Expanding Epic Universe, Part II: An Armchair-Imagineered Build-Out of Universal Orlando’s Cosmic Theme Park

Aside: The Search for Another World

As the big finale of our Build-Out of Epic Universe, we find ourselves with one final expansion pad to play with – the big one. Again, it’s actually quite rare and thoughtful that this park comes loaded with a “land-sized” expansion pad when few modern parks – especially compact, urban, landlocked ones – are afforded such reserved foresight. Again, it could just be that this land was set aside because the budget to construct something there didn’t make it into Phase I, but the result is the same – we have space to think big!

It’s a fairly recent phenomenon that parks have begun to trumpet how many acres their lands fill up, but it’s a helpful metric here for our visioning. On the smaller end, there are projects like Avengers Campus (6 acres) and Diagon Alley (6 acres) and Magic Kingdom’s New Fantasyland (10 acres). On the larger end are Cars Land (12 acres), Hogsmeade (13 acres, albeit it 6 comprised solely of Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure), and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge (at 14 acres). That helps to contextualize that the space left here between the Wizarding World and the Isle of Berk is 17 – 20 acres, which is pretty incredible.

The space does have some drawbacks. For example, it’s very narrow at its entry point (the current dead-end outside of Stardust Racers’ entrance) before expanding substantially into a massive 16 acre bulk plot. In terms of sightlines, it’s also wedged between the ever-visible Stardust Racers and the showbuilding we’ve constructed for the new E-Ticket in the Wizarding World. Given the benefit of a Blue Sky process, we can just assume that we’ll cover those vantage points, but in reality it’s certainly something fans will be persnickety about with whatever ends up here.

Anyway, the real question is to the land’s content – what intellectual property will this be? Luckily, we already have a cued up list of possibilities – our “What’s Left?” look at unclaimed or underutilized IP that’s still out there in the world. Especially given that this space is huge, it really requires an A-List IP.

I already explained that neither Pokémon nor Zelda will factor in here since they are both anchors of my Build-Out of Islands of Adventure. The Wizard of Oz in on the list, but obviously we’ve already applied that to this very park via Wicked. There’s Star Trek, which has been conspicuously absent from theme park conversations (aside from being featured in Universal’s Fan Fest Nights event as a walkthrough). SpongeBob Squarepants doesn’t really fulfill our pre-req for “epic.”

So in my list, at the intersection of “widely popular,” “timeless,” and “epic” reside three things that (coincidentally) all feel cut from the same general cloth of “swords and sorcery” fantasies: Game of Thrones, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Lord of the Rings. All three are fittingly “epic” with sweeping worlds. All three also require that a land embodying them contain multiple locales since no single “locale-as-snapshot” could really capture the “quest” at their cores. I have seen all of the films / TV seasons of these three properties, but I’m not an expert on any of them. So the choice really has to come down to theme-park-ability, popularity, and appeal.

For that reason, I have chosen…

MIDDLE-EARTH: THE REALM OF THE RINGS

Background

When English author J. R. R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937, he probably wouldn’t have imagined that the “children’s fantasy novel” would grow to be one of the best-selling books of all time – much less that it would spur the creation of one of the most comprehensive, encyclopedic, and beloved fantasy worlds in literature.

Published in 1954 and 1955 after nearly two decades of writing, The Hobbit’s follow-up – The Lord of the Rings – wasn’t a mere children’s book, but a 1,077 page, three-volume literary epic regarded as one of the most influential fantasy books ever written. The Lord of the Rings is the prototypical high fantasy and is singlehandedly responsible for establishing many precedents of the genre: Tolkien’s fictional “Middle-earth” is a world of stunning detail and density, with exhaustive histories of centuries-old places and people, meticulous lore, invented languages, and the now-definitive forms of fantasy races like “elves,” “dwarfs,” and “orcs.”

Despite its grandiosity, the universe is made real via the quest of Frodo Baggins (young cousin of The Hobbit‘s titular Bilbo) and his inheritance of the “One Ring” forged in secret by the Dark Lord Sauron. A “lowly” Hobbit bestowed with the corrupting power of a ring granting limitless power, Frodo and his Company must quest across Middle-earth to the evil land of Mordor where the fires of Mount Doom – the Rings’ forge – are the only way to destroy the One Ring and end Sauron’s pursuit of power forever.

