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Potential New Universal UK Park

There was a lot of chat around the EuroDisney days that Disney may have made a mistake going for Paris as a location and really should have went for Spain (for the year-round weather) or for the UK because of transport links, the British understanding/ affiliation to the Disney brand and the general comfort people seem to have for traveling to the UK/ Heathrow. For me, these are moot points as the error was Disney not understanding the European (and specifically the French) culture and markets.

Universal have had a foray into the European market with PortaVentura, but the park really wasn't a ground-up Universal attraction. So a bespoke Universal attraction does seem to make sense to an extent. And if they are following the Disney model of world-wide, highly themed parks something in Europe is something I'm sure they are looking at. I suppose what we know so far is that we don't know much (if anything).

It doesn't even really need to be a 'standard' theme park. Could it be a studio's attraction similar to Harry Potter (as in a walk-through studio thing)? There are lots of films being made in the UK at the moment - could it be a working film studio with a tacked-on visitor experience?
 
I wouldn't look too much into Universal filing domain names and trademarks, companies do it all the time so they are legally covered in almost every area, and even if speculation/rumours is floating around then they'll file trademarks to stop patent trolls from infringing on their works, even if they have no intention of doing anything with them.

Pokémon has filed the trademark for the Pokémon games with every colour under the sun. Pokémon Grey, Pokémon Purple and Pokémon Topaz are prime examples of this, and they held the trademarks for Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet (the most recent games) long before they were even ideas on a piece of paper. There was even a recent example of a patent troll trying to claim the domain name of one of the new cities in GTA VI but Rockstar filed to override the patent troll quickly after. Brand control is everything.

It could be just that Universal are buying PA and they know the rumours of them expanding back into the European market will cause chatter, hence 'Universal Studios UK' and 'Universal Studios France'. Especially after London Resort, I'd be very sceptical of anything happening until dirt gets started to move alongside significant press...
 
Bert2theSpark said:
It could be just that Universal are buying PA and they know the rumours of them expanding back into the European market will cause chatter, hence 'Universal Studios UK' and 'Universal Studios France'. Especially after London Resort, I'd be very sceptical of anything happening until dirt gets started to move alongside significant press...
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They’ve only filed a UK domain name, though… if they were doing this, wouldn’t they file for a number of other countries too?
 
It’s also worth nothing that Comcast who own Universal also own Sky. Universal International Studios are also based in London.

London really is a hotspot for film and TV production. So many Hollywood blockbusters are actually filmed here.

There’s a lot of tax incentives to film in the UK hence the boom.

But it wouldn’t surprise me to see Universal build an actual film studios near London and they could easily tie a theme park into it. Would be very tax efficient and the US Dollar is currently very strong so investing overseas makes more sense.
 
For clarity, if this happens, I don’t believe that Universal would go for some giant, spectacular resort like Orlando from the get go. I should hope that not being too bullish and putting too much into the first phase is something that Universal has learned from DLP as a cautionary tale.

I reckon that we’d see a park more along the lines of the Hollywood or Singapore parks to begin with, with perhaps a small hotel offering. The potential for expansion in the future would then be left on the table.

However, the insiders seem fairly adamant that the UK project is “a full-size park”, not a smaller park like the planned Texas project. Say what you will about them, but these insiders have been very reliable for Universal scoop in the past and I certainly trust them.

I can understand cynicism based on the UK’s past history with such projects, but I’m personally remaining cautiously optimistic. There do seem to be a few potential pieces of evidence to put weight behind the rumour, and trusted insiders seem to be fairly sure that it’s in the pipeline!
 
Matt N said:
However, the insiders seem fairly adamant that the UK project is “a full-size park”, not a smaller park like the planned Texas project. Say what you will about them, but these insiders have been very reliable for Universal scoop in the past and I certainly trust them.
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Full-sized park is very relative and open to interpretation.

US Singapore is promoted as a full-sized park and is around the size of Chessington.
 
