The war for tourists between Universal Orlando and Disney World escalated Thursday as Universal announced it will build a new theme park called Epic Universe.
The company released few details but said the new park will add 14,000 jobs with a base rate of $15 an hour. That also will boost pay for Universal employees at the other two Orlando theme parks who are currently paid a base of $12 an hour.
‘We are going to make the largest investment we’ve ever made in a park,” said Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast Corp., which owns Universal theme parks. He attended Thursday’s news conference with Gov. Ron DeSantis, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and Tom Williams, CEO of Universal Parks and Resorts.
Building a new theme park comes with a multi-billion-dollar price tag and might take three years at a minimum, said Dennis Speigel, president of the International Theme Park Services consulting firm.
“It’s a boxing match,” Speigel said of the Disney-Universal fight. “The gloves have been taken off, and it’s a bare-knuckle match now.”
Universal’s Epic Universe will be the first from-the-ground-up theme park in Orlando since its Islands of Adventure debuted in 1999.
Orange County commissioners already have approved a memo of understanding for a $125 million package of cash and tax breaks to extend Kirkman Road and provide access to the new theme park as well as the Orange County Convention Center and Lockheed Martin.
Universal will spend $160 million on the estimated $300 million road project, the company said.
The company made the announcement at the convention center, close to land it owns where the theme park will go between Sand Lake Road and Universal Boulevard, near International Drive.
Williams declined to provide specifics about the expansion because of “competitive pressure,” after reporters asked if it would feature themes pulled from Jurassic World, Harry Potter or Nintendo. He did not provide a cost or opening date.
But he hinted the attraction will have more than just one single theme.
“Last I heard, universe is a little bit bigger than a world,” Williams said. “So take it for what it is.
“Really, it’s more than a park,” Williams added. “It’s hotels, it’s shops, it’s restaurants – it’s a whole resort. … Our vision is a big one.”
A roller coaster, hotel?
Concept art released by Universal with an aerial view of Epic Universal shows what appears to be a long, narrow, looping roller coaster; an amphitheater; an arched entryway; and a large multistory building that could be a hotel.
“I was looking and tried dissecting it,” said Brian Saeger, a freelance writer and owner of skywalkingadventure.com. “It looks like it’s going to be a shopping/entertainment district with a huge water-fountain concept that reminds me like the Bellagio in Vegas.”
At the news conference, Williams said Universal will lobby “with every bit of strength that we’ve got” for the high-speed Virgin Trains being built between Orlando and South Florida to stop at the convention center, in the backyard of Universal’s new theme park.
“Orange County has invested a tremendous amount of money in building the second largest convention Center in the United States of America,” Williams said. “You can’t bypass the convention center. It makes absolutely no sense. It ignores the investment that’s been made.”
The convention center drew 1.5 million visitors for the past fiscal year.
The king of theme parks is Disney, the world’s busiest operator with an estimated 157 million visitors in 2018, according to the Themed Entertainment Association and the global management firm AECOM’s annual report.
Universal, No. 3 with a projected 50 million visitors, has sought to make up ground.
“Now, let me say Disney is still No. 1,” Speigel said. “They have more gates. They have more everything, but Universal figured out after the Harry Potter introduction, they could rise to a level they never anticipated 20 years ago.”
In an earnings call a year ago, executives vowed to make Universal Orlando a weeklong travel destination for tourists instead of the two- or three-day trip it is now.
As the competition intensified with the crowds lining up for hours to see Universal’s latest Harry Potter rides, Disney has responded by opening new lands in Orlando. New Fantasyland was completed in 2014, Toy Story Land in 2018 and the upcoming 14-acre Galaxy’s Edge will debut on Aug. 29.
But Disney hasn’t built a full-scale theme park since the Animal Kingdom opened in 1998.
Seeking more details
Some theme park observers were hungry for Universal to reveal more news than just a new theme park was coming, something analysts have called a well-known secret.
“If you look at the kind of the group that lives and breathes theme parks and you wake up every day and think about going to Universal or Disney, then, yeah, I could understand how, you know, you really want the details,” said Taylor Strickland, owner of orlandoinformer.com, a vacation-planning website.
But it could be a while before Universal says anything more, said Alicia Stella, owner of orlandoparkstop.com, who has followed the project for months, including monitoring water drainage permits, land grading permits and development plans.
“I would hope they put up a preview center like they did with Islands of Adventure, and maybe a year or two from now, they give us a date,” she said. “But until they start actual vertical construction, I don’t think they’re going to give us any inkling of that. Right now, it’s still a dirt pile. It’s a very flattened dirt pile, but it is still dirt.”
Long history
Universal has a long history looking for a place to expand east of Interstate 4.
In 1998, Universal bought property along Sand Lake Road from Lockheed Martin with a vision of someday building a third park, more hotel rooms and golf courses.
Not all of the 2,000 acres was ready for big tourism dreams, though. First, Universal had to do a massive clean up on the landfills and toxic sludge left over from Lockheed’s time there.
In the end, those amusement park plans never developed.
The land stayed home to weeds and scraggly trees as the theme park industry hit a major downturn after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
In 2003, a Universal company, Universal Vivendi, sold the land to cut costs and raise cash.
Flash forward to now, and theme parks are again a moneymaker for giant companies, including Universal’s owner Comcast Corp. and Walt Disney Co.
In recent years, Universal looked to re-acquire the property near the convention center although executives have mostly kept silent on what their plan would be.
Universal began buying back land, including closing on 475 acres in 2015.
And to prepare for the influx of new visitors, Universal has already expanded to add more hotel rooms east of I-4.
The first in a pair of hotels called the Endless Summer Resort opened in June, which will eventually bring nearly 2,800 hotel rooms online at the former site of the Wet ‘n Wild water park.
grusson@orlandosentinel.com
