Although Universal Studios has been the seemingly more popular destination in Orlando, the park’s parent company is saying the opposite is true. Are Universal theme parks falling off similarly to Disney’s?
As reported by the Orlando Sentinel, Comcast’s 2nd quarter report for 2024 points to a revenue slump for Universal Studios theme parks. Although the company operates theme parks worldwide, the US destinations appear to suffer the most.
The president of Comcast, Michael Cavanagh, pinned the near 11% drop in theme park cash on the dropoff from an early post-pandemic attendance wave:
“Going back to 2022 and 2023, parks were clearly the early beneficiaries of substantial rebounds in tourism and travel after the pandemic, resulting in a surge in demand that contributed to us reaching record results for both of those years. More recently, other travel options, including cruises and international tourism, given the strength of the dollar, have experienced their own surge in demand, which caused visitation rates at our parks to normalize.“
From our first-hand perspective, it feels a lot different. When we attended the Mardi Gras event at Universal Orlando Resort this year, we noticed that it was still bustling, even on one of the lowest attendance days. Although we had fast passes, the wait times in these lines still exceeded 20 minutes on rides like Spider-Man and MIB.
This decrease will probably be temporary as it does not yet show the full scale of the Summer vacation season. 2025 will likely show another surge, mainly due to Universal’s plan to limit access to Epic Universe by making guests pay for multi-day, multi-park tickets just to crack the company’s newest gate.
What do you think of Universal’s decline? Is it just a tiny bump in the road or a sign of something worse? Let us know below!
[Source: Orlando Sentinel]
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