The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: theme park
Legoland Is Planning Its Second Hotel On Its Theme Park Property

Legoland Is Planning Its Second Hotel On Its Theme Park Property

By Lori Weisberg, The San Diego Union-Tribune (TNS)

SAN DIEGO—Just two years after opening its first hotel, Legoland is looking to build a second one on its Carlsbad theme park property.

Like the current hotel, the project is planned to be three stories with 250 Lego-themed rooms and suites, situated on what is now a parking area. Details are still few, as Legoland only submitted a development application last month to the city of Carlsbad and it’s still early in the design stage.

What is known is that it will resemble a castle, including turrets, have a variety of themed rooms and will be located west of the existing Legoland Hotel in front of the Sea Life Aquarium. Plans call for a full-service restaurant and gift shop, a swimming pool and outdoor play areas, Legoland spokeswoman Julie Estrada said.

Ideally, Legoland and its parent company, Merlin Entertainments, would like to see the hotel open by 2018, she said.

Although there are a number of nearby hotels that draw from families visiting Legoland, the competition doesn’t seem to have hurt the themed hotel, which has proved popular from the day it opened. Over the last two years, its occupancy has averaged 80 percent annually, according to its general manager, Frank Idris.

Since the park opened in 1999, Legoland has doubled the number of attractions it has and with increased attendance, demand has grown for more hotel rooms to accommodate families who need more than one day to see the park and its related attractions, Estrada added.

The current Legoland California hotel has three different kinds of themed rooms and, come April, there will be a fourth, playing off its attraction Lego Friends Heartlake City. It’s undecided how the rooms will be themed at the proposed hotel.

©2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Legoland in Carlsbad, Calif., plans a second hotel on the property, with 250 Lego-themed rooms and suites opening in 2018. (Howard Lipin/San Diego Union-Tribune/TNS)

Disneyland To Close Some Attractions To Build ‘Star Wars’ Land

Disneyland To Close Some Attractions To Build ‘Star Wars’ Land

By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — To make way for Star Wars, Disneyland is about to launch its largest expansion ever, which means shutting down a significant chunk of the Anaheim theme park.

In January, 10 attractions and eateries will close — some temporarily, some permanently — only a few months after the resort hiked the price of annual passes as much as 31 percent. This spring, Disneyland’s biggest rival, Universal Studios Hollywood, plans to unveil a widely anticipated Harry Potter attraction.

For any other operation, charging customers more and giving them less would be a perilous business strategy, especially if the competition is upping its game. Not so at Disneyland.

“At the end of the day, you won’t see any attendance drop,” said Dennis Speigel, a theme park consultant and president of International Theme Park Services in Cincinnati. “The tourists will come, hell or high water.”

Instead, the construction project to build a new Star Wars area is likely to demonstrate the devotion of hard-core Disney fans.

Daniel Bowmen of Los Angeles’ Sylmar section, who has owned a Disneyland premium pass for 24 years and visits at least twice a week, said he is disappointed that the park is closing so many attractions during construction. But that won’t keep him away.

“I just renewed my annual pass, so I’ll be going to Disneyland,” he said.

Disney officials won’t say whether the announced closures and the annual pass price hike have affected pass sales so far. During the quarter that ended Oct. 3 — before the closures and the price hikes were announced — Walt Disney Co. reported a 15 percent jump in attendance at all domestic parks.

Orange County, home of the Disneyland and Disney California Adventure theme parks, is expected to be the country’s fourth-most-popular destination for Christmas travel, according to a study of hotel reservations by the travel website Priceline.com.

Park executives don’t seem worried, noting that Disneyland has added several new features in recent months to appeal to devoted Star Wars fans. Disney acquired Lucasfilm, along with the Star Wars franchise, in 2012 for $4 billion.

In Tomorrowland, the Space Mountain and Star Tours rides have been overhauled to include special effects borrowed from the recently released movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

An underused area in the Innovations building of Tomorrowland has been converted into Star Wars Launch Bay, a hall where parkgoers can play Star Wars video games, buy merchandise and meet costumed characters from the movie franchise.

The Galactic Grill eatery now sells treats inspired by Star Wars characters, such as a dessert dubbed Darth by Chocolate and the Cheese 3PO Burger.

The additional Star Wars features, part of an overall celebration called Season of the Force, launched Nov. 15. No closing date has been announced.

Perhaps the only crowding problem facing Disneyland over the next few months, say theme park experts, is that park visitors will be swarming around Tomorrowland.

