It's been a couple of weeks since I've done a proper news update. I have been wrapped up with a new real life work project, and sadly haven't had time. However, I cannot ignore the media preview of Pandora - The World of Avatar that happened at Disney's Animal Kingdom today. So here is an update with a bunch of interesting stuff from this Orlando expansion.
Obviously, SPOILERS. If you don't want to see anything about this new land, look away now.
Firstly, the animatronics that have been added for this new land are amazing, but also a bit frightening:
And if you've got 15 minutes and want to see where she fits in, here is a POV from Inside the Magic:
The other major ride to open is the Flight of Passage, which I've seen today as a cross between Soarin' and the Tower of Terror, so it will be interesting to see more about this, but we have seen another incredibly detailed Queue, with a massive "Avatar" animatronic:
As of yet, we haven't seen a POV of Flight of Passage, I'm sure that will appear (even given the rough nature of the ride) over the next month as the previews and soft opens occur. But this land is as much about the place than these two rides, So if you want to just look at the immersive environment they have build, So it's worth taking a look around:
And if you haven't heard the word Bioluminescence enough yet...
... it looks even better at night (which is apparently not fully operational).
And of course, no new land is complete without food, so here is a preview of the Satu'li Canteen:
For all your shopping needs, pop over to Windtraders:
If you want a summary from one of the lucky media people that was able to tour the site today, check out this article in the Orlando Sentinel from Sarah Pedicini. Pandora: The World of Avatar opens May 27th at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Sunday, 30 April 2017
Saturday, 8 April 2017
News Update - 9th April 2017
Starting this week in Spain (something I rarely say), this week saw the opening of Ferrari Land at Port Aventura World! This second gate for the resort now contains Europe's fastest and tallest ride, Big Red. The ride has made viral news this week, not just for it's opening, but for the bizarre footage of a rider being struck by a bird.
In Orlando, Universal has officially opened the Race through New York starrring Jimmy Fallon. This ride had been soft opened for a few weeks, but this marked the opening ceremony. It also included a great moment where Jimmy Fallon and the Rock dressed up as themselves as mascots, and pranked fans around Universal Orlando.
For U.S. residents, Disney has announced a Twitter and Instagram competition for the opening of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, where winner will get win a trip on a Disney Cruise and a trip to Walt Disney World. Details on the Disney parks blog.
After "disappointing" attendance results in the last week, Tokyo Disney redirected attention this week with a groundbreaking ceremony for their 2020 Fantasyland expansion. The expansion will include a Beauty and the Beast sub-land with a brand new dark ride. 2020 is the year that Tokyo will host the Summer Olympics (and rival Universal will open their Super Nintendo land).
At home, Dreamworld opened the first Australian Jelly Belly store on Main Street yesterday. Check out Dreamworld on Instagram for a tonne of photos.
That's it for this week's News Update. For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
Sunday, 2 April 2017
News Update - 2nd April 2017
It's April! Can you believe it? Let's get into another Theme park news update for the first week of April 2017!
The biggest news stories this week, come out of Paris and Japan. Firstly in Paris, Disneyland Paris started it's 25th anniversary celebrations this week! They celebrated by adding a couple of new shows; the "Mickey Presents: Happy Anniversary, Disneyland Paris" and "The Starlit Princess Waltz". The also debuted a new parade, "Disney Stars On Parade" and new nighttime show "Disney Illuminations".
In Japan yesterday saw the opening of LEGOLAND JAPAN! If you jump onto Themeparx.com you can see an absolute TONNE of videos and photos from the opening day of this little park. Honestly, I'm totally jealous of this. Legoland Parks are super fun little parks, and I have a theory that one day they will be the first of the major chains to open in Australia, but until then we will have to survive by looking at the overseas parks (and perhaps visiting the Legoland Discovery Centre, that is opening in Melbourne later in the year).