HectorLucas said:
Full-sized park is very relative and open to interpretation.

US Singapore is a full-sized park.
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I agree with that entirely. “Full-size park” does not necessarily mean an Orlando-scale resort. It could equally mean a Universal Studios on the smaller scale of a park like Hollywood or Singapore.

However, it would infer that they’re thinking of a full-on Universal Studios park rather than one of the recently announced regional projects. The folks on IU who are spreading the rumour seemed to directly rule out a smaller Texas-style park.

Universal Studios Singapore may be small in area, but it still attracts around 4.5 million guests per year, which is significantly more than any current UK park and on par with some of the large-scale resorts in Europe.
 
Matt N said:
Universal Studios Singapore may be small in area, but it still attracts around 4.5 million guests per year, which is significantly more than any current UK park and on par with some of the large-scale resorts in Europe.
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Having just been there last week i would be more than delighted with the equivalent appearing in the UK. It was built in 2 years too so Universal Studios Britain should be ready to open its doors for the start of the 2026 season :p
 
Matt N said:
I was also thinking that Universal may not use Potter in order to prevent the cannibalisation of visitors to the Orlando resort.
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What percentage of Universal Orlando visitors are European? I'd imagine the majority are US based and for those who do come from Europe it's often a once in a lifetime trip but would be interested to know if that information exists publicly.

Disney having a park in Paris that's almost a clone of its US counterparts presumably didn't decimate visitor numbers, it opened a new market (eventually) and gave those once in a lifetime visitors the chance to become regular visitors. It doesn't strike me as an area of concern in regards to opening a UK Universal but perhaps i'm underestimating the amount of British visitors to Orlando.
 
Bowser said:
What percentage of Universal Orlando visitors are European? I'd imagine the majority are US based and for those who do come from Europe it's often a once in a lifetime trip but would be interested to know if that information exists publicly.

Disney having a park in Paris that's almost a clone of its US counterparts presumably didn't decimate visitor numbers, it opened a new market (eventually) and gave those once in a lifetime visitors the chance to become regular visitors. It doesn't strike me as an area of concern in regards to opening a UK Universal but perhaps i'm underestimating the amount of British visitors to Orlando.
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I think more Brits probably visit Orlando than you’d expect.

I seem to remember reading once that 20% of Walt Disney World’s visitors were non-US guests, for what it’s worth.

Disneyland Paris is a good case study of how this might not have an effect, however; Europeans visit both Walt Disney World and Disneyland Paris.

With Potter, though, I did wonder whether having a Harry Potter attraction at a Universal park in Britain might lower the incentive for Europeans to travel to Orlando to see Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley. The one thing that Walt Disney World does have over DLP is that it has quite a few big-ticket draws that can’t be found in France, and I wondered if putting a Harry Potter land in Britain might remove the incentive for Europeans to travel to Orlando.
 
If 3% is correct then that's pretty low in the grand scheme of things and doesn't sound like something of concern. I also get the impression Universal Orlando has enough big ticket draws on top of Harry Potter and presumably we'd be talking about a much smaller park overall.

Also the fact they've happily replicated Harry Potter twice in Asia (and multiple Super Nintendo World areas) suggests that's not a major issue.
 
7 pages now and the main focus is on turnover as an argument for, and not profitability or other practicalities. And turnover does not equal profit. It never has, it never will no matter how many "I think a Universal park will do quite well" comments are made on fan forums.

Even if we overlook the economic factors, the planning restrictions, the labour challenges and the fact that the UK state has a serious debt problem and cannot/should not provide the level of subsidies that such a proposal would require, I'd argue there is also a turnover problem.

The domestic audience for a full scale Universal park is just not anywhere near big enough. DLP has struggled to pay the bills with 15m visitors per year. Even if we were to believe that 5% of UK visitors would visit this place year in year out religiously (they won't), you're looking in the region of around 3-4m per year. Not an exact science, but somewhere in the ball park of double that would be needed to sustain a park of this kind of scale. So that means foreign tourists would have to make up a significant portion. Will 3, 4, or 5 million visitors come to the UK to every year to visit?

