Mouse Extra

The internet is bubbling this morning with the story that Universal will soon announce they have landed the exclusive rights to Harry Potter for theme parks, something Disney was reportedly working towards for years.  While nothing is confirmed just yet, I certainly recommend that Disney fans read Jim Hill’s piece on this. 

He discusses how Imagineers are not nearly as disappointed with losing Potter as they are with losing a robotic arm technology to Universal.  But he also takes us to the logical conclusion as it relates to Disney theme parks…

But — truth be told — the Imagineers that I’ve talked with are fairly philosophical about this whole situation. Okay, so Universal now has the theme park rights to the “Harry Potter” characters as well as Kuka’s amazing robotic arm technology. That just means that Disney will now have come up with some other way to wow its customer base.

Universal is clearly making a full-court press to combat their attendance problems.  And they are honestly doing it the right way, with investments into new rides and characters.  Will Harry Potter be enough to stem the tide of Mouse Ears that have been dominating the tourist industry in Orlando recently?  That’s difficult to say for the long term, but in the short term I think there is little doubt Potter will pull people from Disney to see what Universal is doing.

                                                                                         Copyright Disney Company 2007

The important thing here for Disney is to respond in a similar fashion, and not wait for attendance issues to pop up like Universal did.  Mr. Hill mentions the “living character initiative” as the way Imagineering plans to answer their competitors.  That would seem like a great idea, but is the Muppet Mobile Lab really enough?  The technology is great, but something even bigger is needed to make a true splash, something along the lines of the Happiest Celebration on Earth.  I’ll be the first one to say that when this gets announced, Disney executives may seriously want to reconsider plans for Beastly Kingdom at the Animal Kingdom.