Over in Orlando, Universal has some anger pointed towards it this week as it announced the new 3-Park Annual Passes, and upgrade options for their upcoming water park Volcano Bay (I refuse to call this a Theme Park, even though it looks great!). Currently annual park holders are apparently outraged that they have to pay to get access to this park. Honestly, these people they were going to get to enter this water park for free? People baffle me. Often Annual Park holders are paying significantly less per day than day pass people, so I'm not sure why that should give you some kind of golden ticket to new things outside what you have paid for. Anyway!
Staying with Universal, it seems Halloween Horror Nights is now pretty much a year round news machine. This week we found out that American Horror Story was returning to Universal Orlando's HHN in September this year. This isn't really surprising, it's pretty much the perfect franchise for this event.
Controversial Sea World Orlando this week closed their long time Dolphin Show Blue Horizons, which was then followed the next day by opening their brand new Dolphin Show Dolphin Days. Apparently the new show is designed to be more educational less entertainment than the previous show, which is a pointer to the way that public opinion has changed in the last 10 years about animal based theme parks.
Over at Walt Disney World, security at Magic Kingdom is changing, in that the security check points are being back to the entrance of the ferry and Monorail terminals. This effectively puts the Monorail loop inside the secure zone, which mirrors a similar move at Disneyland Resort, which moved the security checks to the Car Park and hotel entrances, which effectively put all of Downtown Disney into the secure zone. It's unclear whether these changes are in response to a specific threat, however I must admit the more security at Disney Parks, the better, in my opinion. These parks are such obvious targets as symbols of wealth and decadence, as well as being highly populated, so I have no qualms with having to go through multiple security checks if that is what has to happen.
Also at WDW, we've seen a response from Disney's water parks over the upcoming Volcano Bay upcoming Tapu Tapu virtual queuing devices. Disney's response is essentially the old school FastPass, but now in temporary wrist band form. It's interesting that this hasn't incorporated Magic Band technology (perhaps it isn't water proof??). Regardless, anytime that Universal is putting pressure on Disney, I'm excited!
Finally at Disneyland Resort, the Main Street Electrical Parade has extended it's temporary run through to August 20, effectively finishing the American Summer. This will hopefully spread the crowd for this parade, particularly as the previous finishing date had limited time for the Annual Pass members that were not blocked out.
Over in Europe, we've seen the second biggest park on the continent Europa Park, has opened for it's summer season. Along with it is a number of new features, as can be seen in videos that have been added to Youtube this week (I say videos, just because they do multiple of these in different languages. Particularly of note for me is the brand new Voletarium flying theatre ride, which looks awesome (a Soarin' clone, but still awesome!). Voletarium is said to be "almost ready to open", with a massive 21 meter screen.
In the UK, we have had a review this week of the re-launch of Derren Brown's Ghost Train attraction at Thorpe Park by ThemeParks-UK.com. This attraction looks much improved over the previous version of the attraction, and looks like it's going to scare the pants off a lot of people.
At home in Australia, Dreamworld this week is about to open up (on the 8th of April) a new Jelly Belly Store. The store is inside the park, next to the in-park entrance for the Lego Store, on Main Street, just in time for the Easter School Holidays. This is a welcome bit of good news for the Gold Coast parks, as this week all 3 major parks (Dreamworld, Movie World and Sea World) all had to close on Thursday last week after low pressure system following Tropical Cyclone Debbie, came down the coast. Thankfully the parks themselves were spared any major damage, and were able to open on Friday. Unfortunately the surrounding areas of Logan and the Gold Coast were not so lucky, with large amounts of damage from the storms and the subsequent flooding. The flood waters peaked yesterday (Saturday), and further north in Rockhampton the flood waters are expect to peak on next Wednesday (a week after the storm hit that region) which gives you an idea about the massive amount of water that has been dumped on Queensland this week. Hopefully we get back to our clear skies soon, and can stay that way for a little while.
