Inside Universal Forums

Welcome to the Inside Universal Forums! Register a free account today to become a member. Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members and unlock our forums features!

  • Signing up for a Premium Membership is a donation to help Inside Universal maintain costs and offers an ad-free experience on the forum. Learn more about it here.

Pandora: World of Avatar General Discussion

Some Pandora updates I've been hearing:

  • Ride systems are still having issues. Disney today just reduced hours of DAK starting in July, I expect this is partially due to Ops running these things to the bone so quickly and partially because...
  • Disney isn't seeing the attendance, spending, and guest hours bump they were expecting. On the latest Disney Dish, Len stated Touring Plans will have an article up soon covering what TP expected and what they actually measured (NOTE: TP measures "crowd feel" not attendance.)
  • Lots of talk about brightening up the land at night but nothing concrete or planned, lots of rumors only.
  • WDI actively working on improving accessibility for FoP restraints
 
Some Pandora updates I've been hearing:

  • Ride systems are still having issues. Disney today just reduced hours of DAK starting in July, I expect this is partially due to Ops running these things to the bone so quickly and partially because...
  • Disney isn't seeing the attendance, spending, and guest hours bump they were expecting. On the latest Disney Dish, Len stated Touring Plans will have an article up soon covering what TP expected and what they actually measured (NOTE: TP measures "crowd feel" not attendance.)
  • Lots of talk about brightening up the land at night but nothing concrete or planned, lots of rumors only.
  • WDI actively working on improving accessibility for FoP restraints

They aren't happy with the banshee sales????
 
Some Pandora updates I've been hearing:

  • Ride systems are still having issues. Disney today just reduced hours of DAK starting in July, I expect this is partially due to Ops running these things to the bone so quickly and partially because...
  • Disney isn't seeing the attendance, spending, and guest hours bump they were expecting. On the latest Disney Dish, Len stated Touring Plans will have an article up soon covering what TP expected and what they actually measured (NOTE: TP measures "crowd feel" not attendance.)
  • Lots of talk about brightening up the land at night but nothing concrete or planned, lots of rumors only.
  • WDI actively working on improving accessibility for FoP restraints
As you say, TP crowd calendar measures crowd feel. That being said, I've been monitoring the AK stand by line times nearly daily, and the lines are fairly short for most of the day on nearly all non Pandora attractions. Evening non Pandora attractions are basically walk on times from late afternoon onward. . And FP have been available night of for Rivers of Light most evenings since Pandora opened. They weren't available previous to Pandora. FOP and Navii River Journey stand by times have also dropped significantly from the first week times.... It would be interesting to see true attendance figures, but right now AK would be a pretty good park to visit if you didn't want to wait in long lines for most of the attractions.
 
Some Pandora updates I've been hearing:

  • Ride systems are still having issues. Disney today just reduced hours of DAK starting in July, I expect this is partially due to Ops running these things to the bone so quickly and partially because...
  • Disney isn't seeing the attendance, spending, and guest hours bump they were expecting. On the latest Disney Dish, Len stated Touring Plans will have an article up soon covering what TP expected and what they actually measured (NOTE: TP measures "crowd feel" not attendance.)
Considering how the rest of the park is pretty much quiet, I definitely believe they're not seeing the bump they want. Sure people are checking out Pandora, but that's the usual "check out the brand new thing". So those in the park are just shifted to that area, it's not getting the kind of increase to make the rest of the park busy.
 
If Disney isn't seeing the bump they wanted, the big question is how they're going to solve that.

At the least, the middling response from corporate would tell me that Pandora will probably be a one-off forever. No way Disney will be able to push it to any other resort if there isn't a clear story about making a profit.
 
If Disney isn't seeing the bump they wanted, the big question is how they're going to solve that.

At the least, the middling response from corporate would tell me that Pandora will probably be a one-off forever. No way Disney will be able to push it to any other resort if there isn't a clear story about making a profit.

Disney hasn't been able to duplicate the successful Cars Land anywhere, so I never thought Pandora would open anywhere else. The benefit for other resorts is the R&D is complete. If Disney wanted to they could possibly play hard ball with Cameron and strong arm him into letting FoP only be built in Hong Kong or something.
 
Talked to a trainer at Flight of Passage yesterday and he hinted to see some noticeable changes with the ride content sometime later in the year...Has anyone else heard about this?
 
If Disney wanted to they could possibly play hard ball with Cameron and strong arm him into letting FoP only be built in Hong Kong or something.
Wouldn't be surprised if this happened. Avatar was huge in China so if Avatar goes anywhere, it will be HK or Shanghai.
 
If Avatar only pulls loyal guests away from the rest of the offerings I'm worried about future investments. A reported + $800M land should sell hotel rooms.
 
