According to the Orlando Sentinel, the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park has had a significant impact on the Central Florida travel picture for 2010.
July saw a 6.8% increase in the number of rooms booked versus July of 2009 with an additional 3.6% increase in the average cost of a room night. Hotels and resorts near the new Harry Potter park saw room bookings closer to 90% filled for July!
I know this is a lot of "inside baseball" talk, but it really made me wonder about the impact that the Wizarding World has had on Disney World. The resorts and hotels in and around Universal Orlando have seen significant decreases in room vacancy, in spite of significant increases in average cost per room night. Although the Disney World area has seen similar increases, they can't compare to the the Universal area.
I knew the day Wizarding World opened, it was going to hurt Disney, especially in light of the fact that they have very little in the pipeline to generate the kind of excitement that we've seen for Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Universal went all out on this one and it shows.
What are your thoughts? Has Wizarding World hurt Disney? If so, how much and for how long?