New theme park attractions drive merchandise sales

In other news, water is still wet, high fructose corn syrup is made from corn, and Elvis is still dead. :p

I love the part about coaster enthusiasts buying coaster related stuff. Of course some of them do (not me though, normally). But coaster enthusiasts are a really really small part of those sales.

The real story is IOA. It's my understanding that Universal had to add warehouse infrastructure and staff just to keep up with the sales of Harry Potter stuff.

I wonder if Six Flags is going to regret cancelling their Tony Hawk, Thomas the Tank, Evil Knievel, and Terminator licensing agreements?

Those licensing agreements only work if they're getting an adequate cut. From what I hear, that was the partial motivation for dropping the Nick licenses at the Paramount Parks, but boy would I like to hear a post mortem on that. Kids love their Nick stuff.

Yeah I wonder how Mall of America does on merchandising now compared to pre-nick days?

IOA has some pretty smart people down there. They made fair projections on how much merchandise they planned on moving in the first year of Potter. They beat those projections at the end of the 3rd month.

I wonder if there has been another large investment in the industry that has clearly paid itself off as quickly.

kpjb said:

I wonder if there has been another large investment in the industry that has clearly paid itself off as quickly.

Well....
Certainly not California Adventure
Not Islands of Adventure (pre Potter)
No single ride that I can think of... (Everest, Tower of Terror (any), Indy (DLR), possibly Splash Mountain in Florida, but that's a real stretch.

Actually the only certain answer to that would be Tokyo Disney Sea.

No matter the original projections for Potter, and they were robust, there is no way that anyone could have anticipated the demand for Potter stuff by adults.

Simply stunning.

CreditWh0re said:

No matter the original projections for Potter, and they were robust, there is no way that anyone could have anticipated the demand for Potter stuff by adults.

Simply stunning.

Sustainability will be the key... frankly I'm annoyed... it's harder for me to find a seat at the Lone Palm Bar these days... but I am impressed with Universal Orlando's turnaround, both in success and service.