Mario Fails To Boost Universal’s Sales To Pre-Pandemic Highs

Attendance at Universal Studios Japan (USJ) in 2022 failed to reach its pre-pandemic high despite it being the first full operating year of the park’s new Super Nintendo World according to the latest Global Attraction Attendance Report from the Themed Entertainment Association and infrastructure analysts AECOM.

In March 2021 USJ swung open the doors to the world’s first Super Nintendo World which is designed to give guests the impression they have stepped into the cute and colorful world of the videogame maker’s mascot, Mario. It has been lovingly created with Universal’s usual attention to detail.

On entering the land (through a green pipe of course) visitors are met with bright yellow boxes which have question marks on them and appear to float in mid-air. There are huge snapping piranha plants that look like venus fly traps, stylized green trees and a cafe inside an over-sized toadstool complete with a red cap and white dots.

The land is home to a slow-moving ride through some of the surreal landscapes from the games as well as a more zippy attraction themed to the Mario Kart racing simulator. It features augmented reality headsets enabling riders to compete against each other on sweeping screens which show the scenery as they speed by. The ride is set in a stone stronghold with a soaring entrance shaped like the head of Mario’s reptilian nemesis Bowser and the walkway passes through his gaping mouth.

The new land opened whilst Japan was in the grip of the pandemic and one month after its debut, USJ’s daily attendance limit was slashed by 75% to just 5,000 people due to a spike in COVID cases in the local area of Osaka. This explains why USJ only had 5.5 million visitors in 2021, just 36.9% of the record 14.9 million who streamed through its turnstiles four years earlier as shown in the graph below.

In 2021 USJ introduced a free timed entry system to Super Nintendo World, not just because of COVID but also for more practical reasons. At an estimated 76,000 square feet, it is around eight times smaller than Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge lands and lacks their expansive plazas. Its cramped confines were packed with people in 2022 after the maximum admission limits were eased from March.

This led to USJ’s visitor numbers jumping 125% to 12.4 million last year according to the Global Attraction Attendance Report. “Despite travel restrictions and capacity limitations in Japan at the beginning of 2022, Universal Studios Japan had surprisingly strong attendance, buoyed by its new Super Nintendo World and demonstrating the strength and power of a popular homegrown brand,” says Francisco Refuerzo, senior analyst at AECOM Economics + Advisory.

Although Mario gave USJ’s attendance a bounce, it was still down on 2019 and its 2017 record. Japan was one of the last major markets to exit the pandemic and safety measures were still widespread across the country last year. As a result of this, internal travel was down sharply on the level before the pandemic and there were far fewer incoming international tourists due to strict border control processes.

Until October last year, international tourists could only visit the country with a visa and needed to travel on a tour group with daily arrivals capped at 20,000 people. Even when those measures were dropped, travelers still had to submit proof of a COVID vaccination or negative test results.

However, once the park attendance limits were dropped, there was no reason why USJ couldn’t have beaten its 2017 record by relying on internal tourism alone. In the end, COVID proved to be too great a challenge, even for Mario.

The park’s attendance last year was 17.3% lower than in 2017 but more than double the previous year and the part the new land played in this can be clearly seen when comparing the boost in USJ’s performance with that of its biggest competitors. Neither Tokyo Disneyland nor its neighbor Tokyo DisneySea opened major new attractions last year and the increase in their attendance (both in percentage terms and the number of additional guests) fell far short of that at USJ. In fact, as the graph below shows, USJ had higher attendance in 2022 than both of Disney’s parks in Japan for the first time ever, aside from during the pandemic.

According to the Global Attraction Attendance Report, none of the 20 most-visited parks in the Asia-Pacific region had higher attendance last year than in 2019 so USJ wasn’t lagging behind local rivals. It’s a different story abroad where both of Disney’s parks in Paris and one of Universal’s outposts in Orlando had higher attendance than in 2019.

Japan finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel in March when it scrapped the need for people to wear masks and its final COVID-related border controls followed suit one month later. It should mean that USJ gets another boost in attendance this year and finally surpasses its pre-pandemic high. However, the diminutive size of Mario’s world could curb that as it has been beset with criticisms for being cramped.

One visitor wrote on Twitter that “the USJ land is very cramped even with 2 levels. The walkways were tiny and mostly taken up by queues for the interactive games, restaurants, or meet and greets.” He added that “the land is small, cramped and very hectic. There’s nowhere to sit and enjoy the surroundings.”

Another described it as “super tiny and so in the time we left to do other things they’d stopped letting people in without timed tickets so we couldn’t get back in to get the merch we wanted.” Similar complaints came from others including one who said “it’s just always crowded and packed no matter what time I go.”

That may change soon as Universal is in the process of adding the first ever Donkey Kong-themed area to Super Nintendo World. The expansion is set to open next year and, according to the Global Attraction Attendance Report, it will increase the size of Super Nintendo World by 70%. In 2025 another Super Mario World is expected to open at Universal’s new Epic Universe park in Orlando and it is also being developed for Universal Studios Singapore. There are two reasons for this heavy investment.

Firstly, NBCUniversal’s theme park division is one of the media giant’s biggest cash cows and generated a record $2.7 billion of adjusted earnings on $7.5 billion of revenue in 2022. Secondly, Mario’s popularity is on a high thanks to the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie which has become the highest-grossing film of the year with $1.3 billion of takings. Chris Pratt, who voices Mario in the animated movie, recently told Entertainment Tonight that news about a sequel should be coming “soon” and that too should put even more of a spring in Mario’s step.

Universal benefited from the build-up to the first Mario movie as it opened a Super Nintendo World at its park in Hollywood in February, two months before the premiere of the film. It came at just the right time as the Global Attraction Attendance Report reveals that the park attracted an estimated 8.4 million visitors last year, 8.2% fewer than in 2019. Its version of Super Nintendo World only has the Mario Kart ride so it is even smaller than its counterpart in Japan. Making matters worse, Mario Kart has been branded “blatantly fatphobic” because it can’t accommodate riders with more than 40-inch waists which reportedly rules out the average American male.

“Went to Super Nintendo World today,” wrote one visitor on Twitter. “Super crowded; like hard to tell what’s even going on, where the lines are, what the attractions are.” Photos of the packed pathways went viral with one person commenting that “Super Nintendo World is so small and crowded. UGH! Disney would never do this.” Another added that “it’s very small, crowded, and with a slow moving Mario Kart that isn’t accommodating to all body types. Sure, Super Nintendo World is cool but this kind of stuff will prevent Universal from surpassing Disney.”

Given that the pulling power of the plucky plumber in his home country wasn’t enough to give USJ a boost back to its pre-pandemic highs, his impact on the attendance in Hollywood might not be as super as Universal hoped.