Super Nintendo World, a theme park in Orlando, is almost ready to welcome tourists. Universal Orlando Resort has announced that the Mario-friendly attraction will open on May 22, 2025. That means it takes more than six months to find the perfect Goomba costume to wear on Opening Day.
This is Nintendo’s third theme park in the world, with the Orlando location joining existing parks in Los Angeles and Japan. If the layout is similar to the other two parks, you should expect vast interactive areas to explore, special themed rides, and of course, all kinds of Nintendo-adjacent dining and shopping. The original Japanese park just got a nice Donkey Kong Country area, but it remains to be seen if it will make its way to America.
It’s part of a major expansion at Universal Resort Orlando called Universal Epic Universe. This includes five areas to explore. There’s the aforementioned Super Nintendo World, but this expansion will also host the existing Harry Potter attraction.
This area will feature a theme park based on the “How to Train Your Dragon” series and a theme park based on the “Dark Universe” series. The last one is pretty weird to me, just as the Dark Universe series peaked in the 2010s with a few mid-grade horror films. Most of the films planned for this shared cinematic universe were scrapped after 2017’s Hamunaptra crashed and burned.
The last one is Celestial Park. This place looks like a standard amusement park with a bit of science fiction thrown in. There are also space-themed roller coasters.
