Universal Orlando CityWalk adding mini-golf in 2012

Count me in. I'll book today!

Neat-o. Wonder what the pricing will be like... or more importantly, if I can weasel my family in for free.

If you are a hotel guest, can you 'play through'?

Disney should sue them for stealing their idea from the Sci-Fi Dine-In. :)

Disney should smack themselves for not coming up with the idea sooner. I think it is a terrific idea and the entire CityWalk experience (location, offerings, etc) is really pulled off much better than Downtown Disney.

Totally agree. Downtown Disney has never had any kind of vitality to it. Maybe the problem is location. CityWalk, by nature of its placement, has tens of thousands of people at the very least crossing through it every day.

Should Disney have done something similar at TTC, instead of Downtown Disney? TTC has the crowds of people going thru, like CityWalk, but doesn't have "clubs, restaurants, and the like". I like the Disney mini-golf as it exists now, but I tend to think their courses are often under-utilized. It'll be interesting to see how much foot-traffic translates into "duffing"...

This is so intelligent of Universal. If I ran an amusement park, this is just the sort of thing I'd invest in.

I hope this is on "par" with my expectations ;)

Sounds like a brilliant idea. I'm surprised nobody thought of it sooner. City Walk is fun, but I'm not into the clubs too much, so my time there is usually limited to dinner and a drink or two. This is something that would definitely keep me around a bit longer.

Okay, I give up. What's TTC?

The Ticket and Transportation Center at Walt Disney World. As an aside, that was one of the preliminary locations for EPCOT.

One might argue that the boardwalk area near Epcot was kind of an attempt at that, but it doesn't get the parking lot traffic that CityWalk gets.

The Boardwalk sits between Disney Studios, Epcot and a dozen resorts and time shares so it seems to serve its own audience.

Right, that was what I was getting at. It's not tens of thousands of new people every day.

Something HAS to be done with the TTC. It's such an eyesore. I've seen new, elaborate bus stations in the middle of crumbling cities look better than this piece of garbage. Asside from the monorail, where's the theming we've come to expect from Disney?

The shear volume of people going through the TTC on the way to the Magic Kingdom would make any sort of attraction there difficult (I suspect if Disney thought they could make money on it, they would have done it.) I would also suspect there is a much large guest count at Downtown Disney than there is at CityWalk (when you remove the Universal Guests who simply walk through and don't actually stop to purchase anything. - note I base this fact on an unscientific study conducted by myself while sitting at the Lone Palm Bar.)

To say that Downtown Disney "never had any kind of vitality to it" is a bit of a reach as well, while I personally find it to be a snooze these days, Pleasure Island from 1994ish-2000ish was pretty big in the nation's club scene.

But that's exactly the problem. The "club scene" is a young 20-something person's scene. I outgrew it even sooner, 22 or 23 at most. The only thing I recall being interesting at Pleasure Island was the Adventurer's Club. The rest was the silly meat market scene, which tends to appeal to a local demographic for x number of years and fade, as it has in any other metro area (though admittedly I can only say I've observed this cycle in Cleveland, Detroit and Columbus, none of which have ever been on the up and up).

Diversifying with restaurants, concert venues and shops was certainly the right thing to do, but location for Disney is a huge issue. I've gone there once to meet my parents, and once with my wife to find a specific T-shirt, but it just felt like a glorified strip mall.

CityWalk, by contrast, has a built-in audience every day. It's very, very seasonal, that's for sure, but at the very least there's actual commerce occurring for a few hours when the parks close. During Mardi Gras and the thick of the summer, it's a total zoo. The club rats get their back "street," the families have their after-park time wasters and shopping by the lagoon, anyone who eats has a diverse enough selection, and best of all the on-property guests can really do whatever they want, including get loaded without driving. I'm especially surprised at the success of the movie theater. Sounds like Blue Man Group is seasonally a sell-out, but I suppose that's no different than their other permanent shows.

My guess is that on a revenue per-square-foot basis, CityWalk kills it. Actually, I think we had a news item once that had solid estimates on that.

On the club scene, I completely agree... but to say it never had any vitality is a stretch. In 2001 8trax at Pleasure Island was the most profitable portion of the Walt Disney Company (in terms of square footage and operating costs/profit.)

I agree Disney World is a victim of it's own success and size.. I suppose if we flew back in time to 1989 and they built a monorail line to the Studios and required everyone to park at the TTC and take transit to the new park, perhaps something similar to CityWalk could have been built there. There's also nothing to stop you from going to one of the restaurants on Disney property and getting smashed and taking a Disney bus back to your hotel. (Within reason of course.)

I find most of the restaurants at CityWalk (which really is a glorified strip mall at best as well) to be average at best and bland to terrible at worst. My last meal at Latin Quarter made me wish it really was my last meal. Pat O'brien's is a poor representation of New Orleans food... Margaritaville is a burger joint.. Burger King... Panda Express... Moes.. fast food. The nightclubs are hit or miss, although I am guilty of enjoying Rising Star with the right crowd and group of friends.

Back to the topic.. minigolf? really? Move Wet-n-Wild onto Universal property and make it a top notch waterpark and I will get excited.