On May 7, 2015, a little bombshell announcement was dropped seemingly out of the clear blue sky: Universal and Nintendo were teaming up to create a brand-new theme-park land, primarily devoted to Super Mario Bros. and its decades-long depictions of the Mushroom Kingdom. It took the world by storm, and the global populace patiently began its very long wait.
Cut to January 13, 2020, the day that Universal, as part of the “Super Nintendo World Global Kick-Off Presentation,” announced the first of what would ultimately prove to be a mini-procession of opening dates: sometime in summer 2020, shortly before the advent of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo (which, at the time, were expected to begin on July 24). That would get scuttled, of course, once COVID-19 arrived, pushing the themed area’s debut back indefinitely – it wouldn’t be all the way until November 30 that a new date of February 4, 2021 would get revealed. Then all of this, of course, would get repeated all over again: an up-surge in coronavirus cases in Osaka Prefecture led to a state of emergency being declared and a new delay being announced; then, just on March 8, after the emergency restrictions were rescinded, the new date of March 18 got revealed.
All of which is to illustrate just how monumental of an achievement today is. After almost exactly six years of waiting and anticipating and fantasizing, Super Nintendo World is here (well, in Japan, at least), and we’re able to race against King Koopa or battle against Bowser, Jr. to our hearts’ content.
But that doesn’t mean this is the very first time that we got the opportunity to poke our heads inside of Mario’s domain and experience all of the attractions – representatives of Orlando Informer were able to attend the themed land’s months-long soft-opening period and gather lots of photos, information, and general impressions. We have all that laid out for you in our reviews, our guide page, and our videos, which you can find below:
- Super Nintendo World overview
- King Boo in the Mario Kart queue
- The Mario Motors gift shop
- Mario and Luigi meet-‘n-greet
- The queue of Yoshi’s Adventure
- Nintendo World’s interactive features
- The queue of Bowser, Jr. Shadow Showdown
Find out everything you ever wanted to know about the Nintendo-themed land in our complete guide, and then be sure to discuss it all with 120,000+ other die-hard Universal fanatics in our Orlando Informer Community on Facebook.
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