Universal has dropped new concept art for its upcoming Texas theme park, along with all its attraction and location names.
Universal Kids Resort will open next year in Frisco, Texas - just north of Dallas. The park will feature lands themed to DreamWorks and Illumination animated franchises, along with a kid-sized Jurassic World and a licensed SpongeBob land. We told you some of the details about this new park earlier in our post, Universal reveals the lands for its new Kids Resort. But now we have all the details.
As previously reported, the park's entry plaza will be Isle of Curiosity, which will feature Gabby’s Cat-Tastic Dance Party, a character dance party starring Gabby from DreamWorks' Gabby’s Dollhouse. The land's main restaurant will be the Universal Kids Resort Café, complemented by the Cakey’s Cupcakes sweet shop. You can buy park merch at the Universal Kids Resort Store.
Walking clockwise through the park, the next land up will be...
Rhonda’s TrollsFest Express will be a Zierer Force roller coaster, while Hair in the Clouds will be a kids' balloon tower ride. The land also will feature King Trollex Techno Dance Party, an indoor interactive experience. The land also will include two play areas: Poppy’s Playland and Trolls Critter Crawl.
The land's food service locations will be Trolls Eatz! and BroZone Cones, serving ice cream. Universal Kids Resort will offer a "Troll-ify Me!" makeover experience in Sparkle Shine Glitter Glow. Merch will be for sale in Mr. Dinkles’ Market.
Shrek & Fiona’s Happily Ogre After will be an outdoor track ride "built by Shrek for their triplets, [where] families will ride along to relive the quest to rescue Princess Fiona, with help from Donkey of course," Universal said.
The land also will include two play areas: the dry Shrek’s Swamp Rompin’ Stomp and the wet Shrek’s Swamp Splash & Smash. Hungry ogres can eat at Swamp Snacks, which will sell the Shrekzel that Universal debuted last year at Universal Studios Florida. In fact, much of the Frisco park at this point feels like an upsized version of that park's DreamWorks Land.
Mama Luna’s Adopt a Kitty Day will be a live stage show with puppets, showing "Puss in Boots in his greatest adventure yet as he returns to the village of Del Mar," according to Universal.
Swings Over Del Mar will be the land's waveswinger, while food will be available in Comidas y Leche and the Tienda de Dulces (literally, sweet shop in Spanish.) Merch will be on sale in Mercado de Perrito.
Water features will abound in this Minions-themed land, which will include the Bello Bay Cruise rapids ride as well as the Bello Bay Golf Cart Derby ride. Names are pretty straightforward here with the Bello Bay Boutique shop and Bello Bay Bites snack bar.
This is where you will find the park's second roller coaster, Jurassic World: Cretaceous Coaster, A Mack Rides Youngstar.
"The curious Ankylosaurus, Bumpy, has gone missing, so families will zoom through twists, turns, peaks and valleys on Jurassic World: Cretaceous Coaster to help find her," Universal said of the coaster, which is the same model as Flight of the Hippogriff at Universal Studios Hollywood.
Other rides in the land will include Mr. DNA’s Double Helix Spin, the Pteranodrop - a junior drop tower, the and the Jurassic World Lookout Towers and Paddock Play playground. Fuel up at the Jurassic World Canteen and get your dino drip at the Jurassic World Outfitters.
Rides here will include Jellyfish Fields Jamboree, where "kids and their families hop aboard their very own Jelly Angler to bounce around with the one and only SpongeBob SquarePants," Universal said. Other rides will include Barnacle Bus, Bobbing Barrels (with "water cannons for families to blast water at each other as they spin around"), and Mrs. Puff’s Boating School.
Goofy Goober’s will offer "chicken sandwiches, salads, hot dogs and sky-high sundaes," and Bikini Bottom merch will be on sale at the Barg’N-Mart.
All lands also will feature character meet and greets.
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Are they expecting lots of families to travel across the country for this? I think they're building this as a regional park in a growing area of the country (especially for families). I think they're expecting more people to drive to this destination than fly. I could see something like Nashville or Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill being a next destination (growing, affluent, lots of families with kids, no other amusement parks nearby). With all that said, if my kids were still little they would absolutely want us to fly to Texas for this.
@NCPete - I noted this when Universal previous revealed details about this park, but a number of solid sources have indicated that local officials are being extremely restrictive on what Universal can do with this park including limiting park hours, restricting the heights of attractions, prohibiting fireworks/nighttime shows, and a hard-to-believe restriction on indoor dark rides. From the sounds of it, this park was only granted approval because Universal agreed with local officials to NOT make it a destination park. These additional details appear to play support this idea that this park is being designed and targeted strictly for the local market.
They have a Bikini Bottom land but no Krusty Krab??
Agree with other commenters that this whole project feels underwhelming. Also, building a park in the Dallas area, where it gets incredibly hot in the summer, but there are no indoor dark rides, feels like a huge mistake. I hope they have a lot of shade.
I'm counting 17 attractions, of which 13 appear to be actual rides. However, aside from potentially Happily Ogre After, we're looking almost entirely at flat rides overlaid with IP rather than creative immersive experiences. I'm still very much getting the Sesame Place vibe from what we're seeing, though this park should be about twice the size of that property and lacks the waterpark component.
For families with elementary-age kids, I think this is going to be enormously successful. While adults probably wouldn't need more than a couple hours here, I could easily see it keeping kids occupied for a half day to three-fourths of a day depending on the crowd level. To me, the big risk would come if it is marketed as a Universal resort simply because that carries much higher expectations. Given that five of the seven themed areas are based on DreamWorks properties, it seems as if it might have been a safer bet to name the park after that instead. I guess we'll see in the months ahead how Universal sells this one.
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I’m sure this park will have a lot of appeal for the locals and it’s probably gotten way more press coverage than other similar parks had received. But admittedly I have to say that it looks like a bit of an underwhelming lineup so far and there’s nothing this offers that makes me feel like I should travel across the country to experience. And I can’t help but feel like a bunch of families will feel the same way.