Universal Studios Beijing

Overview 

• Despite the pandemic and perhaps the world’s most restrictive lock down, after 20 years of preparation and planning, the highly anticipated Universal Studios Beijing Theme Park Resort opened in October 2021 as a watershed moment in the Chinese theme park industry. Its ambition, scale and uniform level of excellence sets a new bar for international standard for theme park destination development in terms of guest experience and represents the highest investment to date, reported at more than USD6.5 billion. Universal Beijing Resort was created under the guideline of “global vision, international standards, distinctive Chinese features, and future oriented goals”. The core Universal Studios Beijing resort covers 400 hectares and is part of a larger cultural tourism destination (1,200 hectares) located in east Beijing’s Tongzhou Cultural Tourism Zone. Universal Beijing Resort features the Universal Studios Beijing theme park, the Universal City Walk Beijing retail, dining and entertainment complex and two hotels. The Universal Studios Grand Hotel is the first-ever Universal-themed resort hotel, and the first NUO-branded resort hotel from Beijing Tourism Group. The park includes 7 highly themed, immersive lands with over 37 cutting-edge attractions, rides, and landmarks, 24 shows and performances, 60 food & beverage venues, 30 retail stores, plus specially created experiences designed to honor and reflect China's rich cultural heritage. Universal Studios Beijing is also the world’s first theme park resort destination to earn the LEED Gold certification for the LEED for Cities and Communities rating system. 

• The Beijing destination blends Eastern and Western cultures both literally and metaphorically in the partnerships, design, attractions, and environmental elements of the park. There are some surface similarities but this is not a cookie cutter version of Universal’s previous theme parks. This is a deep re-thinking and culturally appropriate reinvention of the Universal brand, achieving relevance for a Chinese audience. The beautifully designed mega theme park includes 7 highly themed lands, several all-new attractions and immersive lands unique to China along with selected evergreen fan-favorites Universal rides, shows, attractions and popular characters from around the world (such as Harry Potter, Hollywood, Water World) – plus specially created experiences designed to reflect China's cultural heritage. Several key lands and attractions that stand out: - Transformers Metrobase: The first Transformers-themed land in the world, which features an expanded and completely fictionalized story with China as the backdrop; - Jurassic World Isla Nublar: The essence of this legendary film franchise comes to life in this jaw-dropping adventure land including the Jurassic World Adventure ride; - Minion Land: The largest Minion-themed experience in the world captivates guests as they meet characters and explore iconic locations from the blockbuster films; Also of note is the Kung Fu Panda Land of Awesomeness which is Universal’s first Kung Fu Panda-themed land, entirely indoors, and also the land with the most traditional Chinese cultural elements. The highly unique and impressive Untrainable live show based on How to Train Your Dragon uses a superb combination of largescale puppetry, projections, animation, and live-action stunts to make it a fan favorite. The park-wide entertainment program is unique and differentiated, with an innovative approach to including top Chinese IPs such as League of Legends into the parade and Honor of Kings Heroes LIVE. The live entertainment is performed almost entirely by the cast in Chinese, and features prominently in the programming due to Chinese audience preference for live shows. In bespoke merchandise, the Minions have a highly successful line inspired by the 12 Chinese zodiacs. The Transformers More than Meets the Eye featuring Megatron has been a hit, with live interaction between the performer and Chinese guests, with a stand-up comedian approach that resonates well and has gone viral on Chinese social media. Overall, Universal Studios Beijing has made incredible effort to localize and cater to the Chinese audience from the theme park to City Walk restaurants/F&B offerings including retail brands with more local appeal than international brands and successful e-commerce presence targeting the Chinese Gen-Z market. Universal Studios Beijing has also taken integration of technology to a new level with wide use of biometrics and facial recognition (AI) for entry (speed gates) and ticketing/payments providing a seamless experience (throughout the resort with Tencent as strategic technology partner making it a pioneer in the industry supported by 5G technology 

• Almost 20 years in total 

• There were so many memorable moments for our team, our vendors and our IP partners throughout the build of Universal Beijing Resort. This includes many of our Team Members unexpectedly having to spend over two years in China, away from their families, during Covid travel restrictions! 

How to Train Your Dragon: Untrainable

Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement- Live Event 
 
Overview 

• Universal Beijing Resort proudly presents “Untrainable”, a new stage production based on DreamWorks Animation How to Train Your Dragon series. This amazing production transports the audience into the adventurous world of Dragons and Vikings where they discover the common values of life and the message of cooperation and empathy between them and that “family first” is the greatest thing they both treasure. This fantastical show takes the audience on a mythical journey to the Isle of Berk and the new Hatchery where baby Dragons are born. 

• The onsite team for Universal Beijing Resort partnered with Universal Creative over 7,500 miles away, providing virtual walkthroughs of the theater and stage performances, making this show’s creation a global success story. This large-scale production is housed in the magnificent 1500 seat, two-story Majestic Theater at Universal Studios Beijing. The 20 minutes immersive storytelling performance engages the entire theater by using state-of-the-art technologies: multiple large high-flying over the audience animated Dragons, spectacular automated scenery, surround projection mapping, stunning lighting, extraordinary costumes, numerous special effects, breathtaking stunts and an original musical score all of which are integrated with a cast of talented 24 artists, including live actors, dancers, musicians, vocalists, stunt performers and puppeteers who deliver a fantastical heartwarming story that will touch the hearts of the audience. “Untrainable" is an impressive, fully immersive theatrical production experience that seamlessly combined awe-inspiring technology, beautiful music, and an overall stunning live performance stage design, overlayed with a relatable, heartwarming story of love and compassion. 

•  More than five years to complete. 

• Creating and testing the technology behind getting a full-size dragon to fly over the audience with virtual collaboration from halfway around the world was quite a challenge in the pandemic. 

Jurassic World Adventure

Overview 

• With Universal rebooting their stalwart Jurassic Park franchise as Jurassic World in 2015 – releasing three hit movies so far – the studio decided that it was time to apply that gigantic and highly successful cinematic brand pivot — featuring new characters, new settings, and new dinos — to their global theme park empire. With the creation of Universal Studios Beijing, an entire themed land was dedicated to this epic new adventure series, giving designers a clean slate to create a new kind of immersive environment with a massive new marquee attraction to support it. With the existing River Adventures as inspiration for the “what could possibly go wrong” chaos, Universal Creative instead decided to take the action to dry land, and all indoors — creating new possibilities for an entirely different kind of adventure, with full theatrical control. 

 
What sets this attraction apart? 

• Having perfected their roving motion-base technology — first created for the largely 3D-projected Adventures of Spider-Man and Transformers, groundbreaking in their own right and replicated around the world — Universal instead opted for a more tangible, physical experience.  The carefully protected audience view shed of these vehicles was originally designed for focused screen viewing, preventing riders from seeing the all-flat track and using visual 3D & scenic tricks that created the illusion of an all-terrain vehicle and gravity-defying dynamics. This proven technique also allows for a highly directed, very intimate experience without the need for 3D glasses, with massive physical sets that feature integrated 2D moving-eye-point media, and of course, giant dinosaurs.  

• This attraction was built with global collaboration from halfway around the world during a global pandemic 

• The team behind this attraction innovated every step of the way to virtually collaborate with partners, vendors and colleagues. Not to mention, much of the team unexpectedly ended up spending more than two years in Beijing due to Covid travel restrictions.