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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Disneyland’s Galaxy Borrows From Universal

When Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens at Disneyland this month, visitors to the theme park will be able to build custom lightsabers and droids, take a ride on the Millennium Falcon, drink blue milk and shop and eat in a galaxy far, far away. Walt Disney Co. has created the next big thing in theme park attractions at its Anaheim park. But according to industry experts and consultants, the inspiration for the Disney project came from to what Universal Parks & Resorts did at its Universal Studios Hollywood theme park with the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. There, Universal replaced a music venue with the 3-D thrill ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and the park’s first outdoor roller coaster, Flight of the Hippogriff. Beneath Hogwarts Castle, visitors can walk the streets of Hogsmeade, lined with retail shops and restaurants as well as carts selling items based on the popular book and film series. Galaxy’s Edge will be somewhat similar – with its own ride, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, and the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance attraction opening later in the year. The attraction will also feature the Blackspire Outpost shops and restaurants and food stands, including one selling the blue milk that Luke Skywalker had in the original 1977 movie. Monty Lunde, co-founder and president of Technifex, a Valencia-based designer and producer of shows and special effects at theme parks, said that Disney is not just going to replicate what Universal did. “They have learned a lot from what Universal has done,” Lunde said. “I think there are going to be design details and guest experiences that will surpass what Universal has done.” Theme park consultant John Gerner, managing director of Leisure Business Advisors LLC in Richmond, Va., also mentioned Universal and Harry Potter as a predecessor to Galaxy’s Edge. But he also said that the themed area of Pandora: The World of Avatar at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, which opened two years ago, proved that the Burbank entertainment and media giant could provide the same kind of quality and wow factor as Universal. “What ‘Star Wars’ provides is an almost unique opportunity for Disney to take everything up to a new level,” Gerner said. “From everything that I have seen, that is what they are going to do with this expansion.” Lunde, a former Disney Imagineer and a founder of the Themed Entertainment Association, an industry trade group in Burbank, said that what drives him and others creating themed attractions is audience expectations. If you do not meet or exceed what a guest expects, then you have not hit the mark, he said. With the Harry Potter attractions, Universal set a high-water mark, Lunde added. “A lot of people have seen Harry Potter so there is going to be a built-in expectation that ‘Star Wars’ will be as good if not a little bit better,” he said. For Gerner, the lasting impact of Galaxy’s Edge is how it can redefine and reshape theme parks. Building a new park from scratch, at least in the U.S., is not possible due to the cost. So theme parks take intellectual property, like Harry Potter or Star Wars, and rebrand and reconstitute entire sections. “You have the potential over a number of decades to essentially replace the park with entirely new content, characters and stories that are relevant,” Gerner said. “Suddenly you have the opportunity of an evergreen theme park.”

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Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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