Originally, the Orlando park was meant to open in 2023, but the coronavirus pandemic obviously hampered construction, pushing its opening date to 2024 before being delayed indefinitely. Universal itself told CNBC very recently that construction has managed to resume but, while it didn’t provide a new opening date, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings has said that Universal has advised him to expect the park to not open until early 2025.
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Universal added that it will likely take several months for the construction efforts to really pick up, as it needs time to re-hire and reassemble staff, including vendors and contractors. There’s also the fact that the Nintendo attraction isn’t the only thing that it’s building. It will be a part of Universal’s Epic Universe theme park, which is allegedly expected to also contain a smaller version of the planned Super Nintendo World for Hollywood.
The Hollywood version of the park is itself believed to be smaller than the one in Japan, which should mean that will open sooner than Orlando’s but also likely means it won’t feature all of the attractions and no doubt prompt die-hard fans to still make plans to fly to Japan for the original park, especially since it will eventually receive a new expansion based on the Donkey Kong series. Another Nintendo park has also resumed construction in southern California but that currently has no expected opening date.
All in all, the coronavirus pandemic (which is still ongoing) has severely hampered Universal and Nintendo’s plans. The Japan park was originally meant to coincide with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, but the event wound up being canceled (it’s been rescheduled to take place this summer) and its eventual opening in February still had to be limited.
Universal and Nintendo are also collaborating on a new Super Mario Bros. movie, which is easy to forget considering there has been very little news about it since the announcement. All that’s really known about it is that will be an animated feature from Minions studio Illumination and is expected to release in 2022.
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Source: VGC, Orlando Sentinel