If Avatar only pulls loyal guests away from the rest of the offerings I'm worried about future investments. A reported + $800M land should sell hotel rooms.
To be fair, DAK is more than rides - there are a lot of good shows and diversions throughout the park that help fill out a day. Also, rides like Kali, Kilimanjaro, Everest and Dinosaur are all high capacity as well. To the point however, yes, I do think most of the extra guests going to DAK would've gone to Epcot or DHS anyway. High capacity or not though, no jump in wait times for other rides is definitely troubling.

However, where Universal and Disney run into an issue is that there is only so much vacation time. Disney waited FAR too long to react to Potter and now Disney will never be able to recover the guest days that they have lost due to complacency. So I feel like Disney has put them in a position where they can only take guests from themselves now... that's not terrible since with the yearly numbers they pull, but the issue is they need to be pulling people away from MK, not DHS or Epcot. MK will always be one of the busiest parks in the world, but they need DHS, Epcot and DAK to bite into MK's numbers by a few million if they are going to stay stagnant in attendance.

Universal will soon stop growing at such a rapid rate given that both Orlando parks are around 10M (or more depending on real numbers). It will actually be interesting when the south park gets underway and opens... how much will that affect USF and IOAs numbers? When DAK opened in 1998 for example, Epcot's attendance took a nose dive. Disney has been stealing attendance from itself virtually ever since then - remember, SeaWorld used to have a much higher percentage of the market share (and in SW's decline, Uni has mostly grabbed those numbers).

So yeah, spending this type of money and not seeing much except a change in crowd patterns isn't exactly what you want, but by this point, they should bee used to it, and honestly it's what they deserve - especially after ignoring Potter for years out of a sheer "they'll always be #2" attitude.
 
Talked to a trainer at Flight of Passage yesterday and he hinted to see some noticeable changes with the ride content sometime later in the year...Has anyone else heard about this?
Ride film or motion profile do you think.
 
Ride film or motion profile do you think.
Hoping just effects upgrades. I like the ride the way it is.

By the way, was at the Dollar Tree and smelled what smelled exactly like the scent in the cave bioluminescence scene on FoP (and also the the Polynesian scene on Soarin.) Did a double take after I sniffed it. It's like an off brand you might not find in all stores though, hence the dollar store. (The Glade Hawaiian version is nothing like it btw.)

IMG_7343.JPG
 
I really don't think Pandora is a "rush to go see it" type attraction. I think a lot of folks will eventually get around to it, but it's not the type of attraction that is going to prompt a Disney vacation as soon as possible. I think they will see some overall attendance increase, just not a big burst like with Potter.
 
To be fair, DAK is more than rides - there are a lot of good shows and diversions throughout the park that help fill out a day. Also, rides like Kali, Kilimanjaro, Everest and Dinosaur are all high capacity as well. To the point however, yes, I do think most of the extra guests going to DAK would've gone to Epcot or DHS anyway. High capacity or not though, no jump in wait times for other rides is definitely troubling.

However, where Universal and Disney run into an issue is that there is only so much vacation time. Disney waited FAR too long to react to Potter and now Disney will never be able to recover the guest days that they have lost due to complacency. So I feel like Disney has put them in a position where they can only take guests from themselves now... that's not terrible since with the yearly numbers they pull, but the issue is they need to be pulling people away from MK, not DHS or Epcot. MK will always be one of the busiest parks in the world, but they need DHS, Epcot and DAK to bite into MK's numbers by a few million if they are going to stay stagnant in attendance.

Universal will soon stop growing at such a rapid rate given that both Orlando parks are around 10M (or more depending on real numbers). It will actually be interesting when the south park gets underway and opens... how much will that affect USF and IOAs numbers? When DAK opened in 1998 for example, Epcot's attendance took a nose dive. Disney has been stealing attendance from itself virtually ever since then - remember, SeaWorld used to have a much higher percentage of the market share (and in SW's decline, Uni has mostly grabbed those numbers).

So yeah, spending this type of money and not seeing much except a change in crowd patterns isn't exactly what you want, but by this point, they should bee used to it, and honestly it's what they deserve - especially after ignoring Potter for years out of a sheer "they'll always be #2" attitude.
You are right, parks are in constant competition with themselves. I see Universal doing very well opening small, medium and big rides in both parks. Even Transformer was hurried in to level out the crowds in Universal Studios before the opening of Diagon Alley. That was so baffling to me about New Fantasyland. Taking away rides and adding others (many years later) didn't do a thing for the crowds. Why not spent that money in any of the other parks to level the crowds out. Why isn't there a villains land at DHS why no Tron at Epcot, Why wait ages doing anything worthy with Star Wars when you have the rights to build stuff for many decades.

Anyway I hope Disney will see a huge climb in attendance due to their investment. I hate the company with a passion but Orlando needs 2 rivals to stay healthy and the consumer wins.
 
Top