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The NBA Experience

In the end Disney doesn't care if the NBA Experience succeeds or not. They get their money no mater what without lifting a finger.
I get what you mean but, that seems a bit extreme. You want your tenants to do well so they stay, you don't have to look for a replacement, and having stable tenants allowed you to keep the rent higher (supply/demand). If NBA did well, it could attract more people to the area, bringing in more money for Disney and its tenants. Additionally, if it's terrible, Disney may take the "blame" for low quality.

In short: Disney cares.
 
I get what you mean but, that seems a bit extreme. You want your tenants to do well so they stay, you don't have to look for a replacement, and having stable tenants allowed you to keep the rent higher (supply/demand). If NBA did well, it could attract more people to the area, bringing in more money for Disney and its tenants. Additionally, if it's terrible, Disney may take the "blame" for low quality.

In short: Disney cares.
Remember Spinkels had to remove the Mickey head shaped decor from their shop?
Sprinkles in Disney Springs asked to remove Mickey Head
If Disney cared about them doing well they wouldn't ask that of a small cupcake shop, right?
Sure Disney will tell Morimoto not to serve Hepatitis with their egg-rolls.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article222105835.html
And I'm sure they will tell their tenants to keep their shops clean and in order. But they don't care about anything else or have any influence for that matter. Only thing is they promote Disney Springs, drop in some entertainment and maintain the area and pick up the check.
Disney doesn't get a cut of the profit. They get their steady payments and it's a lot.
 
Remember Spinkels had to remove the Mickey head shaped decor from their shop?
Sprinkles in Disney Springs asked to remove Mickey Head
If Disney cared about them doing well they wouldn't ask that of a small cupcake shop, right?
I don't agree.

It would be like if a park guest was drawing on the walls... You tell the guest to knock it off in the most polite way possible, knowing that the guest experience may be hindered.

As much as you want them to have a good time, tenants and guests still have to follow the rules.

Disney doesn't get a cut of the profit. They get their steady payments and it's a lot.
I never said or suggested this. They get their money as rent payment from tenants. You want to keep tenants. You also want high demand for your spots so you can raise rent.

Oviedo Mall has store spaces with no tenants (opportunity loss). Some of their tenants are doing poorly and leave. They have to lower rent to keep them from leaving. The management at Oviedo Mall cares how their tenants are doing. It's the same business model.
 
Video games are a much bigger industry than the NBA. Bar Arcades are on the rise again and esports are becoming huge. Throw in there is a ton of VR innovation that isn't even that expensive now. It would have been the perfect time to update Disney Quest. I dunno maybe they will just build an Esports arena in the sports complex if they haven't had stuff there already. I dunno going for the NBA thing instead just seems like a missed opportunity.
 
Video games are a much bigger industry than the NBA. Bar Arcades are on the rise again and esports are becoming huge. Throw in there is a ton of VR innovation that isn't even that expensive now. It would have been the perfect time to update Disney Quest. I dunno maybe they will just build an Esports arena in the sports complex if they haven't had stuff there already.
Whose to say if this fail, Disney couldn’t just pivot to E-Sports in this space? Besides, the NBA is the second most popular sport in the world right now, behind Soccer.
 
Whose to say if this fail, Disney couldn’t just pivot to E-Sports in this space? Besides, the NBA is the second most popular sport in the world right now, behind Soccer.
Would love an E-sports spot here.
 
GMA:


Walkthrough:


Opening festivities:






Considering the vast majority of people in the world aren't actually any good at basketball, I think that will be where this venue has issues, especially at a $34 pricepoint, rather than the NBA not being popular, which just isn't true. At worst though, it looks like the interior is pretty nice and something that Disney could take and turn into an ESPN Zone type of place if this end up failing.
 
ESPN was live from The NBA Experience on multiple NBA focused shows yesterday so I wonder if that was a one time thing or if ESPN will use the space to their advantage in the future.

 
Alright, so like I said, I went here last night at my sister's request. I may have stated this before in this thread, but she plays AAU basketball, plays the NBA 2K games and likes both the NBA and WNBA (WNBA is represented here), so she is squarely in their target demo. As am I. I'm a big Celtics fan and have been for about 15 years since I really started liking sports.

So we bought our tickets, signed our lives away (they make you sign a waiver since there's a lot of running and jumping going on) and entered. As we entered we were told that we could come and go as we pleased. So if we got hungry or wanted to take a break, we could leave and then come back (quick note: they sell NO food or drink inside the venue). It was 6PM when we entered. I'd be being generous if I said that the venue was lightly crowded when we got there and moderately crowded when we left later on at night around 9:30 (keep in mind, yesterday was a Tuesday).