Sure, a lot of people visit the UK from a lot of places far away. But how many of them want to visit a theme park which they probably have a similar example of at home? How many of those clambering to visit Buckingham Palace, the Lake district, Edinburgh Castle, Snowdonia and Lands End also want to go to Universal studios as well? Some. Maybe alot. But millions?

Then you have the more local foreign market. You live in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany. Just how appealing is going on an expensive plane or train journey going to be when you can get to PA, DLP, Europa and Efteling for far less with ease? How are they going to get here? The overcapacity Heathrow airport with just 2 runways where they'll have to queue in special lanes to get through the over capacity border checks? The Eurostar that only stops in one place, where you get onto a connecting diesel train built in the 1970's that splutters along rail lines at low speed that were built in Victorian times that will either be late or cancelled because the staff are on strike? Are they going to drive to the channel tunnel, get their passports checked and drive on the wrong side of the road on choked south east motorways with complicated restrictions? Many will do this, but will there be enough?

Of course you could just build it on prime land in the south east (where most of those factors are still valid regardless). But how much land in that area can you get for less than £250m? Why on earth would a company even consider such a thing when they can buy more land, at a lower price in continental Europe catering for a bigger audience, more easily reachable, and with support from governments that have both the ability and desire to be far more accommodating.

If you were sitting on the board of Comcast, would you make a large scale investment in the UK a year out from a general election under these circumstances? If you were a Comcast investor, would you buy more shares off the back of this? If you were an MP would you be able to look your constituents in the eye and justify why you walked into the division lobby to spend their tax money and reform planning laws to build shiny new theme parks at a time like this? If the answer to any one of these is no, then this isn't going to happen
 
Matt.GC said:
7 pages now and the main focus is on turnover as an argument for, and not profitability or other practicalities. And turnover does not equal profit. It never has, it never will no matter how many "I think a Universal park will do quite well" comments are made on fan forums.

Even if we overlook the economic factors, the planning restrictions, the labour challenges and the fact that the UK state has a serious debt problem and cannot/should not provide the level of subsidies that such a proposal would require, I'd argue there is also a turnover problem.

The domestic audience for a full scale Universal park is just not anywhere near big enough. DLP has struggled to pay the bills with 15m visitors per year. Even if we were to believe that 5% of UK visitors would visit this place year in year out religiously (they won't), you're looking in the region of around 3-4m per year. Not an exact science, but somewhere in the ball park of double that would be needed to sustain a park of this kind of scale. So that means foreign tourists would have to make up a significant portion. Will 3, 4, or 5 million visitors come to the UK to every year to visit?

Sure, a lot of people visit the UK from a lot of places far away. But how many of them want to visit a theme park which they probably have a similar example of at home? How many of those clambering to visit Buckingham Palace, the Lake district, Edinburgh Castle, Snowdonia and Lands End also want to go to Universal studios as well? Some. Maybe alot. But millions?

Then you have the more local foreign market. You live in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany. Just how appealing is going on an expensive plane or train journey going to be when you can get to PA, DLP, Europa and Efteling for far less with ease? How are they going to get here? The overcapacity Heathrow airport with just 2 runways where they'll have to queue in special lanes to get through the over capacity border checks? The Eurostar that only stops in one place, where you get onto a connecting diesel train built in the 1970's that splutters along rail lines at low speed that were built in Victorian times that will either be late or cancelled because the staff are on strike? Are they going to drive to the channel tunnel, get their passports checked and drive on the wrong side of the road on choked south east motorways with complicated restrictions? Many will do this, but will there be enough?

