But what if you couldn't just put together a dream park from scratch, but had to assemble it from existing attractions at real-world parks? And, just to make this mental exercise more complicated, what if you could only move an attraction from one park to another if the second park agreed to a trade? In other words, no raiding parks to create some all-star line-up. No, instead, you'd have to act like the manager of a team in a Fantasy Theme Park League, trading with others to build the park you want.
That's the hypothetical I imagine in my Orange County Register column this week: Can we make Disneyland better by trading some of its attractions to Walt Disney World? I tried to conjure some trades between theme parks that fans of each park might agree would represent that cliched "win-win" for both sides.
I mostly stuck to trades within chains, but if you could imagine trades between park chains, I think that's where our little fantasy theme park league gets really interesting. The most obvious trade I think most fantasy owners would propose would be one that gets the Marvel theme park rights from Universal Orlando to Walt Disney World. But what could Disney send to Universal to make that happen? And would a third party (Six Flags, with its DC rights?) need to get involved?
Simpler deals might be more fun to contemplate, though. Would Disney World fans agree to send the Tiki Room to Cedar Point to get a Skyway back? Come on, admit it, you'd at least think about that deal, right?
What other theme park attractions trades could you imagine?
Read Robert's column:
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But I'd totally give Disney the Hulk and Spiderman if Universal Orlando got Everest (THEY'D find a way to make the Yeti work.... ) and Haunted Mansion.
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