The latest addition to Walt Disney World's already-extensive array of attractions, Pandora is the theme park's new segment, dappled with dazzling nighttime light shows, bioluminescent plants and floating mountains.
Surely, such a complex and intricate project requires an overwhelming amount of human labor, capital and creativity, hence inducing one Wall Street Analyst to estimate the cost of such an endeavor to be $500 million. The question is, will this figure help compensate for Disney's stagnating television business and counter its rival, Universal Studios?
The opening of Pandora would not only help revive Disney's slowly waning profits, but it would also allow for the employment of up to 1,500 people in addition to the 5,000 people Animal Kingdom already staffs. Additionally, the implementation of unique dining options including the Satu'li Canteen, a 520-seat fast food location and Pongu, a place offering alcoholic beverages, will expand the market to attract older visitors as well as large families, erasing the "child-only" tag that often is attached to the Disney brand.
On the other hand, Universal Studios' "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" which opened in 2010, has been outperforming Disney's Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. With life-like castles including Hogwarts, cobble-stoned villages such as Hogsmeade and celebrated products like Butterbeer, The Wizarding World has been more successful than Disney's recent undertakings.
Part of the problem lies in the themes themselves. Many of Disney's past projects have not been able to garner or never even had a large existing fan base like the one Harry Potter does. Even though Avatar is the highest grossing Hollywood film of all time, its fans still do not display the same level of loyalty and obsession as Harry Potter's do, partly because it is only an isolated movie with sequels still in the works while the latter has been a popular franchise for years. Moreover, director James Cameron speculates that the next four sequels will take at least the next eight years of his life, implying that Pandora would have to generate enough hype and attention to not only hold itself up for the next decade or so, but also the whole notion of Avatar itself.
That being said, with the immense amount of resources including large amounts of steel, capital and labor invested into the building of Pandora, both foreign investors and potential visitors alike have made it very clear that the attraction has caught their attention- at least for now. Pandora can also serve as a complementary experience that piques visitors' interest in the other dying parks too. If not, it can at least serve as a source of revenue from which to extract funds that can be invested into improving these other parks.
Whether Pandora can outdo Universal Studios, only time will tell: however, in order to be successful, the excitement surrounding the Avatar franchise as a whole must be kept alive, else Pandora can remain only a short-lived success story.
