Earlier over on Orlando United I was discussing Universal's Superstar Parade with a few other members regarding wether or not the parade has enough IPs. The discussion starts around this post so if you want to read it there you go. I rarely talk about it, but I'm not a fan of the parade. The problem is that the parade is too small and the stops are only there to make it longer. Worst of all, the whole thing is a 2-3 minute parade if you're not watching in New York or Hollywood. Many say the parade just needs more IPs, but do they just need to start over and make a new parade?
In case you didn't know, the parade began it's daily run in May 2012 when it was Universal's "Year to be Here". Ironically for them, 2013 was the year to be here. Anyways, the big part of the promotion was to bring in families with younger kids. The promotion had this parade, Universal's Cinematic Spectacular, a HD refurb of Spiderman, and most importantly, Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. I believe the parade was announced mid-January 2012, so assuming they started the floats then it would have taken them a little under 4 months to make the whole thing (build the floats, train the cast, etc). Sounds about right if you ask me, and I'm not using the "Uni builds things fast" excuse. It's a 4 float parade with a few things in between the floats, and the build time was quick enough to get it running before Memorial Day. I'm not saying they're bad floats, in fact they look really good, but if you think 4 floats are good enough for a parade I'm going to have to disagree. Oh, and don't get me started on the street parties. If Universal wants to keep families in the park for the parade, they can't put floats out on the street in the middle of the day and do a street party. All it does is tell people, "Hey you've seen the floats, now you don't have to see them again later on!" It doesn't help that the park doesn't have much to do for non-thrillseekers as is, so really I think they need to start over on the parade while keeping the same name. If the rumors are true about IOA getting the 2015 and 2016 rides, any of those two years would be the perfect time to get a new parade up and running to give USF some new entertainment (that's excluding the new Beetlejuice show and potential Fear Factor replacement).
Right now the only 4 IPs being used are Despicable Me, Spongebob, Dora, and Hop. Considering the last one is already outdated and unknown to a lot of people, technically there's only 3. Looking at Universal's roster of kid friendly cartoon IPs that are costumed, we have
Shrek, Popeye, Scooby Doo, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Betty Boop, and Curious George. I'd say everything would be a go. Even if Shrek 4D's days are numbered they can still keep the meet and greet, Popeye has a new animated movie being released by Sony in 2015, Illumination is making a Curious George movie, there'll be a new Rocky and Bullwinkle short made by Dreamworks before Peabody and Sherman in 2014, and Scooby Doo and Betty Boop are timeless enough. Do you realize that's 6 IPs?!?! We could have 10 floats in the parade (9 without Hop) if Universal used those characters, plus it would appeal to all audiences. I'm actually surprised Universal hasn't done this yet. Oh yeah, AND GET RID OF THE DAMN STREET PARTIES!!!!! Like I said earlier, it's only hurting Universal's chances of keeping families with small children in the park all day.
As always, thanks for reading, and you can find me on Twitter @ThemeParks4Life
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