By now, we all know the story – in the 2010 wake of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, it was clear that the theme park industry had been changed forever. The age of the “Living Land” had arrived, and theme park operators raced to choose, purchase, or license the biggest intellectual properties they could find in (or out of) their home-grown studio catalogs.
As the story goes, seeing guests line up for shops and restaurants in Universal’s Hogsmeade lit a fire under Disney that had not been seen in decades. The first Disney-distributed Marvel film was still a year away; the company’s purchase of Lucasfilm, two years away. So there, sensing a seismic shift to the business, Disney looked around for something – anything! – Potter-sized to bring to its parks. And in 2010, nothing was bigger than Avatar.
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