Of course you could just build it on prime land in the south east (where most of those factors are still valid regardless). But how much land in that area can you get for less than £250m? Why on earth would a company even consider such a thing when they can buy more land, at a lower price in continental Europe catering for a bigger audience, more easily reachable, and with support from governments that have both the ability and desire to be far more accommodating.

If you were sitting on the board of Comcast, would you make a large scale investment in the UK a year out from a general election under these circumstances? If you were a Comcast investor, would you buy more shares off the back of this? If you were an MP would you be able to look your constituents in the eye and justify why you walked into the division lobby to spend their tax money and reform planning laws to build shiny new theme parks at a time like this? If the answer to any one of these is no, then this isn't going to happen
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I don’t know about others, but I don’t think I’ve used turnover as an argument in favour. Or at very least, I haven’t used it as the only argument in favour if I have.

Also, I’d raise a few things in response to your post.

Firstly, your point about DLP assumes that Universal would build a resort on the same scale as DLP. I don’t think they necessarily would, as it was well known that one of DLP’s key problems was going very, very ambitious in the first phase; I think they built something obscene like 5 or 6 massive hotels from the very beginning? With this in mind, I imagine the initial resort would be a lot smaller in terms of overheads than DLP, which would necessitate less visitors to make a profit. As me and others have mentioned, a park more similar in scale to Universal Studios Hollywood or Universal Studios Singapore might be more feasible, and would likely suffice for an “initial” iteration.

In terms of why foreign visitors would visit a theme park “when they have an example at home”; the key variable you’re forgetting here is IPs. IPs can be very, very powerful when used effectively, and Universal could bring some very compelling propositions to the table in terms of IPs that would really set a hypothetical British Universal apart from other theme parks in Europe. Even putting aside Harry Potter, Universal has the rights to a very wide library of popular IPs that no other park in Europe has, and I think that could make the proposition of a short break very compelling indeed.

In terms of why Universal might pick the UK over other European countries; I still maintain my two points from earlier.

I think the UK is arguably a lower-risk proposition in terms of American cultural integration than other European nations, which could a be very important aspect to consider following how badly DLP went down in France and how this contributed to the park’s initial failure and financial woes.

I also think that unlike other large European nations, the UK does not really have any existing competition in terms of a large-scale, multi-day resort that attracts significant international visitation. Therefore, Universal might see a gap in the market in the UK that doesn’t exist in other European countries.

In terms of the political argument; it could be argued that having large-scale foreign investment into the UK may help to reinvigorate the economy and create a large amount of jobs. A development like this would undeniably produce money in terms of profits from tourism, and it would undeniably create a significant amount of jobs.
 
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Matt N said:
I don’t know about others, but I don’t think I’ve used turnover as an argument in favour. Or at very least, I haven’t used it as the only argument in favour if I have.

Also, I’d raise a few things in response to your post.

Firstly, your point about DLP assumes that Universal would build a resort on the same scale as DLP. I don’t think they necessarily would, as it was well known that one of DLP’s key problems was going very, very ambitious in the first phase; I think they built something obscene like 5 or 6 massive hotels from the very beginning? With this in mind, I imagine the initial resort would be a lot smaller in terms of overheads than DLP, which would necessitate less visitors to make a profit. As me and others have mentioned, a park more similar in scale to Universal Studios Hollywood or Universal Studios Singapore might be more feasible, and would likely suffice for an “initial” iteration.

In terms of why foreign visitors would visit a theme park “when they have an example at home”; the key variable you’re forgetting here is IPs. IPs can be very, very powerful when used effectively, and Universal could bring some very compelling propositions to the table in terms of IPs that would really set a hypothetical British Universal apart from other theme parks in Europe. Even putting aside Harry Potter, Universal has the rights to a very wide library of popular IPs that no other park in Europe has, and I think that could make the proposition of a short break very compelling indeed.

In terms of why Universal might pick the UK over other European countries; I still maintain my two points from earlier.