That's it for this week's News Update. For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
The biggest news stories this week, come out of Paris and Japan. Firstly in Paris, Disneyland Paris started it's 25th anniversary celebrations this week! They celebrated by adding a couple of new shows; the "Mickey Presents: Happy Anniversary, Disneyland Paris" and "The Starlit Princess Waltz". The also debuted a new parade, "Disney Stars On Parade" and new nighttime show "Disney Illuminations".
In Japan yesterday saw the opening of LEGOLAND JAPAN! If you jump onto Themeparx.com you can see an absolute TONNE of videos and photos from the opening day of this little park. Honestly, I'm totally jealous of this. Legoland Parks are super fun little parks, and I have a theory that one day they will be the first of the major chains to open in Australia, but until then we will have to survive by looking at the overseas parks (and perhaps visiting the Legoland Discovery Centre, that is opening in Melbourne later in the year).
Over in Orlando, Universal has some anger pointed towards it this week as it announced the new 3-Park Annual Passes, and upgrade options for their upcoming water park Volcano Bay (I refuse to call this a Theme Park, even though it looks great!). Currently annual park holders are apparently outraged that they have to pay to get access to this park. Honestly, these people they were going to get to enter this water park for free? People baffle me. Often Annual Park holders are paying significantly less per day than day pass people, so I'm not sure why that should give you some kind of golden ticket to new things outside what you have paid for. Anyway!
Staying with Universal, it seems Halloween Horror Nights is now pretty much a year round news machine. This week we found out that American Horror Story was returning to Universal Orlando's HHN in September this year. This isn't really surprising, it's pretty much the perfect franchise for this event.
Controversial Sea World Orlando this week closed their long time Dolphin Show Blue Horizons, which was then followed the next day by opening their brand new Dolphin Show Dolphin Days. Apparently the new show is designed to be more educational less entertainment than the previous show, which is a pointer to the way that public opinion has changed in the last 10 years about animal based theme parks.
Over at Walt Disney World, security at Magic Kingdom is changing, in that the security check points are being back to the entrance of the ferry and Monorail terminals. This effectively puts the Monorail loop inside the secure zone, which mirrors a similar move at Disneyland Resort, which moved the security checks to the Car Park and hotel entrances, which effectively put all of Downtown Disney into the secure zone. It's unclear whether these changes are in response to a specific threat, however I must admit the more security at Disney Parks, the better, in my opinion. These parks are such obvious targets as symbols of wealth and decadence, as well as being highly populated, so I have no qualms with having to go through multiple security checks if that is what has to happen.
Also at WDW, we've seen a response from Disney's water parks over the upcoming Volcano Bay upcoming Tapu Tapu virtual queuing devices. Disney's response is essentially the old school FastPass, but now in temporary wrist band form. It's interesting that this hasn't incorporated Magic Band technology (perhaps it isn't water proof??). Regardless, anytime that Universal is putting pressure on Disney, I'm excited!
Finally at Disneyland Resort, the Main Street Electrical Parade has extended it's temporary run through to August 20, effectively finishing the American Summer. This will hopefully spread the crowd for this parade, particularly as the previous finishing date had limited time for the Annual Pass members that were not blocked out.
Over in Europe, we've seen the second biggest park on the continent Europa Park, has opened for it's summer season. Along with it is a number of new features, as can be seen in videos that have been added to Youtube this week (I say videos, just because they do multiple of these in different languages. Particularly of note for me is the brand new Voletarium flying theatre ride, which looks awesome (a Soarin' clone, but still awesome!). Voletarium is said to be "almost ready to open", with a massive 21 meter screen.
In the UK, we have had a review this week of the re-launch of Derren Brown's Ghost Train attraction at Thorpe Park by ThemeParks-UK.com. This attraction looks much improved over the previous version of the attraction, and looks like it's going to scare the pants off a lot of people.
