Universal Great Britain - Speculation & Rumors

[tommyhawkins]

Even though DLP is a short trip away, we always choose Florida due to the vast array of what’s on offer. We’d rather pay a bit more and have a well rounded experience. I have been to DLP but not since 2007 and that’s because it hasn’t added anything significant for quite some time. However I may visit again in the next few years as I believe they have some big expansions coming.

I’m quite confident there won’t be any clones at the Universal UK park from Florida. From other Universal parks elsewhere such as Beijing or Japan? Possibly yes as very few people from the UK visit those parks.

I haven't been to DLP since 2015, i think it has less today than it did then, I have however been to Europa 3 times in a year despite DLP being so much easier to get to - I wonder if two different groups are bein conflated in this discussion

I agree, this is a much more important issue as far as duplicate rides are concerned. My first theme park experience was DLP. Rather than stopping me going to Orlando because I'd already seen a version of the Magic Kingdom, it encouraged me to go to Orlando because there was so much more of that theme park excellence on offer. If Orlando had been my first experience, would I have gone to DLP? Maybe not, especially as I might have concluded that I'd already experienced everything that Paris had to offer while I visited Orlando.

I think too much concern is being attached to the cannibalisation issue. Yes, lots of Brits visit Orlando, just over 900,000 last year, but the UK's population is 69 million so Universal is creating a massive new market of potential visitors by building in Bedford. The possibility of Orlando losing a few British visitors is pretty small beer compared to the domestic audience that Universal is hoping to attract in Bedford, and that's before you start thinking about visitors from the rest of Europe.

If Universal want to minimise the possibility of Brits deciding not to visit Orlando because they've "done it all" in Bedford, there is pretty easy solution to that potential problem. Build world class and unique attractions, which reside within beloved IPs. It's what they've done extremely well over the last 20 years, as even the most cursory glance at their track record will show. So it should be business as usual for Universal Creative, the only thing which will hold them back is a lack of ambition (and investment) by UDX and Comcast.

A million visitors is nearly 12% of their expected Y1 visitor numbers, if you are to rank people into groups of who is most likely to visit, the Florida contingent are the highest.

Again, I don't know why so much emphasis is being put on Potter like it will singlehandedly carry this park, it won't. The discussion seems to be as if there will be a huge backlash if they don't have this.

Europa Park is the second most visited park in Europe with 6m visitors- has only one singular mini land with Arthur. It's just a park filled with great theming and rides and people go there. Many of the other popular parks aren't based on mainstream IPs.

I assume the reason everyone is on this forum and not a Harry Potter/Nintendo/HTTYD/Popeye/Transformers/etc forum is cos they like the work Universal do on the whole and believe they are good at this park building malarkey right?

 

[rob@rar]

Again, I don't know why so much emphasis is being put on Potter like it will singlehandedly carry this park, it won't. The discussion seems to be as if there will be a huge backlash if they don't have this.

Europa Park is the second most visited park in Europe with 6m visitors- has only one singular mini land with Arthur. It's just a park filled with great theming and rides and people go there. Many of the other popular parks aren't based on mainstream IPs.

I assume the reason everyone is on this forum and not a Harry Potter/Nintendo/HTTYD/Popeye/Transformers/etc forum is cos they like the work Universal do on the whole and believe they are good at this park building malarkey right?

I’m not wedded to IP-based environments, certainly not as much as Universal itself seems to be. When IoA opened my favourite land was The Lost Continent, which was mostly free of any IP that was still within actual IP rights. But everything that Universal has done since then has been IP-based, either stuff they owned or stuff they paid a fortune to use. Assuming that will be the case for the park in Bedford is not a leap of faith, but a racing certainty.

So if we assume that Universal UK is going to be mostly IP-based, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to discuss the pros and cons of what might be coming. Universal aficionados had until recently mostly dismissed the possibility of Harry Potter forming the basis of one of the lands, for the perfectly rational reason that Warner Bros would not want a major HP presence next door to their very successful Studio Tour. A story in The Sun (a British tabloid newspaper, not always with a reputation for adhering strictly to the facts of the matter) cast doubt on our received wisdom that HP was not a possibility, by suggesting that Universal had recently reached an agreement with Warner Bros. From a commercial point of view I think this makes a compelling story, even if it means there’s less chance of seeing the IP that I’d really want to experience, Lord of The Rings. But does anyone really doubt that HP is anything less than a juggernaut of the IP world, especially in the UK? I’ve not been to Orlando since 2023, but that summer the two HP lands in The Studios and IOA were absolutely rammed, shifting monumental volumes of merchandise, food and beverages, with consistently long queues for all the rides and attractions. I’m sure that’s the case in 2025, and the amount of time visitors are prepared to queue for the new Ministry ride is indicative of the enduring popularity of the IP and Universal’s awesome ability to craft wonderful story-based attractions within that world. Does that mean that HP’s presence will make or break the park in Bedford? No, I don’t think it’s anything like that. But if Universal is able to obtain those rights I think they’d be foolish to ignore the park-visiting public’s desire to immerse themselves in that world. Sitting alongside other massive IPs like the Jurassic franchise, will appeal to the widest possible demographic.