My Day at Epic

Universal Orlando Resort Trip Reports
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In order to help others plan for Epic, I wanted to share my thoughts and experience.

After initially planning to stay at Helios for 2 nights and then move to WDW for 3 nights, we switched things up and decided to stay at WDW the entire time and drive to Epic for our first park day. The main reason for this change was that the reviews I had read of Helios and the process of direct entry into the park were underwhelming at best and staying at a WDW resort the extra nights would improve LL availability for our WDW days.

Our day at Epic: DW, DD10, DS8 and me (with Express Passes for all us)

Overview;

The attractions are great, but something seemed off to me either operationally or in the number of attractions. The walkways were not particularly crowded (noticeably less crowded than the WDW parks), but the lines for food and attractions were very long (2-3 hour standby lines for some rides). It even got to a point where the stand by line for Curse of the Werewolf was closed for a period of time for being “at capacity”. This indicates to me that (1) attendance is still being limited (this the less crowded walkways) and (2) despite limited attendance, there are not enough attractions to absorb the crowds. DW and I discussed this while at the park and tried to come up with theories.

Monsters Unchained was down all day until late afternoon so maybe that had some impact on the lines for other attractions. Hiccups was also down at one point mid-day, but for a much shorter period of time. So less down time would improve things.

I also wonder if Epic is at a stage where most (almost all) guests are of the mindset of getting in/on as many attractions as possible whereas some portion of WDW guests have been to the parks so many times that there are some guests who are taking a more relaxes (less attraction based) approach to the day.

Maybe Epic needs more shows and character meets to occupy guests’ time at the park? The ride situation is similar to DHS, but DHS has many more shows and character meets.

Maybe Epic also needs more practice with operations to get the rides throughput up to max capacity?

The Express Passes were great. Personally, I would not go back to Epic without Express unless things change. Express line waits were 15-30 minute even when the standby waits for many attractions were posted at 100-180 minutes.

Important note: The park was open until 10:00 pm on the day we were there. After 8:00 pm, the lines started to drop (significantly for some attractions). At 8:30 pm, we saw Hiccup’s Wing Gliders had a posted wait of 40 mins so we headed over and ended up waiting only 20 mins.

My grades:

  1. Attractions: The individual attractions are amazing. Grade: A (our favorites were Hiccup’s Wing Gliders, Mine Cart Madness, Monsters Unchained and Cure of the Werewolf)
  2. Theming: The theming is awesome. Grade: A+
  3. Food: Lunch and snacks were good, but lines for food were long and we didn’t do any TS so hard to fully evaluate: Grade: B (with our limited experience).
  4. Overall Experience: Overall park experience was challenging due to lines for attractions and food: Grade (with express pass): A, but if we didn’t have Express Pass, it would likely have been a D.

I’m happy to try to answer any specific questions so feel free to ask.

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Absolutely true! The entry is such a mess at the hotel for EPA from every video I have seen to date.

Epic only has 11 attractions and two stage shows. Plus, there is so much high tech there that everything breaks all day. Of those 11 rides only 3 are “high capacity” (SFR / Monsters / BatM)

For reference IOA has 18 rides and 3 “street” shows only / USF has 3 stage shows, 2 street shows and 12 rides

They are letting in about 30K - 40K according to theme park vloggers and online sources that are reliable.

They are offering less and still admitting about as many people into the park as they do the other two.

As excited as I am about Epic being open, IMHO, it might have been better to be 100% ready to open. They gave themselves a deadline to be open by Memorial Day 2025 to satisfy shareholders instead of being 100% ready.

IMHO at both Universal & Disney they philosophy seems to be - “just get it as ready as possible and we’ll work out the bugs and issues with the paying guests.”

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Yes, but Universal generally gets to that stage a lot faster than WDW.

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I just had kind of a crazy thought: what if allowing park hopping actually smooths out crowds more? I know the conventional wisdom is that park hopping will cause Epic to be busier. But …

Currently, people pay a premium for single days at Epic. So they must feel obligated to stay at the park all day. Whereas if they had park-to-park tickets, they might feel more liberated to leave when they’ve done what they want to do.

