If they were building a Twisters land that took up valuable space, I’d be scratching my head, sure. But this is an addition to the Studio Tour replacing a widely disliked experience, and that’s all it fundamentally needs to be: Better and more fun than its predecessor. If everything on the Tour needed to exist to “sell merch,” then most of it would be gone, because I don’t see anyone buying Earthquake and War of the Worlds merch, and I’m sure Universal is well aware and has the expectation that an addition to the Studio Tour is inherently not going to move the needle in terms of attendance as much as a brand new ride/land will.
Universal’s not in some sort of financial peril. An addition to the Studio Tour is not going to magically cripple the park and nothing new will ever come again because millions of people didn’t flock to buy Twisters shirts. In a few years, another major land or ride will open elsewhere in the park, as always.
I also don’t have a financial stake in the park, so I just… don’t care what “sells merch” or what doesn’t, because I trust Universal enough to make the decisions they believe they need to make for the park’s future. Not that long ago, you were insistent that Universal building Hollywood Drift was “the wrong decision,” and yet here we are, which circles me back around to the original point I was making: That it’s not going to be fun for anyone to be able to talk about this if every conversation is just going to constantly be derailed by the same “This should be what I want it to be” commentary over and over and over again.