On May 21, NBCUniversal trotted out stars, drones, fireworks, giant Bellagio-esque water fountains, and narration from Steven Spielberg to officially open its biggest bet yet on immersive experiential entertainment: Epic Universe in Orlando, Florida.

But a few hours before the celebration, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts was still reflecting on what the “proud moment” for his company really meant. Standing on the stairs in Epic’s Atlantic Restaurant, Roberts looked out over the fountains and gardens of Celestial Park, the central hub of the theme park (an estimated 10 years and $7 billion-plus in the making) that connects the “portals” to its themed worlds.

“This is the worst it’s ever going to look,” Roberts said, noting that it wasn’t that long ago when it was just a dirt site a short drive from the Orange County Convention Center. “It is going to mature, and blossom and grow.”

Epic Universe is perhaps the most expansive push yet by entertainment companies into themed, immersive entertainment. At a moment where traditional forms of media like pay-TV and film are struggling or inconsistent, and where streaming is growing but not nearly as lucrative as media of the past, live experiences have emerged as a top strategic priority. The Walt Disney Co. and Comcast’s NBCUniversal are pouring more cash into the space than anyone else by far, with Disney publicly committing $60 billion in capital expenditures, and Universal committing billions of its own, though Comcast president Mike Cavanagh quips that “we don’t really talk about the billions of dollars in precise numbers.”

Whatever the specific investment, the result is a veritable boom time for theme parks and immersive experiences. “I think it’s a growth lever for a lot of these companies, and it’s also a profit lever,” says KPMG U.S. media leader Scott Purdy. “If you look at the margins of these different parks and experiences, it’s quite high relative to struggling linear businesses, or even best in class streaming businesses.”

Disney, for example, reports that its experiences and consumer products division delivered $34.2 billion in revenues in fiscal 2024, with segment operating income of $9.3 billion. NBCUniversal’s theme parks business delivered revenue of $8.6 billion in 2024, with EBITDA of $2.9 billion.

The business is also meeting the moment of the market, filling a gap for consumers looking for an escape from their screens (albeit filled with characters from those same platforms).

“I think that there has never been a better time to be in this business,” says Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. “What we’re seeing here is this idea of convergence, where great stories are coming together with cutting edge technology coming together with physical experiences and immersive experiences. That’s what consumers are craving, that’s what they’re looking for.”

“I think one of the fantastic things about the experiences business is that there’s no replacement for being here live,” says Cavanagh, noting the “shifts” the company is seeing in entertainment consumption. “You put your phones down, you’re immersed and you’re experiencing all of this.”

And increasingly, those experiences will be global. While Disney and Universal have established core hubs they continue to expand in Orlando, Florida and Southern California, the next wave of new parks are scattered around the world.

In April, Universal announced plans to build a multi-billion dollar theme park in the U.K., and in May, Disney announced a deal to bring a resort to Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, which D’Amaro says will be the company’s most “tech-forward” park yet.

The global bets are based on a thesis that, while many consumers are willing to fly to Florida or California for a theme park experience, opening closer options can expand the potential market to people who can’t afford or otherwise are unable to make the trip. Already the companies have locations in China and Japan, with Disneyland Paris established as a European footprint.

And Disney and Universal each believe they have their own secret sauce that helps their experiences stand out in a world that has no shortage of theme parks.

“There is no other company that invests as aggressively in technology, the Imagineers are still doing it today, and there is no other company that has the physical and digital footprint that we have to deliver those stories and connections to our consumers around the world,” D’Amaro says. “So the Walt Disney Company, by virtue of that collection of IP and technology and platforms, is unrivaled.”

Indeed, intellectual property is at the heart of both company’s experiences business, and their approach to it could not be more distinct.

Disney, of course, has sought to leverage all of the company’s IP when it creates new experiences, going all the way back to the grand opening of Disneyland, when rides featuring Peter Pan and Snow White were flagship experiences. And it has been savvy in leveraging M&A to that effect as well. Consider many of the recent and upcoming additions to Disneyland in Anaheim, which include lands and attractions based on Star Wars (acquired in 2012), Marvel (acquired in 2009) and Avatar (acquired in 2019).

Increasingly, theme parks are being baked into the fabric of the company’s creative process. “When Kevin Feige is thinking about his next Marvel movie, I’m there. My team is there right from the beginning, thinking about these worlds that he’s going to create, these characters that are going to come to life,” D’Amaro explains. “We’re thinking about, how are we going to translate this story beyond the screen into a theme park, onto an attraction, to a consumer product, in a game. That starts very, very early in the process.”

Universal, of course, has embraced that strategy as well. Epic Universe includes lands based on Universal IP like How to Train Your Dragon’s Isle of Berk and Universal Monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula. But the company has also made a strategic decision to partner with third-parties that own compelling IP, making the argument to rights owners that they can increase the fandom of their properties and characters by bringing them to life in the Universal parks. Consider the success of the Harry Potter lands in Orlando, and the Super Nintendo lands in Florida, California and Japan.

“There’s no creator out there that wouldn’t like to see their IP delivered to the world in a way like we’ll see in these parks,” Cavanagh said, adding that the experience “infuses the IP for further use of the creators in writing more books, making more movies, making more TV shows.”

Universal has gone all-in when it comes to immersion at Epic Universe. In each of the lands accessible from Celestial Park, visitors feel as though they are completely transported into the fictional worlds of Harry Potter or How to Train Your Dragon. Many of Disney’s new park additions focus on creating similarly immersive worlds, following the success of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Pandora at Animal Kingdom.

