November 26th - Theme Park News in a Nutshell

 This week's Theme Park News:

- World of Frozen is opening to the public on Monday at Hong Kong Disneyland, after soft openings last week.

- Universal Studios Florida have installed a new sign for their upcoming DreamWorks land, that will debut sometime in 2024.

- High winds in Southern California appear to have contributed to an incident where a light post collapsed in Town Square on Main Street USA at Disneyland that left three people injured. One woman with an apparent head injury was taken to a local hospital, while two others were treated at the scene.

- Universal Orlando brought back its annual holiday celebrations on Friday, including Grinchmas, Christmas in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and its Macy's holiday parade balloons.

- Dinosaurs are taking over at Legoland California. The Carlsbad theme park announced that Dino Valley will be taking over the current Explorer Island land next year. This will replace the two recently closed rides Safari Trek and Fairy Tale Brook. They will be replaced by two newly Dino themed rides in Duplo Little Dino Trail and Explorer River Quest. The land also will include the current Coastersaurus roller coaster as well as the Dino Dig.

- The annual TEA Thea award winners were announced this week, with SeaWorld Yas Island, Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind at Epcot and experimental restaurant Eatrenalin at Europa-Park being among the honorees.

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And you can find our weekly podcast about theme park news called Nuts About Theme Parks, on all good Podcasting platforms.

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Novemeber 19th - Theme Park News in a Nutshell

This week's Theme Park News:

- Hong Kong Disneyland hosted a media preview for its world of Frozen land. It also open the land for soft opening on Friday

- Iaapa expo kicked off in Orlando this week an as rumoured Intamin and Six Flags Qiddiya unveiled the new themed coaster train for the record breaking Falcons Flight roller coaster.

- Also Zamperla and Cedar Point revealed the Top Thrill 2 train

- Chance rides showed of its trains for the Hot Wheels Twin Mill Racer coaster coming to the Mattel Adventure park currently under construction in Arizona

- Intamin also showed off some new ride concepts including a hub less observation wheel and a dome theatre ride which has motion based vehicles under a 360 dome theatre

- They also had a hype video showing 12 seater rotating coaster trains called “MDC 12 Seater” which is rumoured to be being used for Universal Studios Hollywood’s upcoming Fast and the Furious coaster.

- They also so showed a sneak peak of them working with Sally Corp on some dark ride coaster hybrids

- Sally dark rides also showed off animatronics for SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival Ride a new dark they are building for CircusCircus Adventuredome in Las Vegas

-In a quarterly earnings report from Genting the company they mention that the new Minion Land coming to Universal Studios Singapore, as well as the new Singapore Oceanarium just outside the park won’t be ready to soft open until early 2025.

There’s also been some alleged leaked plans about how A Super Nintendo World could be added to the park, but take that with a grain of salt 

You can watch our News in a Nutshell videos on YouTube or TikTok, and catch up with us on X, Instagram or Threads.

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And you can find our weekly podcast about theme park news called Nuts About Theme Parks, on all good Podcasting platforms.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nutsaboutthemeparks

November 12th - Theme Park News in a Nutshell

 This week's Theme Park News: 

• Universal Orlando's hotel partner - Loews Hotels - accidentally posted the website for the one of resort's new South Campus hotels. The Stella Nova and Terra Luna Resorts will stand alongside the entrance to Universal Orlando's new Epic Universe theme park. Universal Stella Nova Resort, opening January 21, 2025.

• SeaWorld San Diego has announced the name for its new emperor penguin chick, Pearl.

• Disneyland has put in a ban on large pin boards inside the parks in an effort to stop professional pin traders from working in the parks.

• Disneyland has also announced that Fantasmic will return to the Rivers of America at on May 24, 2024.

• Legoland owner Merlin Entertainments is showing off the first new attraction in its upcoming Legoland Shanghai theme park, which is a 36,000-brick miniland model of the town where the park is being built.

• Legoland Florida has announced an installation of Lego Ferrari Build and Race in spring 2024. And next fall, Legoland Florida will open a Sea Life aquarium attraction at the resort.

You can watch our News in a Nutshell videos on YouTube or TikTok, and catch up with us on X, Instagram or Threads.

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And you can find our weekly podcast about theme park news called Nuts About Theme Parks, on all good Podcasting platforms.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nutsaboutthemeparks

November 5th - Theme Park News In a Nutshell

 This Week's Theme Park News:

• Two of America's biggest amusement park companies are coming together, Cedar Fair and Six Flags announced this week. The combined company, worth more than $3.5 billion, will boast 27 amusement parks, 15 water parks and nine resort properties in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Cedar Fair CEO Richard Zimmerman will be president and CEO of the combined company with Selim Bassoul, the current president and CEO of Six Flags, will become executive chairman. A merger of equals, they have self dubbed this.

• Six Flags Magic Mountain announced the official ground breaking for its new solar carport. When complete, the 12.37-megawatt solar array and energy storage system will offset 100% of the park's energy usage

• Six Flags Fiesta Texas and Six Flags Over Georgia each are opening Kid Flash Cosmic Coaster - the first installations of the "P'Sghetti Bowl" single-rail racing coaster from Skyline Attractions.

• SeaWorld San Diego will be breaking ground for its new 2024 attraction, Jewels of the Sea: A Jellyfish Experience

• WDW shared a promo video this week of Epcot’s upcoming nighttime show luminous the symphony of us which feature a new original song called Heartbeat Symphony.

• According to a Disney Executive in charge of Disney’s live entertainment, parades and nighttime spectaculars, “Drones are the next thing” we should expect to see coming to the Disney park’s after dark shows. During a panel discussion about the new season of “Behind the Attractions” coming to Disney+ next week, Steven Davidson mentioned Drones, saying “They’re kind of a new thing. We’re doing a lot of work in that. So all I’m going to say is, ‘There’s more to come.’”

• The Tokyo Disney Resort has reported increased attendance at their properties thus far for the first six months of the Oriental Land Company’s fiscal year. This represents a nearly 40% increase over the same term from the previous year for a total of 12.5 million visitors, with 1.63 million of them being international guests visiting from countries outside of Japan

• New pictures taken on site at the future Six Flags Qiddiya construction site can be found over at ThemeparX this week. This includes current shots of the massive Falcon’s Flight roller coaster. And we might be about to see roller coaster trains for this coaster at the upcoming Iaapa expo, if rumours are to be revealed 

You can watch our News in a Nutshell videos on YouTube or TikTok, and catch up with us on X, Instagram or Threads.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThemeParkNut

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themeparknutinsta

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@themeparknutinsta

X: https://twitter.com/ThemeParkNut

And you can find our weekly podcast about theme park news called Nuts About Theme Parks, on all good Podcasting platforms.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nutsaboutthemeparks