Universal Orlando’s parent company has officially announced what its diehard fans already knew: the Orlando version of Super Nintendo World will be a part of the new Epic Universe theme park opening in 2023.

The confirmation came during Comcast’s Jan. 23 earning call. CEO Brian Roberts compared Nintendo’s appeal to the “Harry Potter” franchise, ahead of the first Super Nintendo World opening this summer at Universal Studios Japan.

Roberts said: 

“If you look out, I think the next big thing on the horizon is Nintendo. Nintendo based on our research is one of the biggest potential drivers of attendance that you could have of any kind of IP. It’s up there with Harry Potter, which in some of our parks Harry potter drove incremental attendance of about two million people. So Nintendo is in very rarefied air. And the attraction that we’re building in Osaka is spectacular.

“From a creative standpoint it’s really unbelievable and that opens sometime — midyear this year and then we’re going to bring it to Hollywood and we’re going to bring it, obviously, in the fourth gate in Florida. So I think Nintendo is going to be potentially a big accelerator both in the Theme Park business.”

To attentive Universal fans, this is no surprise. After rumored plans for Nintendo attractions replacing KidZone in Universal Studios Florida and Lost Continent in Islands of Adventure never came to fruition, Epic Universe looked to be the obvious home for Orlando’s Super Nintendo World.

Universal Hollywood will be the first U.S. park to get a Nintendo land. Construction is already well underway, but in typical Universal fashion — especially when it comes to Nintendo properties — that has yet to be officially announced.

The theme park division within Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit reported a 4.5 percent drop in year-over-year earnings for the fourth quarter of 2019, dropping to $636 million. 

“We had a challenging fourth quarter, but overall it was a solid year during a particularly competitive period, and we are looking forward to new attractions in parks to drive growth in the coming years,” Roberts said.

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