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Universal Orlando 4th Theme Park is Currently in Development Code Name "Project 314"

davidm said:
“There’s a new Mickey Mouse ride”

“Oh, another one?”

'cos that's clearly not worked has it?
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Actually, there has never been a ride themed to Mickey Mouse at the Disney parks, at least not for many decades. The new ride in Disney's Hollywood Studios will be the first one in modern times.

But for what it's worth, I'm with Crazycoaster here. While the Harry Potter areas of the other two parks have provided an immense customer draw, they have the advantage of being connected and playing to each other. Guests visit both parks in a single trip, paying for two entrance tickets to experience the entire Harry Potter-themed land. Diagon Alley and Hogwarts are very iconic locations, and travelling between them with the Hogwarts Express becomes a part of the experience. They won't be able to drum up the same excitement for the Ministry of Magic, for instance.

And this new park will be isolated from the other two, without the connecting train between iconic locations. Its eventual Harry Potter area will have to stand on its own, with little synergy to the others. Instead, it will compete for guests' attentions, at least for all the guests who don't have the funds to visit all three parks. A new Harry Potter area at Universal Studios 3 will either be inferior to the USF and IoA lands, and lose customers to them, or superior to them and steal their customers. Universal doesn't need, nor does it benefit from, splitting the customer base like that. Those who come for Potter will go to the best Potter park and do their merch shopping there. At best, the second-best area will get a visit, but won't be quite the same money-making machine.

I believe they won't go for Potter in the third park. They will instead find some other IP as its main draw, something you can't find at the other parks, and which will draw millions of customers in its own right. Like Nintendo, for instance. They could contain the Potter stuff in IoA and USF, possibly even expand their areas to other lands that would instead be moved to US3 (like Jurassic Park or Fear Factor Live) if they need more room. The Potter experience would keep people excited for the two old parks, while the new park does its own exciting things.
 
Like Disney owning Marvel and building many Marvel themed rides, I believe Universal now own Dreamworks and have a majority share in Illumination. Wouldn't be surprised if any of those IPs start popping up in Universal parks soon.
 
Pokemaniac said:
I believe they won't go for Potter in the third park. They will instead find some other IP as its main draw, something you can't find at the other parks, and which will draw millions of customers in its own right. Like Nintendo, for instance.
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I mean, it's not like the new park would be purely Potter. Sure, it would be wiser to draw guests in with new and more unique stuff, but having that in addition to the money cow that is the Wizarding World would definitely add depth in the park's appeal.

That said, the difference between the Wizarding World and a brand like Nintendo is that while games like Mario and Zelda are recognisable under the same banner and often have a shared fanbase, there's a lot more you can do with seperate lands in additional parks, with the same going for DreamWorks and their films. Having the Mushroom Kingdom in one park with Hyrule down the street is more likely to get fans to visit both parks than having one area themed to Jurassic Park and the other themed to Jurassic World for example.

While I'm on the subject, I feel as though the Nintendo games rumoured to be going to each park might give a hint as to how Fantastic Worlds may be positioned compared to the other two parks. While Pokémon does have strong elements of fantasy, it's still heavily based on the real world, with the locations in the games being based on Japan, New York, France and Hawaii. Add to how the appeal of the series comes from the characters rather than the world itself and I can see the theming kept relatively simple much like a lot of the other areas of the studios park (even the elaborately themed Diagon Alley is hidden behind a recreation of a London Street). Probably a lot of animatronics and fibreglass statues of Pokémon but nothing too elaborate
Zelda and Mario on the other hand have much more fantastical elements to their universe, with the key difference being that Zelda is aimed at a slightly older demographic. This would place Fantastic Worlds further on the family-friendly end of the spectrum. Of course, with IoA adding a new large-scale family ride next year and Mordor rumoured for FW it may end up that both fantasy parks have a similar mix of thrills and family, and it'd be interesting to see how the marketing between the two parks would differ if at all.
 