At home in Australia, Dreamworld this week is about to open up (on the 8th of April) a new Jelly Belly Store. The store is inside the park, next to the in-park entrance for the Lego Store, on Main Street, just in time for the Easter School Holidays. This is a welcome bit of good news for the Gold Coast parks, as this week all 3 major parks (Dreamworld, Movie World and Sea World) all had to close on Thursday last week after low pressure system following Tropical Cyclone Debbie, came down the coast. Thankfully the parks themselves were spared any major damage, and were able to open on Friday. Unfortunately the surrounding areas of Logan and the Gold Coast were not so lucky, with large amounts of damage from the storms and the subsequent flooding. The flood waters peaked yesterday (Saturday), and further north in Rockhampton the flood waters are expect to peak on next Wednesday (a week after the storm hit that region) which gives you an idea about the massive amount of water that has been dumped on Queensland this week. Hopefully we get back to our clear skies soon, and can stay that way for a little while.
That's it for this week's News Update. For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
Saturday, 25 March 2017
News Update - 26th March 2017
Starting in WDW this week, at Disney's Hollywood Studios a new show has been added to the roster at night in the Theater of the Stars. The awkwardly named The Music of Pixar LIVE!: A Symphony of Characters will feature a live orchestra playing Pixar movie hits, which are numerous these days.
Over at Disney's Animal Kingdom reservations have opened (and reportedly sold out) for the DVC previews for Pandora from May 13-22. We've also had details about the ordering process at the restaurant in Pandora. The Satu'li Canteen will be the first at WDW to support mobile ordering through the My Disney Experience app. We are seeing more details coming out about this land as the WDW marketing machine winds up, this week was all about creating "real" environments.
At Universal Orlando Resort, we've had it confirmed that the Wet'n'Wild site, which closed last year, will be converted into 4000 hotel rooms. There is definitely a need for more onsite accommodation, so this seemed like the obvious use of this land.
A few weeks ago we talked about Shanghai Disneyland having a problem with scalping of Fastpasses. This week we've seen Disney add a new paid Fastpass program called Premier Access. For as little as US$10, a fastpass for one of the big 7 attractions can be purchased effectively cutting out scalpers and increasing profit.
Staying in China, the Zhonghong group has bought a 21% share in SeaWorld from the Blackstone group (who previously part owned Universal Orlando). It's not clear what action the group plans to take, but I would expect given their current operating issues these parks would not have been heavily expensive.
At home, a fan made video has popped up online this week with a rendering of the upcoming Movie World hypercoaster. It's worth noting that there are a lot of assumptions made in this rendering, so we definitely can't consider it real. But it is definitely cool!
We also got confirmation this week of the colour of this coaster, as the first track pieces were spotted. To my personal surprise the new coaster is going to be pink. Bets are still being made as to the theme of this coaster. I had expected either Wonder woman (Blue and Red) or Flash (Red and Yellow). So pink has me scratching my head for sure. Time will tell!!
That's it for this week's News Update. For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
Saturday, 4 March 2017
News Update - 19th March 2017
Its been almost three weeks since my last update. Life can be overwhelming! Sorry about that! On to a long news update!
One of the strangest Theme Park stories this week was an English mum who set up GoFundMe page for a trip to Walt Disney World. Now this wasn't illegal but the GoFundMe has morphed into largely a charitable fundraising platform, rather than the personal fundraising platform it started as, so acts like this are now poor form. Personally I don't have a problem with people doing this. I won't pay for your holiday, but i won't stop you asking. Anyway!
At Walt Disney World itself, it was announced earlier this month that the Cirque Du Soliel show La Nouba which has a permanent residence at Disney Springs, is due to close at the end of the year. Nothing has yet been announced as the replacement, but I really hope that it is another Cirque show.
The focus at WDW has turned to Animal Kingdom where we've seen more details released on Pandora: The World of Avatar. While I'm excited for this, if I hear the word bioluminescence much more I'm going to scream. If you are interested you can see everything we know about Pandora here. We also saw the full opening of Rivers of Life nighttime show.
At Universal Orlando, the Race through New York featuring Jimmy Fallon soft opened earlier this month. Theme Park Insider had a review of this new attraction, showing that this ride is much more than just another flying cinema ride.