Standing in the shadow of a Donkey Kong roller coaster in Super Nintendo Land, Epic Universe’s creative director Steve Tatham recalled the close coordination his team had with Nintendo creative Shigeru Miyamoto when developing the world. “We worked with them to bring out what’s really important,” Tatham said. “So it’s not so much basing it on a certain frame of film or a certain scene or a certain video game, it’s really what is it about those characters and those stories that resonate.”

“It’s an IP monetization play, and the fact is, it’s a proven economic model, whereas streaming is the least proven model,” says KPMG’s Purdy, who notes that for the sorts of large-scale projects that then companies are pursuing, there are really a “limited number” of places to expand.

And that’s why in addition to new global flagship resorts, both companies are also increasingly pouring resources into smaller-scale bets as well. Disney launched its Disney Cruise Line 30 years ago. But now it is ready to turbocharge it. The company says it will double the size of its fleet by 2031, hoping to bring more of its heavily-themed ships to more ports and destinations. Later this year, for example, the Disney Adventure will launch from its new home port in Singapore.

Universal, meanwhile, is experimenting with a pair of new concepts in the U.S.: A year-round haunted house attraction called Horror Unleashed, with the first set to open next month in Las Vegas, and a second location taking over a former Chicago Tribune building in Chicago in 2027. And next year the company will open a new theme park in the sprawling suburb of Frisco, Texas, one that is smaller in scale and scope than what it built in Florida, targeting families with younger children featuring attractions based on Shrek, Trolls, and Spongebob Squarepants.

Despite the cutthroat competition, executives at both companies privately (and in some cases publicly) acknowledge that each company ultimately benefits from the investments they each make, especially in Orlando.

“If something is built new in central Florida, like Epic Universe, and if it brings in additional tourists, I can almost guarantee you that that new tourist coming into the market is going to have to visit the Magic Kingdom,” D’Amaro told a MoffettNathanson conference in May.

Indeed, the research firm’s Rob Fishman wrote a report July 14, leaning on a visit to Orlando and alternative data sources like the average daily wait times, to suggest that the opening of Epic Universe did little to hurt demand for Disney’s south Florida parks. Universal executives, meanwhile are betting that Epic Universe and its themed lands will be just as much a must-visit, and that the investment will make their parks a primary destination for more visitors.

Of course, neither company is resting on its laurels. At its D23 conference last year, D’Amaro announced a barrage of new lands and attractions coming to California, France and China, based on IP like Encanto, Coco, The Lion King and Indiana Jones.

And Comcast executives are already salivating over what else they can do at Epic Universe. In the park’s Atlantic restaurant, as motorized fish sculptures slowly drifted along the ceiling, Mark Woodbury, the chairman and CEO of Universal Destinations & Experiences, expanded on his view of the park’s future: “What you can’t see sitting here are all the expansion areas that are outside the spaces that you can see,” Woodbury said. “This is the first step in an epic future. There’s a lot of room for expansion, and we’re already thinking about how that plays out.”

Bank of America analyst Jessica Reif-Ehrlich, for one, predicts that a “Wicked World [is] likely a future portal in our view [at Epic],” given the success of the Universal film franchise. It does not take much imagination to picture a glittering Emerald City being constructed in between the Isle of Berk and Harry Potter’s version of Paris.

But the explosion of interest in the experiences business is not without substantial risk, not necessarily from outsiders entering the space (the barrier for entry remains stubbornly high), but from financial and external factors. Experiences are incredibly expensive to develop, and take years from conception to completion (Disney CEO Bob Iger says that the parks typically take as long as two years to develop, and another five years to build). Unlike films or TV shows, which have effectively no costs after they are released, experiences require extensive staffing and upkeep. Those operating costs continue even if demand slows.

And as the COVID-19 pandemic shows, demand can be impacted without warning. Executives today remain concerned about a possible decline in foreign tourists visiting the U.S. Disney CFO Hugh Johnston told Wall Street analysts in May that the company has seen an impact of about 1 to 1.5 percent, though so far domestic demand is making up for that softness.

And as important as IP has become, if a piece of IP is mismanaged or depleted, it can diminish interest in the attraction. Managing that IP and those attractions over years or decades is a hard thing to do.

Disneyland didn’t invent the theme park, but there is no question that the modern idea of an immersive theme park can be traced to the grand opening of Disneyland on July 17, 1955. It’s not just creating an immersive world, where families can experience their favorite stories in real life, it’s also about ensuring that every time they visit, there will be something new to see and do. And it’s an approach that the companies have taken to heart, betting that the frequent investments will pay off in the long run.

“You still want to be able to celebrate the memories that you had as a child with your family as you walk down Main Street, but you want to know that there’s something new all the time, every visit that you have at Disneyland,” D’Amaro says. “It’s a fine balance of that nostalgia that everyone wants to feel and that newness, which we owe to our fans.”

To that end, on Disneyland’s 70th anniversary, it officially opened its newest attraction: A lifelike animatronic of Walt Disney himself, which uses archival audio to have the entertainment pioneer explain to visitors his philosophy for storytelling:

“There’s really no secret about our approach. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors, doing new things, because we are curious,” Disney’s voice booms over the audience of the Main Street Opera House. “Curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We are always exploring and experimenting, we are interested in doing things that are fun, and bringing pleasure and laughter to people. But I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing: It was all started by a mouse.”

This story appeared in the July 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.