Disney has an unexpected new theme park rival

The entertainment company has a new threat in a business sector that it has long dominated.

Jun 27, 2024 - 19:30

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Disney has an unexpected new theme park rival

Disney (DIS) has been crowned the king of the amusement park business for decades, having built 12 theme parks across its six resorts in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Disney has even made a massive profit from the business as it recently earned over $8.3 billion from its theme parks alone during the second quarter of 2024.

Now, it appears that Disney has a fierce new competitor who is beginning to dip its toes in the theme park industry. Netflix (NFLX) , the most dominant streaming service in the world, is hoping to expand its entertainment outside of T.V. screens as it just announced that it is building on its previous live experiences with the opening of Netflix House, which will be an “experiential entertainment venue,” according to a press release.

Netflix will bring some of its most popular films and TV shows to the real world, where fans can experience “Netflix stories and characters beyond the screen year-round.”

“At Netflix House, you can enjoy regularly updated immersive experiences, indulge in retail therapy, and get a taste — literally — of your favorite Netflix series and films through unique food and drink offerings,” said Netflix Chief Marketing Officer Marian Lee in the press release. “We’ve launched more than 50 experiences in 25 cities, and Netflix House represents the next generation of our distinctive offerings. The venues will bring our beloved stories to life in new, ever-changing, and unexpected ways.”

The first two Netflix House locations will open in 2025 at two popular U.S. malls: King of Prussia in Pennsylvania and Galleria in Dallas, Texas. Each location will occupy 100,000 square feet.

The move from Netflix comes after a recent survey by LendingTree revealed that 24% of visitors and 45% of parents who visit Disney theme parks suffer significant financial debt from their trips.

Pinocchio and Tinker Bell during the new Magic Happens Parade on Main Street U.S.A. inside Disneyland on Thursday, Feb 27, 2020.
MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images/Getty Images

On average, parents taking their young children on a Disney vacation end up with about $1,983 in Disney-related debt. The survey highlighted unexpectedly high trip costs as the main culprit of the debt. About 65% of the survey respondents said that food and beverages at Disney parks were a significant expense, while 48% highlighted transportation and 47% said accommodations.

Netflix did not reveal in its announcement how much a visit to a Netflix House location would cost. Still, when Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos first teased the plan to open Netflix House last year, he said that fans should be able to visit locations more often than they would Disney.

“Don’t think of it like Disneyland. [It’s] something you might go to a couple of times a month, not just once every couple of years,” said Sarandos during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in October.

Netflix also revealed in October that one of the locations will even contain an obstacle course based on its 2021 hit series "Squid Game,” which shows that the company aims for the experience to be very interactive for fans.

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Netflix has launched previous live experience efforts

Before recently announcing Netflix House, Netflix opened several pop-up live experiences for fans across the country. In June last year, Netflix opened a three-month-long pop-up restaurant called Netflix Bites in Los Angeles. Customers who visited were served food prepared by chefs who had appeared on Netflix Bites in Los Angeles, which ran for three months in Los Angeles. Customers who visited were served food prepared by chefs who appeared on popular Netflix food-related TV shows.

In December last year, Netflix developed a theater adaptation of the hit series Stranger Things called “Stranger Things: The First Shadow.” It also opened a store for the show in several popular cities across the U.S. where fans can purchase merchandise.

Netflix also opened a virtual reality attraction at Area15 in Las Vegas based on its 2021 “Army of the Dead” film, where fans can “rescue civilians from zombie-infested Las Vegas.”

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