Our First Visit To Epic Universe Shows What Thrills And What Frustrates

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We share an honest first visit to Universal’s Epic Universe, from jaw-dropping portals and standout rides to the operational issues that turned simple plans into marathon waits. We leave you with clear, practical advice on Express Pass, timing, and who this park fits best right now. 

• Epic Universe layout in Celestial Park plus four immersive portals 
• Quick tour of Isle of Berk, Dark Universe, Ministry of Magic, Super Nintendo World 
• Where we stayed and what the drive feels like from other Universal resorts 
• Early entry strategy, security lines, and the morning rush to Nintendo 
• Best moments in Super Nintendo World, including Mario Kart and character sightings 
• Why the Ministry of Magic ride is a must for Harry Potter fans 
• Stardust Racers intensity and why the ride mix skews older 
• Express Pass pricing realities and how it changes the day 
• Extreme standby waits and how Express Pass is prioritized 
• Inaccurate wait times, ride downtime, and app frustrations 
• Areas that feel rushed or unfinished, including missing entertainment 
• Heat, lack of shade, and outdoor queue comfort tips 
• Who should visit now vs who should wait 

Okay, but before we get into that, please make sure you're subscribed to the show so you never miss a new episode. And if you are enjoying the show, I would love it if you left a positive review on Apple Podcast. And also share the show with any of your Disney loving friends. I would love to know if you have been to Epic Universe, if you've been, you know, your thoughts on it, what was it like? So you can send me an email, you can send me a message. There is a link in the show notes to follow all of that. Don't forget, I have a new podcast called Our Adventure Book that has come out. I would love for you to listen to it. If you want to watch on video, you can head over to YouTube and we are on video over there.

Transcript

Welcome And What We Cover

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Welcome to Disney Travel Tales. I'm your host, Jenny. Here we talk all things Disney destinations, be it the parks or cruises. If you love traveling to Disney or just dream about it, then you have found the podcast for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Today's episode is going to be about Universal's newest park, Epic Universe. We are going to just talk a little bit of overview about Epic Universe, and then I'm going to get into our personal experience when we visited Epic Universe last October. Okay, but before we get into that, please make sure you're subscribed to the show so you never miss a new episode. And if you are enjoying the show, I would love it if you left a positive review on Apple Podcast. And also share the show with any of your Disney loving friends, even though this episode's not about Disney, you know, Universal, Disney, Orlando area, cruising, Disneyland, any

Why Epic Universe Has Big Hype

SPEAKER_00 1:18

of that stuff. If you know anyone that loves that stuff, please share the show with them. Universal opened their newest park, Epic Universe, in the, I think it was the end of May in 2025. This park had a lot of hype surrounding it because just to have a new theme park in the Orlando area was really exciting for a lot of people. Just something new, something fun to experience, especially since there had been a ton of flyover videos of this park. So people were getting to see some of the just really interactive things, especially in the Isle of Burke with how to train your dragon and some of the super Nintendo Super Nintendo World attractions. People were super excited about it. Universal also sent a lot of influencers, influencers into the park early so they could get you know content, so they could have a great experience. If you are watching any influencer videos, I have to say, from my personal experience of being there, take it with a grain of salt. A lot of those videos, especially at the beginning, the park was not crowded at all. Influencers were the only people even there. So of course they're gonna have an amazing experience. They're gonna have amazing, you know, the rides are gonna be great, the food's gonna be great. So just take it all with a grain of salt. That's all I'm gonna say about that. But just something to think

