SuperDry ^^^ How do you know that? Maybe this actually means that IOA has been hitting it out of the park as far as attendance and revenue goes, and this is its reward?
Originally Posted By Bob Paris 1 Indeed! If somebody like the Unmentionable One(JonVon-demort)can make a non-stop argument for five years that "the resort expansion including DCA got the numbers up to what DIsney had hoped for and made out of towners spend an extra day onsite, thus DCA was succesful", WHY can't it also be spun that IOA was similarly successful?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Because the numbers for 2009 WERE posted not too long ago, and UO was way down, especially IOA, which had lower attendance than... DCA. That's why.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< Because the numbers for 2009 WERE posted not too long ago, and UO was way down, especially IOA, which had lower attendance than... DCA. That's why. >>> Does Universal release official attendance numbers? I'm pretty sure that Disney does not, so even if the IOA numbers were official, how can you make any meaningful comparison against the DCA numbers since they're not from Disney officially?
Originally Posted By Bob Paris 1 [Jon VonDemort] "IOA added an extra day to guests time at URO thus it was successful" [/Jon VonDemort] I can cut and paste that for the next five years, kinda like he did, if you want.
Originally Posted By dshyates Here is a good article about the merchendising of TWWOHP! <a href="http://mobile.orlandosentinel.com/inf/infomo;JSESSIONID=B68381F4C8DD1992E941.1010?view=top_stories_item&feed:a=sentinel_1min&feed:c=topstories&feed:i=54130560" target="_blank">http://mobile.orlandosentinel....54130560</a>
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << [Jon VonDemort] "IOA added an extra day to guests time at URO thus it was successful" [/Jon VonDemort] >> Really? In 1998, Universal Studios Orlando recorded an attendance of 9 million people. In 2001, the combined attendance of IOA and USO was 10.1 million. An additionaly 1.1 million visitors per year to the entire UO resort doesn't seem to match up with your statement above.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <<<< Because the numbers for 2009 WERE posted not too long ago, and UO was way down, especially <<IOA, which had lower attendance than... DCA. That's why. >>> <Does Universal release official attendance numbers? I'm pretty sure that Disney does not, so even if the IOA numbers were official, how can you make any meaningful comparison against the DCA numbers since they're not from Disney officially?> They were from an industry publication. Not AB any more; I forget who it is now. But we all used to take the AB numbers as - if not Gospel - then at least rough approximations. They always had numbers for all the parks, including Disney, even though Disney doesn't release official numbers. It's funny; when the numbers for DCA earlier in the decade were short of that magic 7 million mark, the bashers were all over them. Now that they're better and IOA is down, it's "how can you believe them?" I have no idea how accurate they are, but if they're using the same methodology year after year, they should at least be valid for comparisons year to year. And they show UO and IOA's numbers down for 2009; I'm sure they'll be up this year with HP - all I said was that IOA could use the boost.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Okay, here's the link. Now it's the Themed Entertainment Association who does it. <a href="http://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/201004/1895/" target="_blank">http://www.themeparkinsider.co...04/1895/</a> They show IOA at 4.5 million (down 13.8%). (And DCA at 6.1 million, up 9.5%.) They posit that perhaps Uni visitors put off a visit in 2009, waiting for HP to open (a possibility I raised myself on another thread in response to mousemerf's strange insistence that "attendance often goes up in anticipation of a major addition" - ??), but at any rate, if IOA - a year-round park - is only drawing 4.5 million, then yes it could use the boost. I hope they get it, because IOA is a good park. It's always mystified me that it's never drawn as well as USO, which is not nearly as good IMO.
Originally Posted By Bob Paris 1 "<< [Jon VonDemort] "IOA added an extra day to guests time at URO thus it was successful" [/Jon VonDemort] >> Really? In 1998, Universal Studios Orlando recorded an attendance of 9 million people. In 2001, the combined attendance of IOA and USO was 10.1 million. An additionaly 1.1 million visitors per year to the entire UO resort doesn't seem to match up with your statement above." I guess you weren't around when jonvn was doing his schtick with DCA and how it was a COMPLETE SUCCESS!!!! for the DLR. If you read my previous posts and the conversation before yours you'd see I was parroting him and thus making fun of "JonVonDemort" - He who must not be named. And they say Yanks don't get irony, huh?