If nothing else, it might equalize attendance across the resort as people seek out shorter lines.

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Maybe. My concern is it will make Epic’s lines worse in the evening when the lines are currently shorter as guests hop from the earlier closings at IOS and USO to Epic.

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I 100% expect this. But it might be offset by more even crowds the rest of the day.

But I guess we’ll see.

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I still think A LOT of this is opening year logistics issues.

They are already announcing expansion plans for WWOHP Paris.

Why not have just taken an extra year to build Epic out completely and have more time for testing?? :roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

I get being open for 5 years and then expanding, but it’s only been 5 months since opening. Epic feels rushed.

WDW didn’t respond to Epic until after it had opened. If Universal had said the new park was going to open 2026 Disney still would’ve waited to announce the Magic Kingdom make over and, possibly, AK.

The only urgency seems to be, IMHO, a need to capitalize on the new attendance since COVID. When you tell shareholders a specific date they expect you to meet it. (Plus, all the $$$ penalties from construction for missing deadlines.)

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After listening to all this I have NO desire to see Universal Epic Universe. Lines are long, Ride break down often, Food is so, so, with little table service. Premium resorts have tripled in price, (Portofino from $200 to $800). Personally, I will stick with WDW. Know it well, Great room rate on special offers for AP members. Sit down restaurants beat the hell out of Universal though they have jumped in price as well. If you are a senior like us, we have NO need for character meals where prices are inflated. Maybe in 3 0r 4 years we may give Epic Universe a shot but for now, no way.

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I think they have a great park with mostly positive public impressions. I’m glad it’s open. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t have been able to experience these offerings at all, and would have missed out for this year. People should be aware of opening year woes, but even if they had waited a year it wouldn’t have been perfect. And UOR can make some money to cover their costs while they are tweaking. It’s a win-win, IMO.

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I was showing a Memory Maker in My Disney Experience I didn’t recall buying so I called to confirm it was active and length of stay version. When I called the cast member asked me what was bringing me to WDW and my response was Epic Universe. This made me think, “I wonder if its arrival has actually helped Disney at all and maybe why there isn’t a strong need to respond quickly.” I mean for those of who don’t live nearby, if we’re gonna fly all the way there for the new theme park (which I’m still very excited about and we have Express Pass and table service reservations so I’m not worried about long lines and I’ll go back when they add more!) we’re gonna visit WDW too while we’re there!

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Thanks for the report! I am thankful that 2026 express rates are starting out lower. I agree that my family would not be able to tolerate the lines without it. We also cannot afford an express pass that is twice the cost of a ticket.

I feel like the park could benefit from a parade, dark ride, more entertainment, more shows right away. I’m not sure if they underestimated things or just are ok with how it’s going. All new things struggle. Look at how often Rise of the Resistance still goes down. Look how long Hagrids lines Still are. We basically have an entire park full of new things. And the wait times reflect that. Yes it would be nice if they anticipated that and threw in some easy/tried and true rides.

I am glad to hear that the crowds don’t feel terrible. But the food being slow is a concern of mine. That should not be so hard. Although, Epic food is generally not your standard burger, fries and chicken tenders. So maybe more training is required, maybe more nuance? I can appreciate that.

I have no idea how ticket changes/hopping are going to change the crowds. I do think people will hop at night. But I’m not sure daytime numbers will get any better.

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Can I ask where you ate and if certain places had longer lines than others. We have younger kids so table service isn’t usually worth it to us. We are also thinking of ruling out any Dark universe restaurants since the theming seems to be quite spooky in those restaurants.

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Yeah, the Disney CFO just shared solid demand and revenue for the parks. (As expected anyway) But he also said the the opening of Epic has hurt other local competition. I guess some of the other parks like SeaWorld, etc.

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Hooligan’s: DW got Mac and cheese cone. Said it was ok (looked better than it tasted).

Spit Fyre Grill: DS8 and I each ordered salmon and we both liked it. DD10 had the steak bowl and she said it was good.

Frosty Moon: We all had ice cream late afternoon and it was delicious.