Portals Lands And Celestial Park

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about. Epic Universe in total has a completely different feel than a lot of different theme parks. So there's a center area called Celestial Park, and it is very space, futuristic, themed, and that's kind of what they were going after. And then off of Celestial Park, there's going to be four different portals, and those lead you to different lands that are fully immersive and themed. And to get into these portals, you literally walk through a portal style door with the name of the land above the portal. It's very fun, very cool. And then at the very back of the park from the entrance, the opposite side, is a hotel of Universal built their own hotel that is literally in the theme park and has its access, its own access to enter the park. So this itself was this really cool new idea in this area. The four different portals in Epic Universe are How to Train Your Dragon Isle of Berg. And this is fully immersive as if you were stepped into the movies and into that Viking village life. It has three rides, shows, character meet and greets, and dining opportunities within it. There is Dark Universe, and Dark Universe is your classic monsters, Frankenstein, I don't know, Dracula, those classic style monsters. Once you step into this portal, you're kind of taking back in time when monsters roamed freely. There are two rides, they have an immersive like makeup class that you can take. They do have some characters wandering around, and then there are a couple of dining options there as well. You have the wizarding world of Harry Potter, the Ministry of Magic. When you step into this portal, you are taken back to almost the Fantastic Beast style 1920s Paris. And then at the back of this portal, you have you step into like the British Ministry of Magic from the Harry Potter movies. So it's more of like a 1990s style. Here you have one ride, they have a show that has animals like the Fantastic Beast, and then some dining opportunities as well. Also, I just want to add all of these portals have shopping as well. And then finally, you have this Super Nintendo world. And this one is, you know, you're stepping into the game, you're stepping into a Nintendo game, and there are three rides, character experiences, there's also interactive opportunities when you purchase a band, a power up band, which is an additional purchase. You will have opportunities to interact with this portal in a different way than just the guests who don't have the bands. And then there is dining opportunities here as well. In Celestial Park, you have a just really nice open area. There's some water features, they have a stage, quote unquote, stage where like outdoor music can be played, there's some dining options, there's a really beautiful carousel that almost feels like you're floating. There is, I don't know if it would be the flagship restaurant of the park, but the Atlantis restaurant is there and it's very large and beautiful, and it's a little bit pricier, so it's a nicer dining, you know, opportunity for you. And then over kind of on the side and between the Ministry of Magic portal and the Isle of Burke portal, you have Stardust Racers. And this is a very, very intense coaster for only, you know, if you don't like coasters, you're definitely gonna like not going to like this coaster. It is a racing coaster, so either are two cars next to each other racing at the same time. Universal also has two, I this like lower tier when it comes to the price point resorts over here as well: Terra Luna and Stella Nova Resort. They aren't in walking distance to the park, but they are closer to this park than any of the other Universal resorts. I also want to add that this park is actually decently far from the rest of

Location Timing And Early Entry

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Universal. So we stayed at Dockside Inn and it was a good 20-minute drive from our resort over to this park. This park really feels like it's in the middle of nowhere. We drove over there and I'm just like, the roads were new. Everything was very new in this area. We passed by the other two resorts as we were driving in, and it just has a completely different feel. If you've ever been to Universal before, the other two main parks are right next to each other, and then the Universal City Walk is right there as well. So there's just a lot going on, it's a lot more condensed. This park is very removed from all of that. So it's not necessarily a park you would be able to park up to, it would just take a lot more planning to get over to it. Something else about this park that we found very interesting is has a late opening time. So when we were visiting, the park didn't even open till 10 a.m. So another you know that's just something else you need to keep in mind if you're planning on visiting here. You definitely don't have to wake up early necessarily to get over here and to get started in this park. Universal Resort Guest will have early entry into the park. So it will open up a little bit before 10 for them, but typically the park is not fully opened until 10. But just check the app or check the Universal's website to keep up with times as well. Okay,