“It’s going to be crowded and they are all going to be in one corner of Tomorrowland,” said David Koenig, an author of several books about Disney. “The question is, how many bodies are you going to get in there?”

To build the new 14-acre Star Wars area, the park will permanently close Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland, Big Thunder Ranch Barbecue, Big Thunder Ranch petting zoo and Big Thunder Ranch Jamboree, starting Jan. 10.

(Disneyland officials say the animals in the petting zoo have been adopted by a Southern California family that has worked with Disney animals in the past.)

Nearby attractions on the Rivers of America — mainly Fantasmic, the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Sailing Ship Columbia, the Pirates Lair on Tom Sawyer Island, the Disneyland Railroad and the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes — will close temporarily.

In total, 14 percent of the park’s attractions will be closed either permanently or temporarily in an area that represents nearly a quarter of Disneyland’s 85 acres.

Also, Autopia, the mini car attraction that opened in 1955, is set to close for routine maintenance in January. According to Koenig, the car ride will reopen with a new sponsor, Honda. Disney officials declined to comment.

To clear more space for the new Star Wars land, Disney employees who work in offices outside the park, just north of Big Thunder Ranch, have begun to move into two office buildings that Disney purchased last year a few blocks away on South Manchester Avenue.

A completion date has yet to be announced for the Star Wars land, but industry experts predict that an opening date could be at least a year away.

The last time that Disneyland closed several attractions for a major construction project was between 1995 and 1998, when the park overhauled Tomorrowland with several new attractions and a gold-and-brown paint scheme replacing the previous blue-and-white colors.

Disney has yet to reveal what will be included in the new Star Wars land. In announcing the park expansion in August, Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger said it would include a re-creation of the Millennium Falcon, in which guests can take the controls for a “customized secret mission,” along with an immersive attraction that will put visitors into “a climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance.”

Instead of discouraging visitors, Speigel said the construction for the Star Wars land could even pique interest among fans who hope to get a glimpse of the new attractions behind the construction walls.

He noted that attendance increased during an expansion of Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom in Florida from 2011 to 2014.

“It became a great marketing tool,” Speigel said. “They capitalized on it.”

Meanwhile, Disney officials say they have plenty to offer visitors. The park’s 60th anniversary celebration — including a revamped fireworks show, a nightly parade and a water-and-fire extravaganza at Disney California Adventure — will continue until Sept. 5.

“We are excited to begin the work that will lay the foundation for the future Star Wars-themed land at Disneyland,” Disney spokeswoman Suzi Brown said. “With our continuing Diamond Celebration entertainment and the new Season of the Force offerings, there is so much for guests to do during this time.”

©2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Riders cheer after riding the updated Hyperspace Mountain at Disneyland during the media preview of Star Wars Season of The Force on Nov. 12, 2015 in Anaheim, Calif. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

 

Seaworld Thinks Smaller With Regional Approach

Seaworld Thinks Smaller With Regional Approach

By Sandra Pedicini, Orlando Sentinel (TNS)

ORLANDO, Fla. — As it reinvents itself, SeaWorld is pursuing strategies more typical of a smaller regional theme park than an international tourist destination.

SeaWorld last month acknowledged its daily prices can’t keep matching those of Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando. The Orlando park’s planned Mako roller coaster is considered an attraction more typical of a smaller theme park than a Disney and Universal. And SeaWorld is marketing more heavily to people within a 300-mile radius of its theme parks, which also include Busch Gardens.

“We’re trying to play where we know we can win,” Chief Executive Officer Joel Manby recently told analysts. “You have to make choices, and I’m not saying we’re not giving up on the international visitor, a long-vacation visitor, but we’re competing where we can compete the best.”

Executives were not available for an interview. During two talks with investors last month, Manby said SeaWorld will stress price to stand out among its increasingly expensive neighbors. The gap in pricing with Disney and SeaWorld, he said, will likely widen over time.

“I think being a strong-value player in Orlando and even in Southern California is a great opportunity for us, because our competitors are increasing their prices dramatically,” he said.

Several theme-park experts and analysts said Manby’s comments are acknowledging that without the same deep pockets as Disney and Universal, SeaWorld has to be satisfied with a lower caliber of offerings.

“It is SeaWorld really saying, ‘We’re a second-tier park, but, boy, we’re the best second-tier park out there,’ ” said Scott Smith, an assistant hospitality professor with the University of South Carolina.

