Tuesday 14 July 2015

Theme Park Nut News Update - 14th July 2015

It's been a very very quiet week in the world of theme parks.

Luckily there San Diego Comic Con was on over the weekend, otherwise there would be nothing going on for us nerds. While there was plenty about Star Wars the movie, SDCC didn't give us any information on the Star Wars lands at Disney parks.

Fortunately, there was one peice of theme park news from the event! The first maze for Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror nights was annouced: Crimson Peak: Maze of Madness. The maze will be based on the up coming Guillermo del Toro film Crimson Peak.

In other news, ThemeParkTourist, posted an interesting post in the last week, which attempt to connect the dots on the potential for a Marvel land coming to Disneyland Resort. While this is definitely still speculation, it is very interesting that Joe Rohde has been promoted to head up Marvel. I am a fan of Rohde's work, particularly in Animal Kingdom, so it is going to be interesting to see what he brings to this global role. Wait and see!

Today we have seen an announcement from WDW, that the upcoming International Food and Wine Festival is going to be expanding into Future World for the first time. While this isn't huge news, and the invasion isn't very large it is good to see this festival going from strength to strength.

There have been two removals from inside WDW parks as well in the last week. One is the removal of the Confederate Flag from Epcot's American Adventure. I'm not an American, so I'm not going to pass comment on this. Secondly, Disney's Hollywood Studios has removed the bust of Bill Cosby from their Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame Plaza exhibition. This isn't necessarily surprising given the news/rumors about Cosby over the last 12 months. Although Disney doesn't need a reason to rip things out of Hollywood Studios at the moment, you can understand where they are coming from with this.

In Canadian park news, Canada's Wonderland have released a video show the making of Wonder Mountain's Guardian, there 4D, interactive dark ride roller coaster that opened last year. Very interesting if you are into behind the scenes footage like I do.

In strange, and sad, news a WDW cast member died over the 4th of July weekend, allegedly from firing a firework from the top of his head. The man had played Gaston, among other characters, and it has been rumored that he stared in at least one of the Gaston YouTube clips that have been going viral in the last year. A sad thing to happen to anyone. If you haven't seen the clips of Gaston, here are a couple of good ones to get you started:
- Gaston arm wrestles 11 year old girl

- Gaston argues about the beast
- Gaston impressed by little girl


For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next week, Cheers!

2 comments:

  1. Yikes that maze looks so scary, I know a few peeps that would love it though :)

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  2. Yeah I'm sure it will be popular! It amazes me how intense the mazes in the U.S are for Horror Nights. Scary stuff!

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