Might be a hot take, but I’m not sure a preview center is really necessary with modern social media. The IOA was one was cool in the 90s, but people couldn’t just easily look up info about the park like they can now. I’m not a huge fan of losing the legacy store for a preview center.
There's something irreplaceable about being physically in a place. Being able to say "I was there when…" is a lot better than saying you saw something online. You may not feel the same but there's certainly a sizeable chunk of people who do. That said, unless they regularly follow theme park entusiasts many vacationers usually won't find out anything new about the parks until the time they're getting ready to book their trip. (There's also something to be said about today's social media atmosphere and growing reluctance to interact with it on top of algorithm filtering, but not the point I'm trying to make.)
For Universal Epic Universe (still find it weird writing it out without the
's but I digress) I hope they have something similar to what was done for Universal Island of Adventure.
For reference of the original preview center for newbies and lurkers:
There's also an IU IoA preview center
thread here with a
post from where the video below was linked:
Granted I'm local so I find it easier to say but I would absolutely make a trip to go see something like this in person. I can't imagine Universal won't be rolling out everything they have when they ramp up advertising. I really hope that includes another model of the new park in a more accessible spot.
Their official site still doesn't have anything about EU on it. When Universal's site updates with a banner saying "get ready for something epic" on the landing page more of the general public will start to catch on.
And a very important thing to remember is Universal can very well treat temporary as temporary
Shrek came back really fast. There's still hope for Jaws!
I passed through into the Legacy Store on a few different visits, specifically to look at the legacy stuff. I never got to visit the IoA preview center but seeing the construction photos and other memorabilia was always nice to see. What is a shame is that those items will go back into storage until who knows when.
This is wishful thinking: It would be cool to have the preview center be a walkthrough from past to present to future. Something like having the first room being dedicated to their legacy and present parks so it would include some of these things, and then lead into all the new stuff for EU. Construction photos on top of ground-level shots of the portals (can we call them Portals of Entry?
) would be a dream. I really hope they bring back the hourglass or something like it as a tease as well.
In any case I'm looking forward to the new preview center more than I am sad at the loss of the Legacy Store. I'll definitely be there in person too!