Our Trip Setup Without Express Pass

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so let's just get into our experience at this park. I'm actually gonna start with our highs and end with our lows, kind of opposite than what I did last weekend, because unfortunately, we have a lot more lows on this trip and they kind of are a little bit more in-depth than the highs are. So we stayed at Dockside Inn and we had a great experience there. We loved our room. We visited during a holiday weekend in October. I had it was kind of a last-minute trip. So when I went and purchased our park tip ticket for Epic Universe, Express Pass was already sold out. I do want to mention that Express Price Express Pass prices at Universal, they they fluctuate, they don't stay the same price. So depending on how what the demand is for them, the price will go up and they will sell out. And so when we I went to purchase it, it obviously was sold out, or I would have purchased it. And just keep in mind, too, so you don't get too much of a sticker shock, your Express Pass is going to cost more than your park ticket. So our morning there, it was a Sunday morning. We visited the park. We woke up, we got dressed, and packed up our room because we were checking out of that resort for the day, and then we headed over to Epic Universe. We drove our own car. Um, like I had mentioned before, it was quite the drive. It was much farther than I expected it to be. However, there was really not a lot of people driving at that time. I had gone downstairs to the desk at Universal and asked them which they thought would be better if it would be driving or the bus. And the girl working, I just want to mention, was very young. She did say that she thought, even though I would be sitting in a ton of traffic, that driving would be quicker because the bus can fill up quickly and then you have to wait for another bus. However, it was a Sunday morning, there was literally no one on the road. So maybe she was just thinking, if it's a weekday, maybe the traffic is worse, but for us it was fine. Since we were a resort guest, we had early entries, so the park was going to open at 9 a.m. for us, so we decided to get there at 8 a.m. I just wasn't sure what the line was going to look like or just how busy the park was going to be. And I had seen online that a lot of people will line up early to get through security kind of first to get over to the portal that they want to get to. And since we didn't have express pass and I didn't think we were going to stay until park close, I just figured let's get there early, let's get done what we want to do, and maybe we can skip some of these really long lines. We ended up getting to the park around 8 15 a.m. and the line for security was already almost to the parking lot, which is pretty far, I will say. So that was a little bit shocking, especially since when we pulled in the park, the parking lot was empty. So I guess a lot of people were just using the universal transportation at that point, but there was already a lot of people in line. They did open security early, security was super easy to get through. I actually prefer the way they do security at Universal over Disney. It's a lot less stressful. You just stick your bag in a scanner and it goes through, and you don't even have to worry about buzzing anything. Once we got into the park, we took some pictures at the main portal. So you do walk through a main portal when you walk into Epic Universe. It's really beautiful. This park is really, really fun to walk around and nice to look at. And then we went over to Nintendo World with pretty much I think everyone else that was entering the park to get in line for that. So they will hold you back a little bit before you actually get released into the wild. So we were held back for a bit, then they released us and we got to kind of go in a little bit closer to the portal. They actually held us decently far back from the portal, I guess, to just avoid a lot of crowding up right at the entrance to the portal. So from here, I'm just gonna give my highlights and my lowlights of this trip. That was just kind of what it was like when we first got there and how that process kind of worked.

Highlights Nintendo And Ministry Ride

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So one of our big highlights of the trip was, of course, the Super Nintendo World Portal. This portal was so gorgeous. It's super immersive. If you are a Nintendo fan, you are going to love this portal. When you go into the park, or you go into the portal, you go up at escalator, but it feels like you're in the green tube. So it's making that like tube noise that it does in the game. It lets you off the escalator into Peaches Castle, which you walk through. There's pictures, it's really, really fun to look at, and then it kind of walks you out into this overlook of the park. And this park is beautiful. It has the question mark boxes, it has the like eating piranha plant, it has little coins, you know, going around. The music is so great. It was just really fun to kind of see and look at. We spent a lot of time over in this area because this portal was one of the main reasons we were visiting the park. I had brought my oldest son, who's always been a huge Nintendo fan. I'm a huge Nintendo fan. I grew up with it. So we fully enjoyed this portion of the park. We loved the Mario Kart ride. It's fantastic. I really wish we could have written it more than once because I felt like after I wrote it the first time, I really needed to ride it again to kind of understand it. It was a bit confusing because you're wearing like these 3D glasses. So you have stuff going on in your glasses, and then you have stuff going on on the ride, but it's so much fun. The line, the cue for that line ride is fantastic. Just you're in Bowser's castle, you're in his like special rooms, so much fun. Like we absolutely loved it. But overall, seeing the characters scene Mario and Luigi here, even after we finished everything that we were going to do in the park, we actually just came back to this area to kind of take it in and to look at it again. And if you we didn't purchase the power bands, but if you did, I think you would really, really enjoyed getting to because you can hit the question boxes, you can get underneath them and hit them. And if you have your power band, it's just very interactive and fun. Another highlight of the trip for us was the Ministry of Magic ride. This ride was probably one of the best rides I've ever been on. Some of the Harry Potter rides in the older Universal Parks made me really motion sick, and as someone who never gets motion sick, it's kind of strange. So I was a little bit worried when we were standing in line for this ride, how it was going to make me feel. But this ride is so fantastic. If you are a Harry Potter fan, you 100% have to do this ride because you're just going to love it. I don't want to give any secrets about it away, but it is top-notch, fantastic. They really hit it out of the park with this ride. Staying in the same area, another high was just being in the Ministry of Magic. This building is amazing. Walking into the building, you go with the flue powder, so it just kind of like makes it look like you're disappearing. They really spared no expense when it came to all of the details in this building. It is amazing. We we just stood there. I mean, part of the line for the ride is in this building, so we stood in that for a bit, which I will go into later. But this room, this building is so much fun, and just we thoroughly loved being in it. In general, a high for us for this park would just be the rides. The rides were much more geared towards older kids or adults, and so we really enjoyed that. We loved every ride that we rode for the most part. I'll go more into that later, but we really enjoyed the ride. Stardust Racers is the most intense, craziest, fun coaster I've ever been on. It is terrifying. Like I love coasters. This ride was terrifying, it was so scary, but it's just really intense and really fun. And we loved it. But just all the rides, they were really immersive. I just, it was nice having options that were definitely geared for older kids and adults. It just felt really good, but that is definitely something to think about. If you have little kids, you don't want to visit this park unless you're gonna spend all of your time in Isle of Burke or the Super Nintendo world. I just don't know if this park is made for little kids at all. There, the rides are a bit intense and some of them are even scary. I would say another high for me in this park was just how clean it was. It was, you know, it's new, so it definitely had that newness feel. It was very clean, everything. The gift shops were really nicely stocked, really clean, organized well. Even the cues all just were really fun. I I enjoyed walking around and just kind of taking it all in. It did have a great newness feel to it. And then another high I just want to mention real quick was a lot of the rides had single rider lines, which I thoroughly appreciated since we did not have the express pass. I kind of told my daughter, if you want to ride anything, you're just gonna have to suck it up and we're gonna have to do single rider so we can get more rides done. And she did, and it ended up being great, and it cut our ride time so short. Okay, so let's get to some of the lows of the trip.

