Universal Destinations & Experiences revealed Friday new details about the theme park being built in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including the park's official name -- Universal Kids Resort.
In January, the company announced it was bringing a family-focused theme park and a 300-room themed resort hotel to North Texas. On Friday, executives with Universal Destinations & Experiences, a division of Comcast NBCUniversal, the parent company of this NBC station, confirmed Friday they'd received zoning approval to move the project forward and announced the park's official name.
We're designing the resort so kids and families can feel the thrill of being physically immersed in their most beloved stories and characters.
Molly Murphy, Universal Creative
The theme park will be the company's first park designed specifically for families with young children, catering to riders up to 46 inches tall.
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“The whole resort will have a very lush landscape feel and we have buffer trees,” pointed out Page Thompson, president of new ventures for Universal Destinations & Experiences.
"The characters that children in this community will grow up loving and get see and touch and be around every single day, it's going to grow into being the very essence of growing up and living in Frisco," said Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney.
The final rendering presented Friday morning differs from the original vision proposed in January 2023 (compare the January and December renderings below).
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The footprint is about one-quarter the size of the parks in Orlando, scaled smaller to be more "intimate and engaging" for younger guests. The company said in January the theme park will have a completely different look, feel, and scale compared to Universal’s existing parks but will still carry the same quality as the larger resort destinations.
The city estimates Universal Kids Resort will generate $200 million in annual spending in Frisco.
Molly Murphy, president of Universal Creative, described the park’s design as one with young children in mind.
“We’ll have playful shows, meet-and-greets, fun food and beverage. We’re designing it with the unbridled creativity of children in mind,” said Murphy. “From a kid’s perspective. What does it look, feel, smell, taste like? Tapping into their imagination and their sense of discovery and play.”
Cheney added Friday that the road leading into the park will be named Universal Parkway.
City leaders and Universal executives spoke of their dedication to including the community in the process.
“Honestly, this was probably the longest zoning case ever done for a project of this magnitude,” said Cheney to the audience.
Residents attended community and city council meetings, voicing their concerns over the proposed theme park, including its size, increased traffic and the potential impact on crime.
“Concerns came up about traffic but as we started showing [residents] how the roads were going to be increased to have the flow, the community was very supportive of the project,” said Cheney.
Some residents of the Cobb Hill neighborhood, which is next to the proposed site, were among the vocal opponents, fearing home values would be impacted and that homes in their subdivision would become short-term rentals for visitors.
The company broke ground on the park in November and expects vertical construction to begin early in 2024. Construction crews were seen Friday building a section of cinderblock wall lining the entrance to Cobb Hill, enclosing a section of the subdivision previously open. The project is expected to take about two years to complete and will bring about 2,500 construction jobs to the area.
