We have the one day express pass. We were surprised to see Potter and Mario were not first in the plan. Potter is the second attraction in the morning and Mario isn’t until later afternoon. Thoughts? The park is so new I worry its algorithm isn’t right?
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Unlimited express for Epic? Are you sure? What is the first thing? What is the start time?
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Multiple sources, including Universal’s own sales site, indicate there isn’t an unlimited option for Epic Universe.
The Touring Plan’s Web interface to the Epic scheduler does not have an option for Unlimited
The Touring Plan’s Android app does have an Unlimited toggle, but I have not tested to see if it has an affect.
Here is a simple plan for next week that has been optimized and it places Harry Potter later in the day. These plans are configured to start at normal park opening. Below that is an evaluation of the same plan but placing Harry Potter first. Note that putting Harry Potter first generates a 12 min increase in wait time. Changing the start time to take advantage of Early Admission would change the optimized plan to start with Harry Potter.
The reason for this is likely that Early Admission guests have flooded the queue by normal opening and you are better off to wait for the flood to dissipate. Also, which entrance you use will have an impact.
You are correct that Touring Plans has not yet gathered enough data points for their algorithm to produce results with high confidence.
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Are we thinking the planning tool is reliable for Epic? When planning my March trip a couple of months ago the planner was saying I could do Epic within 4 hours….so presume there was not enough data to give an accurate plan. Do we feel it is reliable enough now?
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No- I was there last week. The plan said I could do everything by mid-day, which was not even close. Perhaps if all rides are up and running smoothly it would work that way, but our experience was there was lots of ride delays and closures, which made all of the other lines longer, so the waits were longer than the plan had indicated.
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Here is a posting (#24) by Len (Head of Touring Plans) that can be found in this topic: Epic Universe Touring plan issues . There are a number of subsequent postings within the topic that discuss the status of the Epic Wait Time model in detail. It’s definitely worth taking the time to read.
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Apologies…one day. I guess I was dreaming 
Thank you. I’m thinking of going against the plan to what makes sense which is Potter first likely
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I wish it was a thing!
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I’m not even sure you could get on Mine Cart Madness in 30 minutes if you were a team member doing maintenance at 2:00 a.m.!
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Our day at Epic was the Wednesday after Labour Day. It was a disaster. We stayed at Stella Nova to get early entry. We were about 5 people back in our row at the taps. Everybody ran to Mario Kart. It was broken, so we hopped out of line and tried to get in line for Donkey Kong. Broken. Went to Dark universe and finally got on the dark ride. Phenomenal! DH did single rider for Werewolf.
we then went to Battle of the Ministry and waited 2 hrs. Amazing and the line was super cool too. We tried for Cirque Arcanus- waited 45 min and they cancelled it after the pre show due to technical difficulties. Had lunch in Harry Potter- it was very good.
We tried Stardust Racers. Closed. Watched the dragon show- excellent. Tried the carousel- broken.
At this point we were frustrated. We had driven 22 hrs and spent a lot of money for this one day. It was almost 3pm and we had done 3 rides and 1 show. Horrible for being at the gates for 7:15am. I went to guest services and honestly cried. I told him the story and showed him screen shots of the app showing how much stuff was closed. He gave us a bunch of express passes for the rest of the day. we were very grateful.
We went back and rode Hippogriff. Mario Kart. Donkey Kong. All were about 20-30 min waits with the EPs. Tried Cirque Arcanus again and this time made it about 1/2 through the show before they kicked us out again. Stardust Racers went back up around 7pm, so we rode them twice- each side once. We went back to Dark Universe as it is awesome at night. The dark ride was a walk on!
So it ended up being okay in the end, but the crowds were terrible and it seemed like the park couldn’t handle them with half the attractions down at any given time. We missed the Nintendo slow ride, 2/3 rides in Dragon and the carousel.
The park itself is stunning. It will look great as the greenery fills in. We won’t be back for a few years until they work the kinks out though.
Good luck!! Have a great time!!
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They really need to get this fixed! I’ve heard a lot of this lately.