Lowlights Lines Tech And Heat

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And unfortunately, this portion of the podcast is going to sound really negative, but I just want to be honest with our experience in this park because the last thing I want is you to visit this park and have the same experience we did for the most part. So, my number one low is us not having an express pass, and that is partially my fault, but I also want to mention express pass is crazy expensive, and so I think a lot of people visiting the park, it's not even going to be in their budget, so it's not even going to be an option for them. And this park, in my opinion, I would never go to again without the express pass. The lines for the rides are insanely long. Like I've never had this experience at any park I've ever been to. And I've been to the old Universal parks without Express Pass and done just fine. But this park, and maybe it was the day we were there, but our experience was terrible. Universal does not pri they prioritize Express Pass a little bit too much. So whereas Disney and the Fast are in the lightning lanes, yes, you do get to go in sooner, but they try to make it a little bit even to make it a better experience for the guests who are not purchasing it. Universal does not care. I will just say they let Express Pass come through nonstop. So we ended up waiting four hours, four and a half hours for the Battle of Ministry ride. And that has to be one of the worst experiences I've ever had on a quote unquote vacation. Um, it was awful. And as we got closer up, I just noticed they just let Express Pass go through. They never stop them. It is a constant stream. There was a party in front of us of like three adult women celebrating their birthdays. They were like sisters with their adult children. They literally cut their party in half. So they let some of them go through, and an express pass family walked through, and they literally made two of them step back and let the express pass get in between their family. And even the people in the express pass line were like, really? And the guy was like, Yes, just go, go, go. And he was kind of rushing them through. It was bizarre. So obviously, when we all got back in line together, that family, the express pass family, just let this these two people get with their group because that was insane. I have never seen anything like that in my life. With the Donkey Khan ride, it was posted 30-minute wait. We waited almost two hours for it, which moves into my other low. The ride time wait times were not accurate at all, not even close. And it wouldn't tell you when a ride was broken down. So we would walk all the way over to a portal to do a ride because it had a low wait time to get there and it was broken down. So that was also very frustrating. The I always thought Disney technology was bad. Universal, for our experience, was a thousand times worse. It was awful. The waiting, the waiting, the waiting. When you were standing in line, if a ride broke down, they didn't tell you, you just stood there. And that's what happened happened with us with the Donkey Khan ride. We got in line and it said 30 minutes. Well, obviously, the ride had broken down while we were there, and we were already so far into it. I just didn't even know what to do at this point. The single rider line was so far backed up, and this was only our second ride of the day. So the park had just opened. So it just was a mess. I just think if you're gonna spend the money to go to this park, the only way you're gonna enjoy it is with Express Pass, which is unfortunate because it is going to cost you thousands of dollars. But it is the only way to do this park. Another low for us in general. Is I just feel like this park was really rushed. There was so much hype about the opening of it, and it I feel like Universal kind of wanted to compete with Disney like, hey, we're gonna open when we say we're gonna open and we're not gonna be late, like you're always late. They really should not have opened this park. Rides are going down all the time. Some of the rides I don't even know how to put this. So the monsters unchained ride. I had heard so many great things about this, you know, obviously from influencers or theme park podcast. I was so excited to ride it. This ride is mid at best. You can literally see all the like functioning parts of the monsters on this ride. So it completely takes you out of the moment. That was very strange to me. I was like, why can I see this mechanism that's holding this monster? It's supposed to be scary, and I can obviously see it's attached to something. The lighting wasn't great, like on this ride in particular. So they're just little things like that around the park. The Harry Potter area feels so unfinished to us. They're supposed to have a show with like magical animals. It was down the whole time we were there. So, really, the only thing you can even do over there is get a butterbeer and go ride a ride. Like it just felt so unfinished. And it has the same shops as the Harry Potter area in the old parks has. So it's not even anything new. It had the same sweet shop and it just didn't feel original at all. It is beautiful, but it's just not super original, and it just didn't, I don't know. It just didn't have what we thought it was going to have. One of the areas that I think is actually really fantastic is the Isle of Berg. We went over there, it's really beautiful. My kids were never really into that IP, so we didn't really do anything there. We did want to ride some of the rides, but the wait times were over an hour long, so we just were not gonna stand in that because if it said that, I knew it was gonna be way longer because again, the app was completely wrong on white times. So our final low of this trip would probably be that this park has zero shade. It was so hot, and we went on October. I can't even imagine what it's like in the summer. We did go on a really hot day, but there's no shade, and the rides that were had outdoor queues that we were in did not have fans, and so there were times it felt like we were in a sauna, like we were with all of these people, we're all crowded together, and it was so hot with no moving air. People got out of line because they got sick, they were like getting nauseous. So, and then when you're in the center part, there's just a lot of concrete with no shade, so it is just the sun and the heat are just beaming off that concrete and just bouncing back at you. So I definitely would be prepared with a hat, wear loose-fitting clothes, bring an umbrella maybe for some shade options. But being out in the heat and the sun and just literally trying to escape to find some shade was pretty rough. I will say overall, the Nintendo portal is amazing. It had shade, it had food, it had rides, it did need to have maybe accurate times on the rides, would have been nice. But other than that, that portal is definitely worth visiting the park alone. If you do have an option or a way that you can visit and you do have little kids, just take them here and maybe over to Isle of Burke and then just leave. You don't even have to do the other two portals because even though the Ministry of Magic ride is fantastic, if you don't have Express Pass, there's no way I would ever recommend standing in that line. My daughter was actually furious at us because she does not like Harry Potter. And we got off that ride and she looked at me and she was like, You've got to be joking me because she just didn't understand it. And while it was like neat to her, she didn't understand the storyline, and so she just was very upset. She was like,

