Disney says permits will soon be filed to begin work on Magic Kingdom's 'Beyond Big Thunder Mountain' expansion

Purduevian12 minutes ago

Just a joke as this thread is quite far off from the title. Throwing in a personal opinion on this off topic discussion. IMHO Mario is in the elite group of super recognizable characters regardless of if you consume the media. Mickey, Darth Vader, Buggs Bunny, Picachu, Pooh Bear, Batman, Hello Kitty, Spiderman, and Elmo are others that are probably in the same category.

UNCgolf29 minutes ago

Pokemon is only partially a video game IP -- a lot of its popularity comes from other media (movies/TV show and the card game), so I think it's best to leave it out of these conversations. It's been a major cross-media IP from the very start. It's obviously massively popular, though. Fallout is a good example of how to expand video game IP market appeal with traditional media, because there will likely be more people who see the show than ever played any of the games. Minecraft is a massive outlier (it's by far the highest selling video game of all time, nothing else is even remotely close to it). I'm not sure there are any other video game properties with the overall reach of stuff like Encanto and Coco, though (there may be a few, but it's a very small number) -- this is the misconception I was talking about in my original comment.

MJL9237 minutes ago

As a lifelong Nintendo Gamer I booked a trip for USH as soon as Super Nintendo World opened. Had the highest of expectations but IP or not, the rides are lackluster. The kinetics of the land are really cool but I think the rides totally miss the mark with the demographic they're targeting with the IP they chose. Good IP =/= Good Attractions

erasure fan152 minutes ago

We are on our way. Fallout just dominated the streaming charts. It was loved by gamers as well as people who had no clue what it was. Mario did awesome, so did last of us. Sonic has done well and so did FnaF. A proper Pokemon film would do great as well. They are figuring it out and Disney doesn't have a horse in the race. That's the issue. A Minecraft ride would be a HUGE draw. More so than encanto, coco, Tiana, tron, or most of the ips being considered for the parks. Sure you could say Minecraft is another outlier. But I can think of a bunch of properties that would beat that list as well. But none of it matters because Disney has no plans to even be a part of that space.

DisneyRoy1 hour ago

No. Universal owns the theme park rights to Nintendo properties.

Purduevian1 hour ago

Just catching up on the thread. Is Mario going North/West of Big Thunder or the Adventureland expansion plot?

erasure fan11 hour ago

Exactly. And it's not even really close, video games are bigger than movies and music and books combined. Unfortunately it's still thought of as this little sub sector of entertainment. Look no further than Iger, he has blown it off his entire career.

UNCgolf1 hour ago

It's more that people don't really understand the video game market on both sides. There are absolutely people who significantly underestimate it, but there are also people who wildly overestimate it because they look at the market as a whole and not individual properties. The overall video game market is gigantic, but it's spread wildly across segments (including mobile games like Candy Crush which account for a significant percentage of the overall market) and thousands of properties. Individual game properties generally have a much smaller reach than other forms of media for many reasons. Highly successful movies can easily have 100+ million distinct viewers (even into several hundred million); there are only a handful of video games ever that have had 100+ million distinct players. Mario is really an outlier in the gaming market because he's been around for several decades with dozens of games across multiple genres. There probably haven't been any Mario games that have had 100 million players (maaaybe Mario Kart 8), but there are almost certainly 100+ million people who have played at least one Mario game. TLDR: Video games as a whole are massively popular; individual gaming IPs, on the other hand, are generally not comparable in popularity to legacy media. That could change going forward, but we aren't there yet.

ToTBellHop2 hours ago

Two boring sons is bad luck…

Pi on my Cake2 hours ago

The NES (Nintendo's first console) released nearly 40 years ago. There are grandparents out there who grew up playing video games. Every year the number of grandparents who grew up gaming will grow. Already there are plenty of parents who grew up in a time when video games were mainstream entertainment for their generation. There's debate about the mass appeal of video games outside of a few select brands right now, but there won't be any debate in another 5-10 years as the generations that grew up with video games continue to become parent and grandparents. Which means theme parks should be looking at them now if they want to be ahead of the curve

SailorMercury2 hours ago

Maybe your twin sons are just boring.

MouseEarsMom333 hours ago

I played some Mario as a kid but didn't play a lot of video games. Super Mario Bros. 3 was my main game and never had an upgraded console until I was an adult and Wii came out. I've been waiting years for EPIC Universe to open so I can take my son, who also likes Mario games. I've never been to Universal before. You don't have to be a serious gamer to be interested in the new Nintendo land.

Touchdown3 hours ago

Meanwhile, USH which has always been an afterthought in the LA theme park space, continues to sell (and sells out of) early access to SNW on a regular basis. That rump of a land is a huge success out west, the full experience in Epic will be just if not more popular. The Nile, not just a river in Egypt.

Tha Realest3 hours ago

The only animated film that’s made more than Mario is Frozen II. Mario’s been the most enduring video game franchise for four decades now. Younger generations game more than consume other forms of media. Some of you continue to greatly underestimate this market.