Going further north, Busch Gardens Williamsburg announced this week they are adding US's first VR Motion Simulator. We've seen many VR coasters in the last year but this is the first specialist VR attraction being constructed during this new VR boom. So it'll be good to see what it's like!
At Disneyland Star Wars fans are getting pretty excited as two Imperial AT-AT Walkers under construction. They also celebrated the 50th anniversary of Pirates of the Caribbean this week.
If you can't wait for Star Wars Land, Legoland California has expanded it's Star Wars miniland to include new scenes from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. These look seriously cool but no doubt you all know that I love Lego and Star Wars.
Outside of the US, Efteling in the Netherlands is deep in construction of its 4th dark ride Symbolica at the moment and this week gave a sneak peak of the ride vehicles.
At home, Movie World has released the second in their series of Ride Safety videos, which detailed why rides have emergency stops. The video was even picked up by Theme Park Insider! Of course they say what we've been saying for a while, E-Stops are a necessary evil in a well designed attraction.
That's it for this week's News Update . For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
Thursday, 2 March 2017
News Update - 2nd March 2017
It's time for another Theme Park Nut New Update.
Just the other week, while talking about Disney buying out Paris resort, we mentioned that Universal's owners Comcast had bought out a controlling 51% share of the Universal Studios Japan Resort. Well this week, Comcast bought out the remaining 49%! This can only be good news for USJ as the resort continues to thrive over the next few years leading up to the Tokyo Olympics.
At Disneyland Resort, we also saw this week the opening of the Red Rose Tavern, the temporary Beauty and the Beast overlay of Village Haus. From all reports, there were ridiculous queues and they did sell out of "The Grey Stuff" at least once. Interesting that the Grey Stuff in Disneyland is different to the Grey Stuff in WDW. Anyway, if you want a review of a number of the dishes (including the Grey Stuff) then check out Theme Park Insider.
Also at Disneyland this week, we've seen a change in policy over marking space before the daily parades. The new rule is, that you can't save space before the parade route is marked out, and that if you don't stay in your space, you lose it. This has a lot to do with the changes to the night time entertainment at the park, and it is probably just preventative before the situation got much worse.
I don't know if this is news or not, but some prominent French politicians went to Disneyland Paris to have pot shots at Donald Trump over his continued rubbishing of France. Fair enough too!
And because it's never to early to start thinking about Halloween, Universal Orlando announced the date for this years Halloween Horror Nights. The event will be on for 34 nights starting from September 15.
At home, Movie World have the released the first in their short series of videos on Safety and Maintenance. You can watch the video on YouTube and Facebook, and it's really good to see a bit of behind the scenes information. Interesting choice to have Green Lantern Coaster in the first video, given the incident that occurred on this ride 2 years ago.
All of this comes in response to last year's fatal incident at Dreamworld, which this week was reported to have cost the park $95.4 million dollars. In the half yearly results, the park reported that attendance is down 27 percent.
That's it for this week's News Update . For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
Tuesday, 21 February 2017
News Update - 23rd February 2017
It's time for another week's news update!
Last week we told you about Disney theme park tickets going up. This week it's Universal's turn! Universal Orlando raised 1 day single park tickets to US$110. The OCRegister this week did an article on whether the Tickets and Passes for Disneyland and WDW represent "good value" for the entertainment they deliver. This is genuinely subjective, but it's hard to expect the recent rises are going to have any effect on the number of people through the gates, so I suggest they still are good value.
Over at Walt Disney World, we've seen interesting rumors about the return (in a way) of a previous attraction the Skyway. However it won't be an attraction in a park like the original Skyway, the rumor says it will be a park-to-park transportation that might link up the International Gateway rear-entrance of Epcot to the Studios park. That would be an awesome addition, as one of the biggest problem in WDW is the ability to park hop quickly!
At the same time this week, we heard that Disney's Hollywood Studios could be adding a BB-8 meet and greet sometime this April, which would be super cool!!