If Disney can pull off Avatar land and have that attract people, a third Potter area is entirely plausible...and likely.

I would love to see a How to Train Your Dragon land with a flying coaster, maybe clone of Flying Dinosaur would be great.

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It's over 3km away (as the crow flies) from Volcano Bay, so around 4 - 5km away from the other parks. It's closer to SeaWorld than the other Universal parks.
 
Just far enough away that a mass transport link (à la Disney's monorail) probably isn't feasible. Okay, given the area built in, say, Cities Skylines, I probably could have found a way to draw an elevated rail line from the parking site to US3 (across the highway interchange, turning south just east of Fun Spot America, continue straight south along the green belt, and over the second highway interchange), but I doubt real-life planning restrictions would be lenient enough to allow it. For all intents and purposes, this park will be entirely separated from the rest of Universal Orlando. Must be a frustrating commute for the park managers during operations, but at least it spreads out traffic somewhat.
 
I'd just imagine that they'd increase the busses from the resorts to be honest with you. They could literally just nip down Universal Blvd and they'd be there in a few minutes.
 
There is a rumor that Universal has investigated the feasibility of building some sort of mass transit between the original two gates and the airport. There's plenty of obvious pros and cons to it - it would certainly ease the commute for anybody flying in. This property is, for all intents and purposes, half way between the airport and the original gates. With a stop at the new gate and also at the convention center (hell, have an off shoot to Sea World as well) and they'll have created a valuable asset to the area...IF they believe that it's feasible and sustainable.
 
Antinos said:
There is a rumor that Universal has investigated the feasibility of building some sort of mass transit between the original two gates and the airport. There's plenty of obvious pros and cons to it - it would certainly ease the commute for anybody flying in. This property is, for all intents and purposes, half way between the airport and the original gates. With a stop at the new gate and also at the convention center (hell, have an off shoot to Sea World as well) and they'll have created a valuable asset to the area...IF they believe that it's feasible and sustainable.
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That's one of those "Only in the US..." things. It needs to be properly assessed and debated whether or not a 15 km mass transit link from the airport to a major tourist district in a city of two million people is economically sustainable. Elsewhere in the world, it would have been completely unthinkable to build an airport without such a line from the very onset, in a city one fifth of that size. It never ceases to amaze me how awfully auto-centric American city planning tends to be. I presume this line would get some really hard opposition from Avis, Rent-a-Wreck and all other of the dozen-odd car rental companies at Orlando Airport.

And for the record, I believe the odds for this are very slim, even if Disney for some contrived reason decided to back the project too. To get a line anywhere westwards from the airport, it would have to cross some of the insanely busy 4 km runways, those used for international flight. That rules out any sort of above-ground solution, unless they want to loop the line really far north or south. Digging beneath the runways would be even harder; not only would the tunnel go through spongy swampland, the construction effort would also put the runways out of operation for a while. Big no-no in a city so dependent on tourism.

And once the line is clear of the runways, there remains a good 10 km of built-up area to cross before they reach Universal property, interrupted by small patches of swampland (some of which appears to be protected) and three major highways. Buying out a corridor of property would be prohibitively expensive, so would the ground works. Maybe a gondola-style line with pylons spaced few and far between could be cheaper, but that leaves the problem with the runways again. No way you can stretch a cable car over a runway.

If there is a feasible way to do it, I'm pretty sure it would involve a corridor starting at the south end of the runways (possibly looping around them starting straight south from the terminal building), since that leaves only low-rise strip malls and industrial properties to buy up, with no running through residential areas. It would then enter the Universal property from the south, either going east of the golf course or south of it and past the convention center. The last couple of kilometers would literally be in a creek, though, which sounds really expensive from a geotechnical standpoint.¨

All in all, a neat idea, but I'd be surprised to see it go anywhere.
 
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Hahaha gotta love that Sunday night downtime! Conveniently, Bio seems to be most active on the weekends so it's a good time to push everything over here.
 
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