In the six short years since the Tribute Store first debuted at Universal Orlando, it has become one of the most innovative and most beloved parts of the resort, popping up at more and more of its annual events. Now, it looks like the store is making another big leap forward – less than a week after its latest Mardi Gras iteration ended, it’s already being rebranded as the Jurassic World Tribute Store.
While we have no official details as of yet, the apparent theming of the store is not only sure to make it instantly popular with guests who already have dinosaurs on the brain, but it also places this latest permutation in a very interesting position within Tribute’s overall evolution (no pun intended). We’ve already covered in great depth the Tribute Store’s origins and development over the years, but it doesn’t hurt to just quickly touch upon it here, too: the shop first debuted at Halloween Horror Nights 2015 as a lightly themed retail space dedicated to the previous 25 years of that hallowed event. It was so successful, Universal wasted no time in having it return – and expanding it, adding on more rooms that were each fully devoted to one particular intellectual property or another, whether that be Stranger Things or Universal Monsters. Mardi Gras and Holidays Tributes followed in short order, bringing their own additions to the now-magic formula, most especially in the form of a sweets-and-baked-goods shop. The end result, as we entered into 2021, was a fully immersive space that, at times, could be a type of walk-through attraction of its own, but one that would only exist for a handful of weeks before being relegated to the dust bins of theme-park history (not unlike a Horror Nights haunted house, actually, which brings the store full-circle).
The Jurassic World version of the space also adds another interesting spin on the concept: should it last through most of the summer, to help celebrate the arrival of Jurassic World VelociCoaster at the next-door Islands of Adventure, it would essentially make Tribute a year-round presence at the resort. As it is, we’ve already seen a trend of having the store stay up for a longer period of time, such as last year’s Halloween outing, which ran for a whopping three months (from the end of July to early November), or this year’s Mardi Gras showing, which lasted nearly as long (the beginning of February to the beginning of May). In fact, should Horror Nights 2021’s version of the retail space open up in July again (which is not at all a given, admittedly – especially if Jurassic World proves to be successful with the public), it isn’t that difficult to see a mere two weeks off between the summer and Halloween renditions, just as what occurred between HHN and Holidays in 2020. This might even necessitate Tribute being put permanently on the park map! With all due apologies to the brand-new Universal Studios Store, we may just have a new, de facto flagship retail experience at Universal.
While we’re waiting for the Jurassic World store to throw open its doors, you can peruse our collective tribute to Tribute:
- Halloween Horror Nights’s Tribute Store overview
- Mardi Gras’s Tribute Store overview
- Inside Universal Orlando’s first-ever Holiday Tribute Store
- Mardi Gras 2021: Inside the best Tribute Store yet
What’s been your favorite incarnation of the Tribute Store? What would you like to see in this new Jurassic World one? Share your thoughts with 125,000+ other theme-park fans in our Orlando Informer Community on Facebook.
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