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

erasure fan18 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.

DisneyRoy17 minutes ago

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

Purduevian26 minutes ago

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

erasure fan136 minutes 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.

UNCgolf39 minutes 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.

ToTBellHop1 hour ago

Two boring sons is bad luck…

Pi on my Cake1 hour 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

SailorMercury1 hour ago

Maybe your twin sons are just boring.

MouseEarsMom332 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.

Touchdown2 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 Realest2 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.

Ayla2 hours ago

Similar for me. My 23 and 27 year old played Mario all the time as tweens...could not care less now, and both of them still have gaming systems in their homes.

UNCgolf2 hours ago

The Mario Kart ride has good sets -- it would be a better attraction if it was just a Mario dark ride. The AR shooting gallery aspect actually makes the ride worse. And yes, it's a major misfire as a Mario Kart attraction.

seabreezept8133 hours ago

My family members who don't have kids or are older are always shocked how popular Mario is with little kids. The movie is cute, but I didn't love watching it everyday when it first came out lol. I draw the line when my kids try to watch videos of people playing Mario games. We have taught the 6 year old how to play Mario Kart and Mario Party though. It's a fun way to engage my college aged stepdaughter with the little kids.