Theme park and attraction news, rumors and videos.
Starting today, Nov. 20, guests can enjoy fan-favorite Butterbeer and more magical treats at Universal CityWalk Hollywood and its new seasonal walk-up location, “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Sweets & Treats.”
Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Animation have teamed up together to give Universal CityWalk Hollywood guests a chance to watch their new movie, “The Croods: A New Age” with an exclusive drive-in experience.
The State of California has shared the reopening guidelines for theme parks in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but as a result, Disney and Universal likely won’t reopen for quite some time.
As a kid, I always thought that if an attraction was in a Universal Studios theme park, that meant it was a Universal film. As I grew older, I started to recognize that isn’t the case, and that a lot of the time, intellectual properties are licensed in order to use certain characters in the parks. A great example is “Beetlejuice.” For a long time, I thought this was a Universal character since he was featured so much in the park. I was surprised to find out that that film was distributed by Warner Bros. It was equally as confusing at a younger age with everything at Disney-MGM Studios.
There’s no doubt that 2020 has been a very disappointing year for theme park fans, as many attractions around the world were (or continue to be) closed due to COVID-19. Still, with the hopes of a brighter 2021, Blooloop—the world’s leading online resource for professionals working in the field of visitor attractions—has ranked this year’s top 25 theme park attractions.
Right from the top, I’ll admit that I am not the biggest fan of “The Simpsons.” I haven’t seen very many episodes and I simply was never enthralled by it the way so many are. But it always seemed like a no-brainer to me that “The Simpsons” could have (and should have) been a part of Halloween Horror Nights in the Universal Studios theme parks. But now, it’s probably too late and this opportunity has been missed.
In a typical year, we’d already be several weeks into the excitement and scares of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. But as we all know, things are different this year. Let’s instead take a look back at the excitement and hard work it took when I performed as a scareactor for a few years at this iconic event.
One new theme park land that we’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about for quite some time is the new Super Nintendo World heading to Universal Studios Japan (and beyond). Although the opening has been delayed due to the pandemic, it hasn’t stopped the excitement among fans. Nintendo is a major brand for the Universal theme parks, but is it a good fit? If you look at the history between Universal Studios and Nintendo, it actually works out pretty nicely.
Hasbro has released a new figure in the Transformers Studio Series modeled after Megatron in the Universal Parks’ attraction Transformers: The Ride 3D.
Universal’s theme parks have long been known for letting guests “ride the movies,” and now fans of Transformers: The Ride 3-D can step behind the scenes and learn the the attraction’s secrets through a recently discovered off-ride video.
