trips tour : Let's Take a Closer Look at Today's Announced Plans for Universal Studios Beijing

By Robert Niles: Universal Parks & Resorts confirmed its Universal Studios Beijing project today, with a formal announcement with Chinese officials. We'd known about the Chinese project for some time, as official reports from China had detailed its progress through the local bureaucracy.

Predicted to open in 2019, this US$3.3 billion, 296-acre park will be Universal's largest (if you don't count the Hollywood backlot), and the company's sixth theme park (seventh if you count the Moscow indoor park which was supposed to open in 2018, but hasn't seen any construction progress in months). Universal's other parks include one in Hollywood, two in Orlando, one in Osaka, Japan, and one in Singapore. Previously announced parks in South Korea and Dubai have been cancelled.

But let's take a look at the concept art to see what clues we might find about this new theme park.

Concept art courtesy Universal. Click for higher resolution.

We've got a CityWalk at the bottom of the image, with a bridge leading to a plaza surrounding the familiar Universal globe. A massive hotel stands at the far end of this plaza, straddling the entrance to the park. Let's zoom in and see what's inside the park.

We start with a Hollywood Boulevard entrance plaza, with an amphitheater straight from Universal Studios Florida to the left. Beyond that, it's not clear. Could that be Springfield? Or maybe Sesame Street? (Don't forget that Universal holds the Sesame Street theme park rights in Asia.) Let's continue around the lagoon, for things get much clearer in the next image.

That's obviously Orlando's Incredible Hulk coaster in the middle. To my knowledge, Universal would not have the rights to the Marvel franchise in China, but nothing is keeping Universal from duplicating the coaster with another theme. But it is what stands behind Hulk that really captures the imagination.

That's clearly Diagon Alley to the left. You can see the London facade in the front, with the tracks of the Hogwarts Express extending from the station at the right of the London facade. Behind those tracks stand what looks like a Revenge of the Mummy building. In front of that, at the end of the tracks, is Hogsmeade village, though it looks a bit different without the snow on the roofs. That's the Flying Hippogriff coaster on the peninsula, with the bridge above that leading to Hogwarts Castle. Above the castle? Maybe a Dragon Challenge coaster? But that building behind it looks large for its queue.

Moving clockwise around the lagoon, we come to Jurassic Park.

You can see the Discovery Center on the left side of this image, with the main show building and final drop of the River Adventure ride above that. Continuing to the right, over the bridge, leads us to the Shrek-themed Far, Far Away land from Universal Studios Singapore — that's the big castle facade there. In front of that appears to be the Madagascar land from Singapore. The green-topped carousel in the middle appears to be King Julien's Beach Party-Go-Round and the shape of the show building to the right is consistent with the Madagascar: A Crate Adventure ride there.

That leaves the large, flat-topped building in between Madagascar and returning to Hollywood Boulevard. Guesses? One would think that there would be a Transformers ride in here somewhere, but I didn't see an obvious sign of it.

Of course, all this might not be any more than a mash-up of existing Universal theme park IP, and have nothing to do with final plans for the park. Disney's been exceptionally reticent to share concept art for its new Chinese park in Shanghai, in part due to concerns that competitors would use it to build copycat parks before Disney could open. Given the lax state of intellectual property protection in China, it would not be surprising to see Universal try a misdirection here, showing people concept art from all its existing attractions, then developing something different for the actual Universal Studios Beijing.

Thoughts?

This article originally appeared at http://ift.tt/1xMLBXI. All rights reserved. If you are not reading this on a personal RSS reader (such as Feedburner) or on http://ift.tt/N0yOgi, you are reading a scraper website that has illegally copied and stolen http://ift.tt/N0yOgi's content. Please visit http://ift.tt/1xMLBXI for the original version, along with all its comments.