The kids had had another snack around dinner time, but I can’t remember where we did that.

The food lines appeared to be long everywhere. We had our meal around 1:30 pm and even at non-prime lunch time the line was about 20 minutes for QS. There was no line when we got the kids icees at 9:30 pm, but that doesn’t help much.

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This is good info. We are going in mid January and will have 3 park tickets and express pass. DD12(will be 13) is at the perfect age for universal and I double we’ll make it to Disney for a long time given her age and preferences for coasters and theming. We’re really prioritizing epic but will hit up all our favorite rides at IOA and USF. I usually try and make sure we explore a couple of new things each day as we’re usually pleasantly surprised but that otherwise DD would just want to do rides non stop. It takes effort to get out of those lines and explore other things. I do think certain YouTubers do a good job of that and I’m planning on that to help us space our time out and really enjoy the parks.

I really don’t know what to expect with the changes in park hopping when we go. I’ll watch the standby times in the universal app but this is why we bought express passes. Mostly I’ll be using weather to decide our plans. At this point I’m slightly bummed that I can’t overplan because it just is such limited data! Oh well. EP yo the rescue.

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I think both these things are true.

  • First year of a new park/land is going to have problems.

  • Epic should have added more street things. I wonder if they thought the Nintendo games and new wand locations would eat up more people? I’ve heard that wand2.0 spells take less tries.

I am fine though with when they opened. I hadn’t started watching the Disney/Universal parks until shortly before Star Wars opened. I remember lots of complaining and gnashing of teeth about all the Star Wars downtime. There is still discussions of what parts of the big ride are currently running. Is all parts of it back yet?

Some friends of our went to Universal maybe 4 months after HP opened, then about a year later. They said that so much had been fixed in that year.

So, DH said that we don’t want to visit anywhere until it has been open a year. Our Jan 2026 Epic Epic trip violates that, but we have to work around DD’s college now.

On our trip to DW at the tail-end of required masking we ate a LOT less in the parks than we’d planned. We like to graze, and the lines were usually not worth it. It wasn’t that the lines were particularly long, but there wasn’t enough servers. I remember once waiting for the family outside a shop for 25 minutes and the first person in the line at a snack place stayed the first person the entire time. That was mid-afternoon. If it was something we really wanted like an Orange Dole Whip, we waited in line.

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There are a couple of effects (like the cannons) that will likely never be exactly the way they were when the ride launched - which is normal when a new ride is introduced (see Indiana Jones and Expedition Everest as examples).

But other than that, the ride functions about as reliably as any other major ride in WDW. Which is to say, there is sometimes downtime and sometimes B mode, but most times I ride everything is working fine.

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I guess I could forgive ride downtime if the parks didn’t cost so much. You don’t see Disney giving any refunds, nor Universal. Those that have AP’s get screwed out of park time during MNSSHP and MVMCP. Disney going for more gold. Universal the same and even worse on event days. Now Igor is saying the classic Disney parks are going to be a changing. He right, not only are they going to change but they already have. For the better? That all depends on who you are. Soon Mickey and Minnies will be parading around with a drink in their hand and drunks will be abundant. Fights among park goers have escalated and courtesy has become a thing of the past. Why do we still go? For the memories I guess.

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100%!! A lot of fans forget this. I went to DAK the first few months is was open. It was pretty bad! There was almost nothing to do except the safari and the Bugs Life movie. (I am one of the few guests that ever saw dead Big Red!)

I was always expecting some issues at Epic, probably, continuing for another 6 - 12 months. Whenever they, finally, let APs in is when you’ll see the park is flowing and operating better. For now, every day is an experiment and each guest is a test subject…

Same! IMHO - It appears like a lack of shade and the big open area of the park entry make the park look less attractive. However, each portal / land looks great once inside.

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Very cool. I mean “cool” that you got to see it … I’m not celebrating a scene depicting the death of an elephant.

I liked Kilimanjaro Safaris much better with the poacher theme than the current version, but I must have been in the minority. I seem to like the stuff other guests want to get rid of like Alien Encounter and the original, more intense Countdown to Extinction.

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