But it was director Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of the three volumes (2001’s The Fellowship of the Ring, 2002’s The Two Towers, and 2003’s The Return of the King) that gave modern audiences the definitive forms of its characters and settings. And with 17 Academy Awards (out of 30 nominations) and a $2.9 billion box office haul, is it really any surprise that Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings is widely regarded as one of the greatest films series ever made? Rarely does a film series translate to the screen (the cast, the production design, the score…) so resoundingly as to make the idea of a reboot or remake a nonstarter.

(That’s less true for the Jackson-helmed Hobbit prequel series that was released from 2012 to 2014, often criticized for its over-reliance on CGI and its insistence that the 300-page children’s novel be expanded to fill a cinematic trilogy by any means necessary. But given that those three films also netted a cumulative $3 billion, you can’t argue with the results.)

Obviously, the success of The Lord of the Rings and its enduring popularity leads to the inevitable question: why hasn’t it become part of a theme park already? One answer is doubtlessly the one we already touched on: that like many literary epics or high fantasies, it’s hard to pin the vast world of Middle-earth into a “theme-park-able” scale. No single locale from the series can ever fully represent it, and even if it could, it would inherently lack the “journey” or “quest” that’s foundational to Tolkien’s world. (Even in my Build-Out of Islands, we discussed that Lord of the Rings is literally a perfect for the park, but to do it any justice would require space far, far greater than Islands can offer; maybe an entire Lord of the Rings theme park!)

The other hurdle to bringing Middle-earth to life in a theme park is that ownership of The Lord of the Rings is… more complicated than you’d imagine. The films were produced by New Line Cinema, which is today a subsidiary of Warner Bros. As a result, New Line is able to make further films (hence, The Hobbit series) and is involved in other filmed adaptations (for example, Amazon Studios’ The Rings of Power series, which is co-produced by New Line, but is explicitly not a continuation of the films per Warner Bros.’ requirement).

But of course, it’s not that simple. Unlike Harry Potter (where Universal and Warner Bros. have the benefit of being able to receive counsel and instantaneous approval from series creator J.K. Rowling), many of the trademarks surrounding The Lord of the Rings are the property of the Tolkien Estate, a legal trust whose executors have assigned many copyrights to subsidiary entities.

Add to that, Tolkien himself sold the stage and merchandising rights to the Lord of the Rings in 1969. That means that the rights to produce some adaptations and nearly all products themed to the property belong to “Middle-earth Enterprises” – today, a subdivision of a Swedish media holding group. Middle-earth Enterprises also owns the copyright to names of characters, places, objects, and even events within the series, as well as the copyright for certain “phrases and sayings” associated with Tolkien’s work.

To give you a sense of just how complicated this is, in 2012 the Tolkien Estate actually sued Middle-earth Enterprises, Warner Bros., and New Line Cinema for producing casino games using the film characters, insisting that Middle-earth Enterprises only had the right to sell “tangible” products (“such as figurines, tableware, stationary items, clothing, and the like”) but had no right to product intangibles or media, such as video games. The suit was settled in 2017, but the point is that at least until The Lord of the Rings enters the public domain (at present, expected to happen in 2050), anything Lord of the Rings requires collaboration between three very large, very unwieldy, and very self-serving, insular entities.

In the mid-2010s, rumors began to suggest that the rights-holders to the series had been spotted touring Disney’s Animal Kingdom with Disney Parks executives… a rumor that was swiftly spun into speculation that Disney was courting Lord of the Rings as a potential land for the park, especially in the midst of a rumored rough patch with James Cameron that fans suspected might derail plans for a then-in-development Avatar-themed land… If that’s true, it at least suggests that the powers that be in Middle-earth are or were at least open to the idea of their blockbuster property being licensed for use in theme parks…

Anyway, the point is that clearly, Lord of the Rings is the answer to “What’s Left?” in a major, A-List, top-tier IP sense. It’s also a property that’s “right-sized” (aka, huge) for Epic Universe’s last expansion pad, and “epic” enough to be a place we need to step through a portal and be transported to. This sort of high fantasy is also conspicuously missing from Epic Universe. To its credit, it’s also easy to imagine that Universal’s existing relationship with Warner Bros. (for Potter) and Peter Jackson (for 2005’s King Kong) could be a major boon to the concept, too.

