But decades removed, hindsight overshadows foresight.
Dominoes were already falling in the tourism industry. The World Travel and Tourism Council saw the stagnation coming, kicked off by a 1997 economic crisis in Japan. Disney’s Animal Kingdom met first-year attendance projections but pulled away twice as many guests as anticipated from its sister parks, all of which saw a decline. Despite the revised marketing, resort-wide attendance at Universal Orlando dropped 1.5 million in 2001. The September 11th attacks would bring air travel to a relative standstill for years after.
The rest of the 2000s called for major replacements at the Studios park - Jimmy Neutron’s Nicktoon Blast, Shrek 4-D, Revenge of the Mummy, The Simpsons Ride - and fixing the opening day lemon at Islands - The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride! A third hotel, Loews Royal Pacific, opened in 2002. It would be the last new lodgings for 12 years.
Before the boy wizard flew in on his broomstick, Universal Orlando was as close as it’s ever been to oblivion. This tape is canary song in a deeper, darker coal mine than anyone could’ve expected. What’s impressive is how well the infrastructure has stood the test of time.
Tenants have come and gone, but CityWalk survives in both form and function. The water taxis now extend to two other resorts only because of the groundwork laid here. When the parking garage was first built in 1996, it only needed to handle the carload for Universal Studios Florida. Today, it serves two theme parks and a waterpark, with unprecedented crowds across the board. It was all there, as planned, a resort built to last.
Which is why tour guide Kristin is bold enough to name the competition. It’s always dropped as proof of Universal’s convenient location, but the most startling reference sounds like sacrilege today: “Universal Orlando offers transportation to many of the area’s other attractions, including Walt Disney World Resort.”
Not only does Universal mention the Mouse, it now offers a shuttle to his front door. Times were changing, had changed, and this planning video catches the difference in amber.
Universal brass didn’t expect to replace the Walt Disney World vacation - in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, then-president Ron Meyer admitted, “We just want them for two days instead of one.” But they had to enter the vacation-planning conversation and stay there. Universal wasn’t just about riding the movies anymore. It suddenly meant character breakfast reservations at Confisco Grill and spa days at Portofino Bay and parrothead parties at Margaritaville. In just a few years of construction, Universal Studios Florida caught up to Walt Disney World’s first decade and change.
It was a quantum leap the likes of which Orlando hasn’t seen since. That is, of course, until now.
There almost certainly won’t be a planning video to commemorate the opening of Epic Universe and the rest of Universal’s second campus. If there is, it certainly won’t be confined to physical media. And besides, other than transportation between campuses, Universal already answered all the tough questions twenty years ago.
And in just under twenty minutes.
Comments
You hit the nail on the head with how well the infrastructure stands up. Universal learned via the "School of Hard Knocks" how to become a multi-park resort (which every resort to follow arguably learned from). To that end, I think in retrospect, they made a whole lot of very, very good decisions (marketing aside).
Universal Orlando, Disneyland Resort, Disneyland Paris, Tokyo Disney... The master-planned, all-at-once expansion of a single park into a walkable, "urban," multi-park resort with perimeter parking, a hotel district, a shopping district, and intra-resort transportation model works well, and arguably, Universal does it best. I think that's very high praise.