Politics
Just like Disney World, SeaWorld gets a boost from Epic’s opening down the street
There was a lot of speculation about what would happen when Universal’s multibillion-dollar Epic Universe opened. Would Epic eat up the attendance from its competitors in the theme park capital of the world? Or would a rising tide lift all boats?
That question was answered this week, as SeaWorld Orlando’s owner confirmed that attendance was not only up for the second quarter, but is currently up in the third quarter through this week.
Disney World also experienced record-breaking revenue for its most recent quarter after Epic opened, the Walt Disney Co. reported Wednesday during its earnings call.
Both SeaWorld and Disney executives previously said they expected Epic to drive more visitors to Orlando that, in turn, would benefit their attendance as well.
“We hope we really don’t have to discuss this topic again,” United Parks and Resorts CEO Marc Swanson said during Thursday’s earnings call. “We do not plan to make it a normal practice to discuss individual park performance information in the future.”
Universal’s owner, Comcast Corp., reported a 19% increase to $2.35 billion in revenue for the theme park segment in the second quarter following Epic’s opening. Epic’s five lands feature Harry Potter, Super Nintendo World and more.
During the United Parks earnings report, the company said attendance reached 6.2 million visitors, up nearly 1% year-over-year, while revenue fell $490 million, down about 2%. The company, which owns parks in Texas and California, dealt with “some of the worst weather we have ever experienced in the second quarter,” Swanson said.
Meanwhile, bookings at Discovery Cove, Orlando’s all-inclusive resort, were “up mid to high single digits for the remainder of the year,” Swanson added.
The parks will soon be pivoting to Halloween within the next few weeks, followed by the holidays.
“These special events continue to grow in popularity, and we expect this year’s events to be among our biggest ever,” Swanson said.
In other news, the company announced a $500 million share repurchasing program and also expects to sign two memos of understandings for new hotels by this year as it moves forward on long-discussed plans to add hotels. Swanson brought up its valuable undeveloped land, including in Orlando.
The company also cared for 500 animals that were sick or injured in the wild.
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Mills was a day-one Byron Donalds backer in the gubernatorial race.
A former House Speaker and current candidate for Governor is leading the charge for Republicans as scandal swirls around a Congressman.
Saying the “evidence is mounting” against Rep. Cory Mills, Paul Renner says other candidates for Governor should “stand up and be counted” and join him in the call for Mills to leave Congress.
Renner made the call earlier this week.
But on Friday, the Palm Coast Republican doubled down.
He spotlighted fresh reporting from Roger Sollenberger alleging that Mills’ company “appears to have illegally exported weapons while he serves in Congress, including to Ukraine,” that Mills failed to disclose conflicts of interest, “tried to fistfight other Republican members of Congress, and lied about his party stature to bully other GOP candidates out of primaries that an alleged romantic interest was running in,” and lied about his conversion to Islam.
The House Ethics Committee is already probing Mills, a New Smyrna Beach Republican, over allegations of profiting from federal defense contracts while in Congress. More recently, the Committee expanded its work to review allegations that he assaulted one ex-girlfriend and threatened to share intimate photos of another.
Other candidates have been more reticent in addressing the issue, including Rep. Byron Donalds.
“When any other members have been involved and stuff like this, my advice is the same,” said Donalds, a Naples Republican. “They need to actually spend a lot more time in the district and take stock of what’s going on at home, and make that decision with their voters.”
The response came less than a year after Mills, a New Smyrna Beach Republican, spoke at the launch of Donalds’ gubernatorial campaign.
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Staff writer Jacob Ogles contributed reporting.
The cold war between Florida’s Governor and his predecessor is nearly seven years old and tensions show no signs of thawing.
On Friday, Sen. Rick Scott weighed in on Florida Politics’ reporting on the Agency for Health Care Administration’s apparent repayment of $10 million of Medicaid money from a settlement last year, which allegedly had been diverted to the Hope Florida Foundation, summarily filtered through non-profits through political committees, and spent on political purposes.
“I appreciate the efforts by the Florida legislature to hold Hope Florida accountable. Millions in tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads. If any money was misspent, then it should be paid back by the entities responsible, not the taxpayers,” Scott posted to X.
While AHCA Deputy Chief of Staff Mallory McManus says that is an “incorrect” interpretation, she did not respond to a follow-up question asking for further detail this week.
The $10 million under scrutiny was part of a $67 million settlement from state Medicaid contractor Centene, which DeSantis said was “a cherry on top” in the settlement, arguing it wasn’t truly from Medicaid money.
But in terms of the Scott-DeSantis contretemps, it’s the latest example of tensions that seemed to start even before DeSantis was sworn in when Scott left the inauguration of his successor, and which continue in the race to succeed DeSantis, with Scott enthusiastic about current front runner Byron Donalds.
Earlier this year, Scott criticized DeSantis’ call to repeal so-called vaccine mandates for school kids, saying parents could already opt out according to state law.
While running for re-election to the Senate in 2024, Scott critiqued the Heartbeat Protection Act, a law signed by DeSantis that banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy with some exceptions, saying the 15 week ban was “where the state’s at.”
In 2023 after Scott endorsed Donald Trump for President while DeSantis was still a candidate, DeSantis said it was an attempt to “short circuit” the voters.
That same year amid DeSantis’ conflict over parental rights legislation with The Walt Disney Co., Scott said it was important for Governors to “work with” major companies in their states.
The critiques went both ways.
When running for office, DeSantis distanced himself from Scott amid controversy about the Senator’s blind trust for his assets as Governor.
“I basically made decisions to serve in uniform, as a prosecutor, and in Congress to my financial detriment,” DeSantis said in October 2018. “I’m not entering (office) with a big trust fund or anything like that, so I’m not going to be entering office with those issues.”
In 2020, when the state’s creaky unemployment website couldn’t handle the surge of applicants for reemployment assistance as the pandemic shut down businesses, DeSantis likened it to a “jalopy in the Daytona 500” and Scott urged him to “quit blaming others” for the website his administration inherited.
The chill between the former and current Governors didn’t abate in time for 2022’s hurricane season, when Scott said DeSantis didn’t talk to him after the fearsome Hurricane Ian ravaged the state.
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