Final Advice Express Pass Or Wait

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I just want to leave this park. So, my overall, my two biggest takeaways from this park and this trip and our experience would be buy express pass, just splurge on it, it's gonna be worth it. I 100% promise, because I saw families who had express pass and they were having the time of their life, so there you go. And then I would wait. I think this park has a lot of flushing out to do for their problems. I did see on a like Facebook group for Universal one day that ever almost every single ride was down, and someone was really upset, and they were like, I don't even know why I'm here. Like everything is down. So I think this park just has a lot that needs to be fixed before it's really gonna be a park that I would recommend visiting if you are going to go as part of like a bigger Disney trip or a bigger Universal trip. I would just have low expectations for this park. Um, also, another thing with the express pass is when you stay at one of the premiere hotels at Universal, you get express pass to the other parks. This park is not included, and this park has its own express pass, so you have to buy it completely separate. Whereas with the other parks, you can buy a two-park express pass and use it at both parks. This is not included in that, so it really is going to cost you a lot more money. So, in order for you to have the best experience, I just think you need to wait. I think that's the best thing because one day this park is going to be amazing. Once they can just work out all the kinks and they can get things running more like flowing more smoothly, I think it's gonna be a really great park. Plus, uh Universal bought some more land around this park, so they are going to be expanding it, which I think will be fantastic and a great experience for their guest.

Share Your Take And Closing

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Okay, so that is all for the show. I would love to know if you have been to Epic Universe, if you've been, you know, your thoughts on it, what was it like? So you can send me an email, you can send me a message. There is a link in the show notes to follow all of that. Let me know what you think about this park. Don't forget, I have a new podcast called Our Adventure Book that has come out. I would love for you to listen to it. It's available anywhere podcast ours. So go ahead and give that a listen. If you want to watch on video, you can head over to YouTube and we are on video over there. Other than that, next Monday I'm going to be doing a deep dive into Bay Lake Tower and our experience staying there on our last trip. So make sure that you come back for that. And until then, this is Jenny and the All Your Disney travel dreams country.