Yesterday, Chairman and CEO of Universal Parks & Resorts Tom Williams revealed some new information about Universal Japan’s Super Nintendo World during Comcast’s 2019 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference. Williams spoke with Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Jessica Jean Reif Cohen about the matter, revealing that Super Nintendo World is “a whole new separate area of the park. It’s got food. It’s got merchandise. The first phase will have two rides, Super Mario Kart Ride and as well as Yoshi’s Adventures. Yoshi is one of the other Nintendo characters. There will be two rides. The whole land is interactive. And you are going to have a wristband that’s got the big red Mario symbol on it”.
Williams elaborated more on the wristband, saying that “the wristband is super cool. It’s all magnetic. You slap it at your wrist and it just snaps on and it won’t come off. And that allows you to, on an interactive basis throughout the entire land which is built on three different levels. It’s got all the popular Bowser’s deal and Princess Peach’s Castle and all the different key elements. And you will be able to go up and keep score and play with the various games and that also translates to a score keeping capability, if you choose to do so within the rides and it actually interfaces back with your game console. So you can build on it and come back again and really got everything going for it”.
This is for Japan. Rumors say Hollywood is only getting Mario Kart and Orlando will have the same rides as Japan + the Donkey Kong area when it opens with the new Epic Universe park that was announced. Japan has the space for Donkey Kong but it’s being kept empty for future expansion. Possibly Pokémon.
“. . .you will be able to go up and keep score and play with the various games and that also translates to a score keeping capability, if you choose to do so within the rides and it actually interfaces back with your game console.”
These rides will have some sort of compatibility with (presumably) your Switch? Now you’ve gotten me veeeeeery curious…