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Jurassic World VelociCoaster Construction Thread (Opening June 10)
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- Feb 15, 2012
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Aren’t ride budgets usually just guessed by experts, same as yearly visitor counts, and aren’t always verifiable?
I mean sometimes press releases or CEOs in interviews actually say amounts, but hasn't that been rare lately.
I mean sometimes press releases or CEOs in interviews actually say amounts, but hasn't that been rare lately.
It would appear that the first reporting of the budget for Hagrid came from a CNBC article, so maybe they had some info given to them by Uni themselves or they're pulling the number out of thin air.
10-hour wait: New $300 million Harry Potter coaster opens at Universal in Orlando to massive crowds
EDIT: Found the CNBC article through a Fox Business article which gave CNBC credit for the $300 million number.
Than the question is: does this include removing Dueling Dragons (2 coasters) and grading the land. Does that also include the rockwork that is moved over to Velocicoaster?
Universal usually doesn't include demolition of previous attractions in new project budgets. But land prep is.
In the grand scheme of projects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, demolition is negligible unless it involves having to relocate something like "Costuming" into a new state of the art facility like Disney had to do for TSL.
That’s not the first article that stated the number. Amazing how facts are sometimes born though.
So, you're saying that it is Mad Dog's fault. Seems appropriate. 0
My expectation is that either Tron or 7DMT are the most expensive coasters built. Hagrid does have a fair amount of rockwork and AA's, though. Still, I'd argue that, pound for pound, Hagrid's provides a far more satisfying ride experience.
- Jul 13, 2018
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Guardians is almost 500 million.
So is Tron. But there's a whole different conversation to be had about how Disney bundles many project budgets together, which is partly how their budgets appear to be so outrageous. Part of it is just wasteful spending, but for TRON for example, work on the Tomorrowland speedway track shortening, the tomorrowland paint job refresh, the 3-year refurbishment of the WDW Railroad, filling in and moving where a retention pond is located, building new berms, etc. All of that is built into the Tron budget. Universal counts things like that separately.
Yes, that's why I questioned it. The source was only 'guessing' and the fact basis of that number was thus questionable. The 300 million figure became an echo of a person's guess and took on a life of it's own by passing through a number of different news organizations. What's known as 'lazy journalism'. It's unfortunate that today's journalists seem to have abandoned the old time journalistic practice of not reporting something unless they had two solid sources.So, you're saying that it is Mad Dog's fault. Seems appropriate. 0
Seeing how “facts” are born in journalism for the theme park world should be a chilling reminder of how the “news” operates for EVERYTHING. And that’s kind of alarming. But I digress.
- Jul 13, 2018
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Agreed, and it also seems to come from not knowing anything about theme parks. If other sources had done their research, they could have compared the budget of the ride to, say, the budget of the individual land, similar rides, or other rides Universal had recently built. Then they would have caught, like some of us did, that 300 mil sounded like too high of a number.
National media journalists writing about theme parks don't have a very good history, mostly because they don't have much of a background, except the Orlando Sentinel writers and other local Orlando publications. . Therefore the stories from national news media generally are not as accurate, or knowledgeable, as stories from IU or Theme Park Stop in the case of Universal Park news.............on Alicia's @Alicia point, it's quite true. In my younger days I had a position where I did thousands of media interviews. Except for the 'regular' government beat reporters, I had to school the writers or interviewers on the subject matter (usually I would give them a detailed description in writing on the story, and tell them they were free to use it as their own. Almost a press release of sorts), since generally they had no idea or knowledge of what they were reporting on. I found that was the best way to get a solid story reported, but it required a lot of extra work on my part. That's a major reason I have such an aversion to social media news stories, especially twitter reporting , of government oriented news, since these people generally don't have any real inside government sources. Short of the Washington Post & NY Times, there aren't many journalists that really know what they're reporting about. It all becomes a Twitter echo chamber.
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Sometimes(most of the time) media reporting on the parks is quite the cluster____. What I love is that Fox Business gives credit to CNBC, and CNBC just presents the number as fact with no mention of where it comes from. Whatever, at least when they call it a roller coaster they are correct. They figure if they call everything a roller coaster, eventually they'll be right about something.
To put into perspective, Everest cost around $100Mil thanks to all the rockwork. A "normal" coaster with no theming whatsoever costs less than half of that. Velocicoaster has theming, but not at the level of Everest in terms of complexity... which would put it at a much lower price tag. I think it would be safe to assume we're looking at an $70-80 mil project.
Don’t forget about inflation since Everest. Also, we counting the redone bypass bridge and new courtyard area with this project?
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