So with just 17-ish acres to play with, here’s what I drafted as a way to bring at least a representative portion of Middle-earth to Universal Epic Universe…

Build-Out

To start, we need to figure out access and entry here. Remember, the entry to this expansion pad starts out really tight, wedged between the immovable Stardust Racers and backstage roads required to supply Le Goblet Noir. Given my quest to make sure these Build-Outs are at least “reasonable,” neither of those can go anywhere. And it hardly makes sense to build the portal to this world right at the entrance to Stardust Racers only to have it shrink down to its narrowest point soon after.

Instead, I want to position the portal at that narrow point so that the world beyond widens. You have even noticed back in Part I that I did that by continuing the circle motif from Celestial Gardens to a new circular plaza outside of Stardust Racers.

While we could put a flat ride here, I actually feel that it gives us an opportunity to provide something Celestial Park needs – ELM GROVE, a “Great Lawn” providing shade, play space, hills, a stage, and a genuine relaxation zone. Anaheim’s Downtown Disney recently added this sort of thing – with small faux hills and a bandstand and lights – and it’s just the greatest place in the evenings as kids roll and play tag and dance while also providing natural, shaded picnic space by day. I also added LEAF & LOTUS, a quick service boba, tea, coffee, and pastries joint well positioned to serve the lawn as a chill-out zone.

Anyway, we’d then pass through an ancient stone portal inscribed with our entry quote for this land:

I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk
That keep the darkness at bay

With that simple call to action, we arrive in the first of three sub-sections of Middle-Earth…

Hobbiton

The quaint, comfortable place where so many tales begin: the Shire. The pastoral town of Hobbiton is probably the most instantly-recognizable locale in the Lord of the Rings canon if only because any other locale could just as easily be from Narnia or Game of Thrones or the like.

But Hobbiton – with its little Hobbit homes and circular doors embedded in hillsides is clearly the home of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. This space is so “iconic” that the on-location sets (from filming in Matamata, New Zealand) are preserved and operated as a guided tour attraction for New Zealand tourists.

For our purposes, beginning in Hobbiton makes sense narratively (again, our warm, green, comfortable place of departure and eventual return) and logistically. Because this is the narrowest part of the land, we never get a “wide-shot” view north or south, so by constructing various layers of Hobbit hills, I think we could actually do a fairly good job of blocking views of the rear of Place Cachée and Stardust Racers.

The result is that Hobbiton surrounds us in the nestled hills with paths along hillsides with a placid, reflecting pond and stream splitting right down the center. Retail is provided via HOBBITON MARKET, a covered marketplace where, under fluttering overhead quilts and repurposed banners, parked wagons offer hand-crafted textiles, wooden swords, and other imaginative Hobbit-made products suited for adventure.

The rolling hills and their front gardens serve as photo opportunities for guests, as does a waterfront pollinator garden located across the pond. Further on in the land is BAG END – Bilbo’s own home, here used as a walkthrough experience with an optional meet-and-greet with the harrumphing Hobbit at the tour’s end.

This subsection also offers two comfortable dining locations: the GRISTMILL situated right on the Shire-water is a snack location serving the land’s signature Seed Cake bread, while across the stone bridge is THE GREEN DRAGON INN, a quick-service eatery allowing guests to dine on roasted meats, potatoes, sausages, and pies. (This may be unnecessary since Das Stakehaus and Dragon’s Mead Hall both, to some extent, fill this need in the park’s lineup, but I think the allure of dining in the world is the point here, and the Hobbit-stylized menu could have some clever creations to keep guests engaged.)

Obviously, this relatively small, narrow space is just our introduction to the Realm of the Rings; indeed, there’s really no way we could have a Lord of the Rings world without this specific place being our start. Next, we encounter the unignorable truth that we can’t contain the entirety of Middle-earth, so we must choose our next location cleverly so as to display as much of the breadth and depth of the world as possible. So that placid pond leads to a bridge ascending to our next sub-section and the heart of the Realm…