Right Now is Best Time to Ride New Rides Yet
Want to ride the newest hit rides at Disney and Universal? If you’re a local, or if you have the capacity to jump on a plane and fly to the Orlando area theme parks, now is a great time to go. Both of the region’s latest attractions, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Hagrid’s Magical Creature Motorbike Adventure at Universal’s Islands of Adventure have shorter lines than they’ve had ever. Ever! Hagrid’s wait times were less than an hour yesterday, something that never really happens. ROTR has been running smoothly and has been having high throughput, accommodating a huge number of boarding passes. To top it all off, the weather has been great. Could things get any better? Floridians can even get Discover Disney tickets for (relatively) cheap now.
Rise of Skywalker Breaks a Billion
Movie news on a theme park website? Only when the parks are involved. Movie tie-ins at the parks, whether it be rides, shows, or attractions, are big profit makers for the parks (we cover this topic a bit in an article here). Much of the almost $25 billion Disney’s theme parks brought in during Q4 2019 was related to merchandise licensing (we also cover how Disney makes their money here). Disney hasn’t been hiding how hard it has been pushing Star Wars tie-ins at the parks. Not just new rides and attractions, but whole new lands have been added at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland. Suffice it to say, the huge worldwide earnings of Rise of Skywalker, the latest Star Wars theatrical release, will be good news for Disney’s theme parks.
Figment Merch
Figment is being featured on new merch for Epcot’s upcoming International Festival of the Arts. The purple dragon, created as a logo for the Imagination pavilion at Disney’s Epcot park, is being commemorated in colorful designs. The line of merchandise includes shirts, hats, ears, mugs, magnets, and more. See items from the collection here. You can pick up the merch at Mouse Gear, a shop in Epcot. Just be aware that Mouse Gear is undergoing renovations and a temporary version of the shop has been set up on the east side of the park.