Over at Universal Orlando, there has been very quiet testing of a new technology in conjunction with their Express Pass system, Face Recognition. The system they call "Photo Validation Technology", is being tested in a couple of locations, and good help aid with Pass security within the park!
Theme Park Insider reports this week on another new phenomenon (for theme parks at least) that has started at Shanghai Disneyland, ticket scalping. The tickets being sold in this case, are FastPass tickets, which can then be used to see an attraction faster than the standby queue. The process seems awfully complicated, they need to get a family worth of passes, and then you have to go on the ride with the scalper pretending to be part of his family, however it doesn't breach any rules strictly. No doubts Disney will attempt to stamp out this from happening as soon as they can, but in such a big popular park (over 1 million visitors per month!!) it will be hard to change quickly!
In Dubai this week, apparently the Cloudy with a Change of Meatballs River Expedition opened at MotionGate Dubai, however I haven't yet heard from anyone who has ridden it. If you follow Theme Park Insider this week, you would have also seen an interview with Mycotoo, one of the designers of the MotionGate Dubai theme park.
Over in Germany, Movie Park Germany (which for the Australians reading started life as an almost exact clone of Warner Brother's Movie World), provided a sneak peak at their new attraction, a triple launching MACK coaster themed to the Star Trek series. Star Trek: Operation Enterprise will open for the park for their summer season, however it isn't yet clear whether it will have much more than a name to represent the Star Trek theme. Star Trek has always been a little bit of an awkward IP for theme parks, so it will be interesting to see if this attraction will draw much interest for this German park.
That's it for this week's News Update . For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
Last week we told you about Disney theme park tickets going up. This week it's Universal's turn! Universal Orlando raised 1 day single park tickets to US$110. The OCRegister this week did an article on whether the Tickets and Passes for Disneyland and WDW represent "good value" for the entertainment they deliver. This is genuinely subjective, but it's hard to expect the recent rises are going to have any effect on the number of people through the gates, so I suggest they still are good value.
Over at Walt Disney World, we've seen interesting rumors about the return (in a way) of a previous attraction the Skyway. However it won't be an attraction in a park like the original Skyway, the rumor says it will be a park-to-park transportation that might link up the International Gateway rear-entrance of Epcot to the Studios park. That would be an awesome addition, as one of the biggest problem in WDW is the ability to park hop quickly!
At the same time this week, we heard that Disney's Hollywood Studios could be adding a BB-8 meet and greet sometime this April, which would be super cool!!
Over at Universal Orlando, there has been very quiet testing of a new technology in conjunction with their Express Pass system, Face Recognition. The system they call "Photo Validation Technology", is being tested in a couple of locations, and good help aid with Pass security within the park!
Theme Park Insider reports this week on another new phenomenon (for theme parks at least) that has started at Shanghai Disneyland, ticket scalping. The tickets being sold in this case, are FastPass tickets, which can then be used to see an attraction faster than the standby queue. The process seems awfully complicated, they need to get a family worth of passes, and then you have to go on the ride with the scalper pretending to be part of his family, however it doesn't breach any rules strictly. No doubts Disney will attempt to stamp out this from happening as soon as they can, but in such a big popular park (over 1 million visitors per month!!) it will be hard to change quickly!
In Dubai this week, apparently the Cloudy with a Change of Meatballs River Expedition opened at MotionGate Dubai, however I haven't yet heard from anyone who has ridden it. If you follow Theme Park Insider this week, you would have also seen an interview with Mycotoo, one of the designers of the MotionGate Dubai theme park.
Over in Germany, Movie Park Germany (which for the Australians reading started life as an almost exact clone of Warner Brother's Movie World), provided a sneak peak at their new attraction, a triple launching MACK coaster themed to the Star Trek series. Star Trek: Operation Enterprise will open for the park for their summer season, however it isn't yet clear whether it will have much more than a name to represent the Star Trek theme. Star Trek has always been a little bit of an awkward IP for theme parks, so it will be interesting to see if this attraction will draw much interest for this German park.
That's it for this week's News Update . For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!
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