The first thing we did was personalize our tickets to our skill set. You have the choice of either Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. I picked Beginner, my sister picked Advanced. This affects how easy/hard certain things will be for you throughout the experience. Then we took our picture with some of the replica NBA Finals trophies, locked at the mock locker room area etc. All of that stuff has interactivity elements throughout it. Those things were more like exhibits though, so we moved on to the real stuff. I think it'll be simpler and more easy to read if I break each individual thing down below and give my opinion rather than lumping it together.

1st Floor
Combine - As the name suggests, this simulates a draft combine. There's three components to this. Measuring your wingspan, measuring your standing jump (with extended arm), and your shot. You pick a basketball (they have different size basketballs for kids and adults) and you get a practice shot and then 5 that count towards your score. After shooting, there's a machine that shoots the ball back to you so you don't have to chase it down. By the end it shows you how you did in every category. We did this about 4 times as my sister and I were competitive on the shooting portion and there was either no line or there was open lanes, so we could keep going again.

Film - This is more of a laid back area. There's two 7-minute films in this area, made by ESPN Films, although there's no seating inside. One of them was basically an NBA promo video (although done in a clever way) and another was a much more ESPN 30 for 30 style Film about NBA Player Jrue Holiday and his wife, who got a brain tumor mid-pregnancy.

2nd Floor
Shoot! - This area was easily one of the most popular. I did it many times and my sister did it way more than me. There wasn't a line much until it got later, but even then, this is a quick, 15 second basketball exercise. Basically you stand on the logo of your favorite team that you picked and then when the CM says go, the clock starts and the goal is to go through the course and get to all five spots on the floor within the 15 seconds while making as many shots as possible. This is one of the areas that goes by player level you selected earlier (I selected Beginner as I said, but changed to Intermediate for this specific activity.

Dribble - This was the most challenging for me and also requires the most actual basketball skill out of all the activities. Basically, you pick up a basketball and fallow what the guy on screen is doing. There's a camera that is tracking to see if you are doing it correctly or not. There's 5 total levels, I made it to level 4 before I gave up as you have to dribble between your legs on that level. That wasn't happening. (although my sister managed to complete the whole thing on a harder skill level than me :lol:)

Dunk - Right next door to dribble is Dunk. It's fairly straight forward. You tap the card they gave you upon entry to start the clock and you get 60 seconds to do whatever. You also can move the hoop up and down anywhere between 7' and 10'. There are many cameras recording and taking pictures of you in here that go onto your card.

Slingshot! - This was kind of more arcade-ish, but still fun. You use a dodgeball to try and slingshot into the many hoops around you. Highest score at the end wins. If there wasn't a line or even if there was but others left and there was still enough open slingshots to where you could stay, they would let you (which was most of the time). This one was pretty popular too as the entire family could easily participate in this.

Replay - This was sort of a unique thing as a fan of the game. Basically you watch film of a play and determine if the call that was made was correct or not. They give you four different angles to look at the play from and then they tell you if you got it right or wrong. We did it twice and it was different things that we were "reviewing" both times. I realize this is probably boring for most people.

Trivia - Self explanatory. NBA and WNBA trivia. Highest score at the end wins.

Arcade - There was a mini-arcade that had two versions of the Pop-a-shot arcade game along with multiple NBA video games. Pop-a-shot gets addicting when you can just do it over and over again, so we did this a decent amount.

Draft - There's a photo op where you can get your picture with a wax version of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, drafting you as the #1 pick.
----------------
So that was my time there. We spent about 3.5 hours there and we were TIRED by the end. The place definitely can wear you out. I definitely had a good time and I know my sister had a good time... but the other side of the coin is my mom was there too and there was things she didn't do like Shoot!, Dribble, and Dunk because of some actual basketball skill being required or simply just the over-exertion.

Again when we walked out, the store was very crowded like I said last week, but the inside wasn't all that busy. I do wonder what it's like on a weekend. The crowd there was definitely not your typical "Disney" crowd. There was a lot of people who actually seemed to know how to play who were there and it's a very active environment, which really is going to keep the scooter and wheelchair crowd out i'm guessing. That's actually what the waiver is for, signing that you're in good physical shape to do it and basically that you won't sue.

I just see this as a very limiting experience. I personally walked out having a good time, yes, but I also walked out worried for it's long-term sustainability. My mom has mentioned multiple times that they should create a form of annual pass for this place and I agree. My sister would lover to pay a little more to be able to go back all year and in turn they would get my mom and probably me too.

 
Alright, so like I said, I went here last night at my sister's request. I may have stated this before in this thread, but she plays AAU basketball, plays the NBA 2K games and likes both the NBA and WNBA (WNBA is represented here), so she is squarely in their target demo. As am I. I'm a big Celtics fan and have been for about 15 years since I really started liking sports.