As late as 2013, SeaWorld was emphasizing higher pricing, saying it was willing to sacrifice some attendance for visitors who would spend more money. Also that year it opened Antarctica, following a trend set by Disney and Universal of building entire lands around one theme.

Manby unveiled SeaWorld’s new path in November, seven months after joining the company from Herschend Family Entertainment, the operator of theme parks including Dollywood.

SeaWorld has lost attendance in the wake of controversy over its killer whales, fanned by the 2013 anti-captivity documentary Blackfish.

However, SeaWorld has a competition problem, too. Universal Orlando, which opened in 1990, has become much stronger, especially during the past five years as it has opened its Harry Potter lands. In 2009, industry estimates showed SeaWorld was Central Florida’s busiest non-Disney park. Now, those same estimates show SeaWorld lagging far behind Universal, with 3 million fewer annual visitors than either of its parks.

As Disney’s and Universal’s attendance has grown, so have their prices, with both crossing the $100 barrier this spring. One-day tickets cost $102 at Universal. Disney charges $105 at Magic Kingdom and $97 for its other parks. SeaWorld tickets cost $99 at the gate.

SeaWorld offers discounts to buy advance tickets online. Those cost $70 for weekday admission, $89 for weekends. Next month, SeaWorld will charge $79 for advance tickets both weekdays and weekends.

Daily rates might come down, Manby said, but SeaWorld is trying to shift people to options such as multiday tickets and passes.

Now its own publicly traded company, SeaWorld finds itself without the same financial resources as Disney and Universal, both part of huge media conglomerates: the Walt Disney Co. and Comcast Corp., respectively.

Both have television networks that provide promotional opportunities, such as an hourlong special NBC ran last year on Universal’s newest Harry Potter area. Both Disney and Comcast created or have purchased rights to popular movie franchises such as Harry Potter and Frozen, big draws in theme parks.

Without such blockbusters to rely on, “I don’t see where they really have any other choice but to become more of a regionally focused chain,” said Robert Niles, editor of the ThemeParkInsider.com blog.

SeaWorld is still investing, with plans to open a new attraction annually for the next five years in Orlando. SeaWorld described the new attractions in a statement as “experiences of exploration, where we can touch the heart, teach the mind, and inspire positive action.”

Opening this summer is Mako, a 200-foot-tall shark-themed coaster expected to be taller and faster than any other in Central Florida, for now. Manby earlier this year described it as “just a classic thrill ride that is more typical of a regional park.”

The investment in the coaster is likely between $20 million and $30 million, said Credit Suisse analyst Joel Simkins — “significant, but not on the scale of a Harry Potter.”

Manby told investors this year that Harry Potter has been a major reason SeaWorld has lost international visitors. Focusing heavily on visitors from 300 and fewer miles away, SeaWorld has been trying to drive visits from pass holders.

“Particularly targeted to our local market, we will continue to always be accessible but with scope unlike our regional competitors,” Manby said.

Some analysts describe SeaWorld as a sort of hybrid between a destination theme park and a regional one. With so many visitors from around the world here in Orlando, they say, SeaWorld needs to keep drawing from them.

“I think there’s definitely room for, let’s call it a premium regional park,” Niles said. “You’re not just trying to compete on cost and frills but get the type of person who would go to Universal on a summer vacation … for a weekend getaway. I think there’s space in the market.”

©2015 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Christian Benseler via Flickr

 

10 Best Theme Parks for Roller Coasters

10 Best Theme Parks for Roller Coasters

Time was that you went to an amusement park or even a theme park, and a roller coaster was just one of the many rides from which to choose. It was usually the scariest, most stomach-turning one at the park. Roller coasters are now so popular that many of the big theme parks offer a choice of several, one more gut-churning than the next.

Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, CA has a whopping 19! And roller coasters loom large in the Six Flags franchise generally if Bankrate’s 10 Best Theme Parks for Roller Coasters is any indication.

Bankrate tries to combine the quest for thrills with bang (so to speak) for the buck, and lists the park price of general admission. Then, assuming you ride each coaster once, they also figure the cost per ride.

If you want to get cheap rides you’ll have to head north to Ontario, Canada where the 16 coasters in Canada’s Wonderland amusement park will cost you $3 a pop. Stateside each one of Six Flags Magic Mountain’s 19 coasters is a measly $3.68.

Photo: Fotocommunity.com via Google Images