Hello! Bottles of Sriracha are selling like, well, hot sauce — Huy Fong Foods’ popular version of the spicy condiment is changing hands for $80 on eBay amidst a chili pepper shortage. Today we're exploring:
In news that will delight coaster enthusiasts and weary parents alike, Disney’s Florida theme parks are reportedly the emptiest they’ve been for years, according to new analysis cited by the Wall Street Journal.
This year’s figures revealed that parkgoers who spent the Fourth of July at Animal Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom experienced shorter wait times for attractions, despite the much-loved firework displays and July 4th festivities going ahead as usual.
Queues to the kingdom
Disney’s sprawling Orlando kingdom of theme parks has contributed much to the company’s revenue in recent years. Indeed — as we charted last year — Disney’s "Parks, Experiences, and Products" division brought in some $7.4 billion for Q3 2022, more than a third of the entertainment giant's overall takings — hence why the wait time drops may have Disney execs concerned.
Thrill Data, which tracks queue times from the official My Disney Experience app, corroborate WSJ reporting and show thrillseekers at Disney’s Hollywood Studios Park and Magic Kingdom saw the most significant drops this Independence Day. Fans of the Star Wars rides at Hollywood Studios waited in line for just ~18 minutes on average, down from 37 minutes in 2022. Riders at Magic Kingdom, home to Space Mountain and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, queued for 25 minutes on average, almost half the wait time from 6 years ago.
Price hikes have certainly been a factor for the lighter crowds, with Disney looking to attract a smaller number of customers who may spend more money, and its ongoing war with Ron DeSantis won't have helped either. Another factor is simply that tourists have cooled on American theme parks more generally, with international travel more possible this year than during the pandemic.
Game on
Yesterday, a US federal judge gave Microsoft the green light to proceed with its planned $69bn acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard, effectively thwarting the FTC's attempt to halt the deal. The decision resulted in Activision Blizzard's share price surging to $92, the closest it's come to the $95-per-share price that Microsoft offered, suggesting investors expect the deal to go through.
Since its announcement in January 2022, the deal has encountered various obstacles, including a recent block by UK regulators, but this ruling paves the way for its completion before the agreed-upon deadline of July 18th. It also means Microsoft will avoid paying Activision the hefty $3 billion breakup fee that would have been incurred had the deal fallen through.
Leveling up
Activision Blizzard came into existence following a merger in 2008 between two prominent video game publishers, Activision and Vivendi Games. That brought together the creators of popular franchises such as Call of Duty and Guitar Hero with the talented developers behind World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch, establishing a behemoth in the video game industry.
However, just as the new gaming partnership was taking shape, a seismic shift was occurring with the rise of mobile gaming. As smartphones became ubiquitous, portable gaming devices were suddenly in millions of pockets. Recognizing the trend, Activision Blizzard dug into its pockets again, this time to acquire King, the producer of mobile sensation Candy Crush, for $5.9 billion in 2016. That laid the foundation for the company's mobile division, which last year accounted for nearly half of its $7.5bn+ of sales.
With mobile gaming still the fastest-growing segment of the entire market, per analytics firm NewZoo, Microsoft looks set to add a prestigious roster of games into its Xbox empire... with expertise in every format.
Take evasive action!SpaceX's Starlink satellites have been forced to perform more than 25,000 course corrections in the last six months to avoid collisions with other spacecraft and orbital debris, according to a report filed by the company at the end of June. That figure is double the number of maneuvers performed in the previous six months. Indeed, experts fear that the need to evade is only going to rise exponentially as the orbital environment gets busier — by 2028, some predict that SpaceX satellites would need to make as many as 1 million such maneuvers every six months.
The vastness of space…
May not be vast enough. Indeed, space debris — or space junk — is a growing problem. The European Space Agency currently tracks nearly 34,000 objects bigger than 10 centimeters in size, all classified as space debris. While some debris in lower Earth orbit can burn up on re-entry, debris left at higher altitudes of 36,000km+ can continue to orbit Earth for hundreds of years.
This space junk is contributing to the growing fear of an idea known as the Kessler Syndrome, in which a cycle of increased debris would cause increased collisions and so on and so forth, leading to Earth’s orbit becoming essentially unusable.
Fortunately, actual space collisions remain relatively rare — the last one came in 2021 when a Chinese satellite smashed into a rocket body left over from 1996. Aside from that, there have been no other unintentional collisions in the past 10 years. However, as SpaceX is planning to increase its current satellite count from 4,000 to 30,000 in the coming years, it seems that more and more collisions could be written in the stars.
• Sweden is set to build the world’s largest wooden city with some 7,000 office spaces and 2,000 timber homes — it’s unclear whether deceptively difficult flatpack instructions will be included for the $1.4 billion assembly.
• The inflationfixation is slowly fading, as the latest data reveals that prices rose 3% last month, down from 9% in June last year — marking the 12th straight month of cooling.
• $120 “rage rooms” where you can destroy homeware, furniture, and printers with sledgehammers are proving a smash hit in the US.
• AMC says more than 20,000 cinema lovers have already booked their seats for a Barbenheimer double bill next weekend.
• Have we hit peak Nessie? Charting Loch Ness Monster sightings through history.
• Is Harrison Ford’s starring role in the new IndianaJones movie an octogenarian anomaly? A statistical analysis from Stat Significant.
Off the charts: Which company, that we explored in our recent Sunday deep dive, is disbanding its legacy sports department? [Answer below].
