Amusement Park Leader Scales With Flutter Apps

Entertainment
Flutter
Angular

We built Universal Destinations & Experiences one Flutter map for web and mobile, and turned its food and drink ordering app into a self-service kiosk for its restaurants, in time for the park openings.

map widget for web and mobile: 1
of build sprints and QA on ordering: 9 weeks
staff needed at low-traffic hours: 0

01The ask

Two frameworks, one park map, and a menu to move.

Universal Destinations & Experiences, part of Comcast NBCUniversal, runs theme parks and entertainment destinations around the world. Its park map was built twice, in Angular for the web and in Flutter for mobile, and every change cost double.

UDX also wanted more from mobile food and drink ordering in its Universal Studios and Universal Hollywood apps. The ordering had to become a self-service kiosk in the restaurants, cut staff dependency at low-volume times, bring in more revenue, and work with the restaurants’ existing point-of-sale systems.

In their words

“VGV is very adaptable. They do things we don’t even ask. Their team says ‘Here is some value we can provide, can we do this?’ and it’s great.”

Director of Global Product Management, Universal Destinations & Experiences Mikal Wessel

02The map

One Flutter map, running inside an Angular web app.

We built a unified Flutter map component as a shared widget for mobile and web, and embedded it in UDX’s existing Angular web application. Both sides now run the same map from one code base.

The work started as a proof of concept that showed Flutter’s performance on the web. It built confidence in cross-platform work and brought UDX’s web team around to the technology.

03The ordering

The phone ordering app, rebuilt as a kiosk.

We audited the code and services to rank features by readiness and priority, then ran nine weeks of build sprints and QA. New features give guests more information and choice, and put relevant options in front of them to lift engagement and revenue.

We rewrote the mobile food and drink ordering app as a Flutter kiosk that runs on Windows machines from a single code base. Guests order on their own, with no staff needed during low-traffic hours, and the build is ready to reuse for the next expansion.

The Tickets & Passes screen of the Universal app on a phone, with a 2 Days + 2 Days Free Promo Ticket card for Universal Studios Florida, Islands of Adventure, and Volcano Bay — Universal’s Flutter mobile app, home of the food and drink ordering.

04What changed

Built once, and shipped before the gates opened.

One map

Web and mobile share one code base.

Less duplicated code, and one map component for both the web and mobile experiences.
Buy-in

The web team came around to Flutter.

The proof of concept showed what Flutter can do on the web and won over UDX’s web engineering team.
Self-service

Kiosks that cover the quiet hours.

Guests order without staff at low-traffic times, and the mobile apps saw more use and more in-app transactions.
On time

Every deadline met.

All of the work launched on a very tight timeline, ahead of the park openings it was tied to.

05If you’re next

What we’d tell a team in Universal’s seat.

01
Prove it with one component before asking a web team to switch. A working map inside their own app answers more questions than a pitch.
02
Audit the code and services before the first sprint. The build then starts on what is ready and what matters most.
03
Ask what else the code base could run on. The ordering app became a Windows kiosk without a second code base to maintain.

Roll credits.

Who did what, and with which tools.

Client: Universal Destinations & Experiences
Our part: Application developmentCode and services auditWeb proof of concept
Platforms: WebMobileWindows kiosks
Built with: FlutterAngular
Timeline: Nine weeks of ordering sprints and QA