Making matters worse, Mario Kart has been branded "blatantly fatphobic" because it can't accommodate riders with more than 40-inch waists which reportedly rules out the average American male. Its version of Super Nintendo World only has the Mario Kart ride so it is even smaller than its counterpart in Japan. It came at just the right time as the Global Attraction Attendance Report reveals that the park attracted an estimated 8.4 million visitors last year, 8.2% fewer than in 2019. Universal benefited from the build-up to the first Mario movie as it opened a Super Nintendo World at its park in Hollywood in February, two months before the premiere of the film. Chris Pratt, who voices Mario in the animated movie, recently told Entertainment Tonight that news about a sequel should be coming "soon" and that too should put even more of a spring in Mario's step. Movie which has become the highest-grossing film of the year with $1.3 billion of takings. Secondly, Mario's popularity is on a high thanks to the success of The Super Mario Bros. ![]() There are two reasons for this heavy investment.įirstly, NBCUniversal's theme park division is one of the media giant's biggest cash cows and generated a record $2.7 billion of adjusted earnings on $7.5 billion of revenue in 2022. ![]() In 2025 another Super Mario World is expected to open at Universal's new Epic Universe park in Orlando and it is also being developed for Universal Studios Singapore. The expansion is set to open next year and, according to the Global Attraction Attendance Report, it will increase the size of Super Nintendo World by 70%. That may change soon as Universal is in the process of adding the first ever Donkey Kong-themed area to Super Nintendo World. There's nowhere to sit and enjoy the surroundings."Īnother described it as "super tiny and so in the time we left to do other things they'd stopped letting people in without timed tickets so we couldn't get back in to get the merch we wanted." Similar complaints came from others including one who said "it's just always crowded and packed no matter what time I go." The walkways were tiny and mostly taken up by queues for the interactive games, restaurants, or meet and greets." He added that "the land is small, cramped and very hectic. One visitor wrote on Twitter that "the USJ land is very cramped even with 2 levels. However, the diminutive size of Mario's world could curb that as it has been beset with criticisms for being cramped. It should mean that USJ gets another boost in attendance this year and finally surpasses its pre-pandemic high. Japan finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel in March when it scrapped the need for people to wear masks and its final COVID-related border controls followed suit one month later. It's a different story abroad where both of Disney's parks in Paris and one of Universal's outposts in Orlando had higher attendance than in 2019. ![]() ![]() In the end, COVID proved to be too great a challenge, even for Mario.Ĭomparison of theme park attendance in Japan Caroline Reid using FlourishĪccording to the Global Attraction Attendance Report, none of the 20 most-visited parks in the Asia-Pacific region had higher attendance last year than in 2019 so USJ wasn't lagging behind local rivals. However, once the park attendance limits were dropped, there was no reason why USJ couldn't have beaten its 2017 record by relying on internal tourism alone. Even when those measures were dropped, travelers still had to submit proof of a COVID vaccination or negative test results. Until October last year, international tourists could only visit the country with a visa and needed to travel on a tour group with daily arrivals capped at 20,000 people. As a result of this, internal travel was down sharply on the level before the pandemic and there were far fewer incoming international tourists due to strict border control processes. Japan was one of the last major markets to exit the pandemic and safety measures were still widespread across the country last year. by PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty ImagesĪlthough Mario gave USJ's attendance a bounce, it was still down on 2019 and its 2017 record. Super Nintendo World has been criticised for its small footprint (Photo by Philip FONG / AFP) (Photo.
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