There's over 50 kinds of berries so they could go wild making various smoothies or fruit juices in a quick serve location. It could be a place to get some different seasonal items for something cold during the summer.
Berries are also used for
curry so that could be a unique thing to bring over as a food option.
The main plot of Harry Potter involves a murderous wizard that has no problem torturing anyone who gets in his way. I know HP might be a few years above the age range Universal may be going for with PKMN (for comparison Ash is 10 years old in the anime, Harry is 11 in the first book) but I the implication of eating them is the least of a kid's concern.
If they've played the games or watch the show they'd likely be aware of it anyway as it's mentioned in places. The fact it's part of gameplay section in a game is an interesting change bringing that upfront.
Adding to this, in terms of detail and depth it could be something comparable to Diagon Alley.
If they leaned on including the darker side of Pokémon we could also get something like Knockturn Alley containing all the ghost/psychic/dark type Pokémon. In the game there are cementaries for Pokémon and people which lends itself to a "dark wizard" type environments; some Pokémon actually haunt those places. They could build a
Pokémon Tower in the land's town.
I know we brought it up before but since it's re-relevant: It would be a disservice to the franchise to ignore those darker bits too. You can't ignore fun things like this
Pokédex entry:
Or this description of
Hypno:
Or the
best description of how far the series will go:
Personally I'm not expecting anything outright that dark in the land to be front and center, I'm only pointing out there's mature aspects to the series that make it feel alive. For the most part Pokémon is a happy-feel-good series
and there's also a lot of lore, worldbuilding, and environmental storytelling that shouldn't be ignored either. Ash died in the first movie of the series (he came back but not the point).
This IP deserves a fresh slate of land and not be retrofited into exisitng spaces because it is very content-rich. Similar to HP there could be a Pokémon land in multiple Universal parks with something completely different.
I assume once the the Japan Spider-Man redo finishes up it'll help guage what we're likely to see for USF. There's some comfort that since it's a decent footprint it won't feel like a quick ride if they keep the pacing anywhere near SM.
Universal plz.