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ORLANDO, Fla. – Universal isn’t the only business expecting to cash in on Epic Universe’s grand opening.
Other nearby attractions such as ICON Park said they’re already seeing an increase in business since the park’s grand opening on Thursday.
ICON Park President and CEO Chris Jaskiewicz said it’s not a competition when it comes to the grand opening of Epic Universe.
“I tell our tenants here as an example — if we’re good, and we are very good, we’re very high quality — if we continue to be good, we are all going to benefit from the new visitors to Orlando for Epic Universe,” Jaskiewicz said.
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He said with the addition of Epic, he expects Orlando will stay at the top of a very competitive industry.
“There is so much competition in our industry in South America and in the Middle East,” Jaskiewicz said. “Those companies are building state-of-the-art, and they are trying to take away our business, so that’s one of the things I think about. Now we have one of our home companies doing exactly that and so I’m so proud to be next to that.”
Jaskiewicz said they’re already seeing an uptick in business at ICON Park since Epic opened its gates.
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“I think we’ve seen 10, 15, 20% increase in visitation because of this, because people see ‘The Eye’ and they want to know what’s here and when they come here they see the fact that we have 20, 30 restaurants, we have 10 attractions of our own, it’s easy to get here, we don’t charge for parking, we don’t have a gate, so it’s really easy to get here,” Jaskiewicz said.
As to whether the park’s opening drums up more excitement for the future of tourism and development in Orlando, Jaskiewicz said they’re always excited.
“People who are in our industry are in it for a reason,” Jaskiewicz said. “We genuinely enjoy hospitality; we genuinely enjoy entertainment and helping produce that. We like that it helps us stay No. 1, being No. 1 in the world is something that’s important to us and we want to maintain that.”
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