So we bought our tickets, signed our lives away (they make you sign a waiver since there's a lot of running and jumping going on) and entered. As we entered we were told that we could come and go as we pleased. So if we got hungry or wanted to take a break, we could leave and then come back (quick note: they sell NO food or drink inside the venue). It was 6PM when we entered. I'd be being generous if I said that the venue was lightly crowded when we got there and moderately crowded when we left later on at night around 9:30 (keep in mind, yesterday was a Tuesday).

The first thing we did was personalize our tickets to our skill set. You have the choice of either Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. I picked Beginner, my sister picked Advanced. This affects how easy/hard certain things will be for you throughout the experience. Then we took our picture with some of the replica NBA Finals trophies, locked at the mock locker room area etc. All of that stuff has interactivity elements throughout it. Those things were more like exhibits though, so we moved on to the real stuff. I think it'll be simpler and more easy to read if I break each individual thing down below and give my opinion rather than lumping it together.

1st Floor
Combine - As the name suggests, this simulates a draft combine. There's three components to this. Measuring your wingspan, measuring your standing jump (with extended arm), and your shot. You pick a basketball (they have different size basketballs for kids and adults) and you get a practice shot and then 5 that count towards your score. After shooting, there's a machine that shoots the ball back to you so you don't have to chase it down. By the end it shows you how you did in every category. We did this about 4 times as my sister and I were competitive on the shooting portion and there was either no line or there was open lanes, so we could keep going again.

Film - This is more of a laid back area. There's two 7-minute films in this area, made by ESPN Films, although there's no seating inside. One of them was basically an NBA promo video (although done in a clever way) and another was a much more ESPN 30 for 30 style Film about NBA Player Jrue Holiday and his wife, who got a brain tumor mid-pregnancy.

2nd Floor
Shoot! - This area was easily one of the most popular. I did it many times and my sister did it way more than me. There wasn't a line much until it got later, but even then, this is a quick, 15 second basketball exercise. Basically you stand on the logo of your favorite team that you picked and then when the CM says go, the clock starts and the goal is to go through the course and get to all five spots on the floor within the 15 seconds while making as many shots as possible. This is one of the areas that goes by player level you selected earlier (I selected Beginner as I said, but changed to Intermediate for this specific activity.

Dribble - This was the most challenging for me. Basically, you pick up a basketball and fallow what the guy on screen is doing. There's a camera that is tracking to see if you are doing it correctly or not. There's 5 total levels, I made it to level 4 before I gave up as you have to dribble between your legs on that level. That wasn't happening. (although my sister managed to complete the whole thing on a harder skill level than me :lol:)

Dunk - Right next door to dribble is Dunk. It's fairly straight forward. You tap the card they gave you upon entry to start the clock and you get 60 seconds to do whatever. You also can move the hoop up and down anywhere between 7' and 10'. There are many cameras recording and taking pictures of you in here that go onto your card.

Slingshot! - This was kind of more arcade-ish, but still fun. You use a dodgeball to try and slingshot into the many hoops around you. Highest score at the end wins. If there wasn't a line or even if there was but others left and there was still enough open slingshots to where you could stay, they would let you (which was most of the time). This one was pretty popular too as the entire family could easily participate in this.

Replay - This was sort of a unique thing as a fan of the game. Basically you watch film of a play and determine if the call that was made was correct or not. They give you four different angles to look at the play from and then they tell you if you got it right or wrong. We did it twice and it was different things that we were "reviewing" both times. I realize this is probably boring for most people.

Trivia - Self explanatory. NBA and WNBA trivia. Highest score at the end wins.

Arcade - There was a mini-arcade that had two versions of the Pop-a-shot arcade game along with multiple NBA video games. Pop-a-shot gets addicting when you can just do it over and over again, so we did this a decent amount.

Draft - There's a photo op where you can get your picture with a wax version of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, drafting you as the #1 pick.
----------------
So that was my time there. We spent about 3.5 hours there and we were TIRED by the end. The place definitely can wear you out. I definitely had a good time and I know my sister had a good time... but the other side of the coin is my mom was there too and there was things she didn't do like Shoot!, Dribble, and Dunk because of some actual basketball skill being required or simply just the over-exertion.

Again when we walked out, the store was very crowded like I said last week, but the inside wasn't all that busy. I do wonder what it's like on a weekend. The crowd there was definitely not your typical "Disney" crowd. There was a lot of people who actually seemed to know how to play who were there and it's a very active environment, which really is going to keep the scooter and wheelchair crowd out i'm guessing. That's actually what the waiver is for, signing that you're in good physical shape to do it and basically that you won't sue.

I just see this as a very limiting experience. I personally walked out having a good time, yes, but I also walked out worried for it's long-term sustainability. My mom has mentioned multiple times that they should create a form of annual pass for this place and I agree. My sister would lover to pay a little more to be able to go back all year and in turn they would get my mom and probably me too.

Nice review.
 
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