I think the UK is arguably a lower-risk proposition in terms of American cultural integration than other European nations, which could a be very important aspect to consider following how badly DLP went down in France and how this contributed to the park’s initial failure and financial woes.

I also think that unlike other large European nations, the UK does not really have any existing competition in terms of a large-scale, multi-day resort that attracts significant international visitation. Therefore, Universal might see a gap in the market in the UK that doesn’t exist in other European countries.

In terms of the political argument; it could be argued that having large-scale foreign investment into the UK may help to reinvigorate the economy and create a large amount of jobs. A development like this would undeniably produce money in terms of profits from tourism, and it would undeniably create a significant amount of jobs.
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The majority of posts in this thread that dare to look beyond the typical closed season hopes and dreams of having something like this, that then venture in to a debate about feasibility, are mostly turnover based and I 100% stand by that. Even a cursory look back shows that there's a huge desire among enthusiasts (me included) to have a jolly good park built on our doorsteps for all to enjoy and I'm sure every single one of us would be stood at the gate during opening year (again, me included) with fist fulls of cash to spent. But that's wishful thinking and not reality.

I used DLP as an example with very liberal ball park figures. To get something like Studios Hollywood or Singapore, it's far closer to the DLP example than it is Towers or Thorpe. We're talking a large scale premium park offering here that would need to attract many millions of guests paying premium prices from both the domestic and foreign market. We're talking a large expensive land mass (I would guess much more land than is being suggested has been bought for such a stated sum of money, especially if it is in the south east), expensive building costs, extensive external infrastructure costs, tall things, noisy things, light pollution, vast amounts of energy, high amounts of expensive labour, and so forth. Sure, there's less of a unionsied workforce and less of a cultural problem than there is with DLP, but are the other factors not far worse? And wouldn't you conclude that it would be far better to just not bother and build it somewhere else? I doubt very much, under current circumstances that Alton, Thorpe or Blackpool would even exist if now of they were proposed today, and something of the scale of Hollywood or Singapore is still in a different league.

I'm not forgetting IP's. That's an argument aimed at numbers/ turnover again and I think you make a valid point about Potter to be fair. But again, is this really enough to justify something on this proposed scale? Something Studios tour wise yes, but brand new theme park? I think having an animatronic Harry speak in German, French, Spanish or Italian would be a price worth paying for Comcast at this stage.

Yes there would be loads of low wage jobs that they'll struggle to fill created. But which money is the UK government, that is likely to change in the next 11 months again anyway, going to use to incentise this? And this would need government subsidies, you can bet your bottom dollar that our EU neighbours will have a far bigger wheelbarrow of cash than us to wheel out. Again, if your local MP walked into the division lobby to vote for this, would you not question why?
 
Matt.GC said:
I doubt very much, under current circumstances that Alton, Thorpe or Blackpool would even exist if now of they were proposed today, and something of the scale of Hollywood or Singapore is still in a different league.
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Don't really follow this point. Singapore is a fraction of the size of Alton or Thorpe (about 1/10th in terms of acres) with far fewer attractions, the majority of which are housed indoors so would negate several of the concerns you raise at least (height, noise, light).

I agree something the scale of Alton or Thorpe from scratch wouldn't exist today but i think people are using Singapore as an example because it is so much smaller.

BPP is an anomaly so can't really compare that.

If a tiny indoor theme park can be built in the middle of Camden then anything is possible ;)

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John_P said:

From: https://youtu.be/XSUAgPFoD2M?si=c72KoHDn3P3B7e3T


Interesting video from theme park stop (who do those great epic universe updates) pulling together all the facts for this together so far. Along with speculation.
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The article version is here:

orlandoparkstop.com

Universal Studios Great Britain — Possible Location Revealed for UK Theme Park

Rumors for a new Universal theme park coming to the United Kingdom seem to be backed up by the company purchasing land in England
orlandoparkstop.com

For those who'd rather not spend the time looking at either, the possible location is Bedford.
 
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