www.themeparkinsider.com: That's the indoor amusement park that has been under construction in Glendale, Ariz. There are also plans for a second installation in the Kansas City area. But the initial Mattel Adventure Park has missed multiple expected openings since its announcement, and the entire resort project surrounding it has become, well, a topic of conversation in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
3 comments:
It's always fun to see a new name enter the theme park space, especially in the United States where new theme park development is really dominated by the big 3 (Disney, Universal, and Cedar Fair). I had heard about the Mattel Adventure Park project, and as someone who's been a fan of many an adventurous project that never materialized, I was as suspicious as I was excited. Turns out, my intuition has been honed over many years of disappointment. Theme Parks, like all live entertainment, are a wildly tough business, and if Mattel stall out despite hundreds of millions of dollars, it doesn't seem like good news for indie projects. Not that this was the only problem with Evermore Park, but the inherent difficulty of the business certainly was one of them that was not *helped* exactly by Ken Bretschneider's... interesting investments.*
I also have a somewhat unique perspective on this park, though not this specific location, as a Kansas Citian. As a general curmudgeon who dislikes loud noises and fun things (kidding, mostly (-; ), I tend to be very suspicious of huge developments in KC -- the Kansas City Royals, who suck, are opening a stadium 10 minutes from my house, and I simply have never recovered from that news. However, as a theme park fan and person somewhat in favor of drawing whatever economic value we can out of our small, centrally-located city, a brand spanking new theme park from a very popular IP is good news, probably. Hopefully? If it ever opens, that is, which the news from this article does not inspire confidence in.
* Be forewarned that I will bring up Evermore at every opportunity.
It is sad to hear how many delays are happening with this project. I love the idea of a Mattel theme park, with the majority of franchise-based theme parks revolving around Disney and Universal, the openings of different brands is fun to imagine. I really hope that this park ends up being fully developed and has success despite the complicated process. It reminds me of smaller theme parks that people love going to–Lego Land and the Peppa Pig theme parks in Florida are not only popular with the intended audience (kids), but also with teens and some adults (me, for example). I think the Mattel park would also appeal to people older than the intended audience, I think of all the doll collectors and the people who resonated so much with the Barbie movie. I really hope this project continues to advance, I can only think of how popular it has the potential to be. If not in Kansas, then maybe in California or Florida where many theme parks are already so popular.
Its really interesting to me how much this project has struggled to get off of the ground. With a company like mattel, with the seemingly infinite piles of cash generated by franchises such as barbie, monster high and hot wheels, one would think it would be no trouble to fund and develop a theme park in a timely manner. After doing further research, it appears that when the project was initially announced the opening date was in 2022, then pushed to 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 and now 2027. While massive construction projects like this can often take longer than expected, these kinds of delays with no clarity on the source other than "construction taking longer than expected" it makes it difficult to have faith that this enterprise will ever be completed. Nevertheless, mattel still maintains a website for these parks, with the only information being that they are "coming soon"
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