Nearly a year after the grand opening of Epic Universe, the impact of Universal’s newest gate continues to echo through the attractions industry. This was evidenced by the four trophies picked up by the park during last weekend’s Themed Entertainment Association THEA Awards — aka the amusement biz’s answer to the Oscars — which were held here in Orlando for the first time in their 32-year history.
But prior to Saturday’s sequined-tie gala honoring past achievements, I got a glimpse of the future from Friday’s TEA State of the Industry panel, where moderator Shawn McCoy guided representatives from Disney, Universal, Falcon’s Beyond, Herschend Creative Studios and Lionsgate through a refreshingly frank conversation covering everything from geopolitics to artificial intelligence. Here are some highlighted insights from the two heaviest hitters.
Page Thompson: President, New Ventures, Universal Destinations & Experiences
“The rising costs of construction and operations are a continual challenge for all of us. … I think it’s really important for us to look at ways we can make [attractions] more affordable, whether it’s annual passes or discounts or bundling, and it’s something that we talk about absolutely every day. One of the big trends in the industry that I think is most interesting is trying to have more immersive experiences, where people can talk to the characters and interact with them. I think that some of those experiences can be produced for less cost than building an enormous building, and have equal impact on the guests. They really enjoy talking to somebody who’s in character and living out that dream of interacting with those people.”
“We really have three ways of growing. The first one is to grow our existing businesses, and the second one is to find new locations to create resorts like that. The third is to develop new concepts for new audiences and new locations. So what we’re doing with our kids park [opening soon in Texas] is trying to reach an audience. Historically, our big parks are really designed for tweens and up. There’s a 3- to 8-year-old audience that we’re developing this specific experience for. … There are very low restrictions on who can ride the rides, if any, and we’re training our staff in a different way to really serve kids. We’re going to be an autism-certified park with least 80 percent of our staff trained in autism awareness.”
“I think one of the biggest uses of AI is not a creative use, perhaps, but it’s just on the engineering [and] technical services side of maintaining rides, looking for abnormal patterns and things like that.”
“I don’t think there’s any substitute for human interaction. With all screens and the doom-scrolling that’s going on now, especially among parents, there’s likely to be a counter-reaction to that in the coming years. People are going to want to get out of the house and interact with other people. I think robotics are great [when] robotics can do something that human beings can’t, I think it’s fantastic, but there’s no substitute for human interaction.”
Ali Rubinstein: SVP Executive Global Management Creative Development, Walt Disney Imagineering
“The technological tools that are now presented to us, that we have access to and we can utilize, is I think what’s most exciting; it’s also what’s most challenging. Imagineering does not move at the speed of technology, so it takes us a lot longer to advance an attraction or part of a land than the technology that we’re bringing along with it. So there’s a little bit of misalignment there, but we’re working on that.”
“I often get questions about, are you going to do more original IP [intellectual property]? … That vast library of [Disney-owned] IP, much of it has not even been seen in the parks yet. We have so much new IP coming on board that we can tap into that we own, that we’re just starting to bring to life. … So I think that the variety of what we’re seeing coming into the parks from an IP standpoint remains, even if we’re not doing unique and original stories or brand-new stories.”
“What we pay close attention to at Disney is the interpersonal relationship between our operators, our hosts, our entertainers. I think that those provide for those smaller personal experiences [like the new animatronic Olaf in Hong Kong Disneyland]. Within the big picture, we are creating more and more of these truly personalized moments, and we’re going to be seeing more of that as we bring more of these kinds of characters to life.”
“When we went into China and Shanghai, we over-indexed a little bit into what we thought the region was going to want. People have heard about our approach to Shanghai, ‘authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese.’ We over-indexed a little bit into the Chinese and they kind of said, ‘No no, we don’t want a big, fancy Chinese restaurant. We want more turkey legs.’ Now we’ve announced that we’re going into Abu Dhabi, and that’s going to be another experiment for us. It’s a whole new culture for us. … When we go into a region, we are extremely culturally sensitive. We want to make sure that we are listening and adopting, but we also are bringing our authentic Disney brand, so finding that balance is critical.”
“We certainly use [generative AI] in the creative space, but it’s never, ever — I hope not — going to be a replacement for humans. I talk to my teams a lot who get nervous about the fact that we’re bringing AI into the workplace. I say, ‘This is not about replacing you. This is about you being able to get your work done faster, so your 60-hour work week turns into a 40-hour week, and you actually get a lunch break.’”
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This article appears in May 6-12, 2026.
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