FRISCO, Texas — It’s 93 degrees at 10am and I’m standing outside, only mildly baking in the hot Texas sun, at Universal Kids Resort, Universal’s first theme park made specifically for small children. There are roller coasters and water rides and Minions and SpongeBob Squarepants, but when I ask my four-year-old son where he wants to go first, he takes a hard left and walks straight into a small wooden caterpillar playground made to look like it belongs in the “Trolls” franchise.
An entire theme park at his disposal, brand new rides with no lines, and he runs to the thing he could play on any day back home. But the fact that this kind of playground even exists in Universal Kids Resort, let alone that it’s the first thing that catches my son’s attention, speaks to why this park is different from anything Universal has made before.
Missing are the experiences where guests can step completely inside the worlds of “E.T.,” “Jurassic World” and the Harry Potter universe. There are no massive “Fast and the Furious”-style roller coasters and 3D motion simulators. Instead of glamorous Hollywood or the theme park capital of Orlando, Fla., it’s located in a medium-sized Texas city about 30 miles north of Dallas.
But, as executives told TheWrap, its purpose in the larger Universal portfolio is also different. Universal Kids Resort is much smaller — both in scale and budget — than the coastal parks, and is designed to be a gateway to those bigger summer destinations down the line.
Market research showed the booming population and economy in North Texas offered an opportunity to build a park that could operate at a profit with mainly regional visitors, while also hooking kids and families on IP that feeds directly into the larger Comcast flywheel. It represents an entirely new strategy.
