News
 

• An unexpected announcement: Disney said last week that they’re partnering with the Oriental Land Company on a new cruise ship for the Japan market.

• A Wish-class ship, same number of staterooms (1,250)
• Flagged out of Japan, which is interesting bc most cruise ships are flagged out of, say, the Bahamas
• Cruises start in 2029
  

• One more thing that’s news because it hasn’t happened: Jim, the annual Themed Entertainment Association Theme Park Index, which is the industry standard for annual theme park attendance numbers, is normally out in June. And here it is, the middle of July, and we haven’t heard a peep about it. Any idea what’s going on there?
  
• Also, Jim, an interesting tidbit that may or may not be true: I’m hearing that one of the reasons why character greetings are not part of Lightning Lane multi-pass is that Disney World simply doesn’t have enough character performers to staff those and the parade.

Surveys

Our friend Rae sent in a new Universal Orlando survey about possible changes to their VIP tours for 2025.

First question is on your general interest in visiting Epic Universe.

The next question is what year do you plan to visit? And the years range from 2025 to “2029 or later”

Reminder question that Universal has different VIP tour options than Disney - Universal offers private tours, like Disney, but also non-private tours for up to 12 people, including your group and possibly others.

How likely are you to buy a private VIP tour?

How likely are you to buy a private VIP tour?

What do you think are the 3 primary benefits of a VIP tour [Jim: this is an example of how you’d market the tours, right?]

And

Question about meals

Non-private tours:

First option that includes Epic Universe:

Note that “Unlimited Use Express” is essentially what Disney does on its standard VIP tours - you get access into the Lighting Lane lines.

One thing I think is missing from this questionnaire - and I know Universal listens to this show so I’m going to mention it because I think it’s important - is that to this point in the survey, we haven’t been told two things:

• How many people we can have on the tour
• How long the tour is.
  

And I’m saying this because the obvious comparison is going to be to Disney’s VIP tours. We know that Disney’s VIP tours have a 10-person maximum and a  7-hour minimum and run between $450 and $900 per hour.

So a Disney VIP tour costs a minimum of $3,150 and up to $6,300 for 7 hours, plus gratuity. On a per-person, per-hour basis, that’s

$45 to $90 per hour.

Universal’s proposed pricing for this private tour at $5,555 per group. And a standard Universal VIP tour is 8 hours, so 1 more than Disney. At 10 people and 8 hours, that standard pricing works out to just under $70 per person per hour, which is just above the middle part of Disney’s price range.

There’s another two-day option for $9,554 per group that doesn’t include:

• Epic Universe
• Prime parking
• Unlimited Express access (it’s 1x per attraction)
• Photo package

But does include:

• Backstage, behind-the-scenes access

Epic Universe One-Day VIP Tour

Tons of other options. It’s roughly 100 questions. Let me know if y’all want to hear more!

Listener Emails

Research/Patents (use query "disney enterprises".as AND "theme park".ab)

If I can fanboy for a minute, Foxx Nolte is one of my absolute favorite theme park writers. The first thing of hers I remember reading, on her Passport 2 Dreams blog, was the 2014 history of Jungle Cruise’s queue audio. And it’s such incredible detail, because some of these are old-time 78 rpm records that you’ve managed to track down. I remember thinking “I wonder if Foxx and I take the same ADD medicine?”

Questions for Foxx:

• Foxx’s General Background

• How did you come to be interested in the Disney parks?

• (Worked at attractions, etc.)

• What kinds of theme park history are you interested in?

• One of the things I love about your books is that they explain the sources, references, and influences that Imagineering used. The Disney narrative always feels like them saying “And this idea emerged fully formed from the brains of Walt and his hand-picked team, with only their previous original work as influence.”
• But you have this line in the book that says something like “The Disney organization has this tendency to prioritize what it thinks is a good story, over an accurate story about how attractions are developed.” And I think for a lot of us, especially our listeners, the accurate story is really the more interesting of those options.

• Scoundrels, Villains, and Knaves

• Part One: A history of piracy

• Real history to early Hollywood pirates, which shaped conventional narrative about what a pirate does, looks like, talks like, etc.
• I love that you mention International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Thursday, September 19)

• Part Two: Walt’s pirates

• Treasure Island book vs movie

• How’d Disney get the rights to Treasure Island?
• We see Walt picking people for jobs outside of their realm of expertise

• Original ideas for pirates

• Herb Ryman had some pirate stuff in pre-opening concept art for Disneyland?
• Bruce Bushman walk-through (Bruce left Disney in 1958)
• The influence of the 1948-1949 Chicago Railroad Fair on the design of New Orleans Square

• Part Three: Walt Disney World, the Asian and European Parks

• What can readers expect to see in this?

•  Part Four: On Stranger Tides

• How Pirates has changed over the years
• Werner Weiss of Yesterland.com has this great observation that adding Jack Sparrow to WDW Pirates fundamentally changed the ride from a trip through a physical location in linear time - to a trip through time AND space. Thoughts?
• The thing that bugs me about the addition of Red is that it seems silly that a bunch of pirates, who to this point are happy to bombard a city, waterboard its citizens, and otherwise pillage and loot whatever they can find, decide to stop in the middle of this to have an auction that determines the correct market price for chickens.

• What was it like to work with Tom Morris on this book?

• How’d y’all meet?
• What was Tom’s perspective on this?

• Boundless Realms book

• What did you learn in writing that book?

• Hidden History book
• Last questions (from our listeners)

• Would you rather be too hot or too cold?
• What flavor of PopTart would you be, if you were a toaster pastry?

Thanks so much for being on the show.

Where can people find you?

Amazon link to Scoundrels, Villains, & Knaves: Disneyland, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Popular Culture, out next month August 15.