Future of top theme parks looks like `Avatar'
Disney CEO Bob Iger has doubled down on the company bringing “Avatar” to the Disneyland Resort. At an investors conference last week, Iger said, “We have one `Avatar'-based land, Pandora, in Florida. We're going to put a second one in California.”
Iger's comments helped make clear what observant fans have suspected for some time. The future of theme parks — at least at the top of the industry — lies in singlefranchise lands.
Ever since Disneyland opened in 1955, theme parks have been organized around lands. That's what puts the “theme” in theme park, after all. But Fantasyland, Frontierland and Tomorrowland offered broad themes designed to accommodate attractions based upon multiple films and television shows. A case could be made that Adventureland was based upon a single franchise — Disney's “TrueLife Adventures” series — but that was an anthology of documentaries rather than a single narrativedriven property.
As years passed, Disney and rival Universal expanded their libraries as single movies spawned sequels that grew them into multirelease franchises. TV shows became movies, and vice versa. When Universal opened The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando in 2010, the company enjoyed a surge in attendance and revenue that was certain to elicit imitations.
Since then, Disney has built Cars Land and Pandora — The World of Avatar, as well as multiple installations of Avengers Campus, Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. Universal has followed with multiple installations of Super Nintendo World and Minion Land. Next year in Orlando, Florida, Universal will open Epic Universe — a park containing four single-intellectual-property lands.
Many Disney fans have been asking how their favorite company would respond. While some have been clamoring for a fifth park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, Disney instead has been talking about a four-land expansion in California.
In addition to Iger's plans for an “Avatar”-themed land in California, Disney officials have teased new lands based on “Frozen,” “Zootopia” and “Black Panther's” Wakanda during public discussions about the company's DisneylandForward proposal. Disney recently opened “Frozen”- and “Zootopia”-themed lands in Hong Kong and Shanghai, respectively, but a “Black Panther”-themed land would be a first for the company.
One concern some fans have expressed about single-franchise lands is that they leave no opportunity for the development of attractions based upon original concepts. Disneyland earned generations of fans with original attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion. Why limit Imagineers and other attraction designers to adapting stories from Hollywood, instead of allowing them to develop their own stories?
Fortunately — in Hong Kong, at least — Disney has created singleintellectual-property lands based around original concepts, with Grizzly Gulch and Mystic Point. The latter is the home of the park's widely acclaimed Mystic Manor dark ride, which advances the parks' original Society of Explorers and Adventures franchise.
Ultimately, it's all about branding. Anyone can build a Frontierland or Fantasyland, but only Disney can deliver “Zootopia,” and only Universal can build a Minion Land. That's why they are the future.
Robert Niles covers the themed entertainment industry as the editor of ThemeParkInsider.com.
Disney's use of “Avatar” marks a trend toward whole theme park lands devoted to single franchises.