Universal's Epic Universe General News & Discussion

[GA-MBIT]

Hiccup's was one of the most reliable, quickest loading at the previews I went to. Sad to see it in this state already.

But I wish they considered opening with at least 1 ultra reliable ride system like a boat ride or another indoor dark ride other than Yoshi (well partially indoor).

Wonder if they're talking about fast tracking something to help with capacity but, seeing how the storms leave all but 4 rides operational, they've gotta do something.

Luigi is needed asap. Yoshi goes down consistently for rain, Mine Kart has terrible capacity, and Mario Kart isn't very good, especially for the 75+ minute wait it is always sitting at.

An actually indoor, and far more streamlined shooting gallery dark ride would be the best thing for the current Mario Land we have. It would certainly help spread out the Nintendo crowds at least a little wider.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

Hiccup's was one of the most reliable, quickest loading at the previews I went to. Sad to see it in this state already.

But I wish they considered opening with at least 1 ultra reliable ride system like a boat ride or another indoor dark ride other than Yoshi (well partially indoor).

Wonder if they're talking about fast tracking something to help with capacity but, seeing how the storms leave all but 4 rides operational, they've gotta do something.

I love Epic, but even with the existing attractions operating at peak efficiency, park capacity is not great. Going back to Epic's construction, I and others were significantly concerned over it with attractions like Yoshi & Donkey Kong being way too low capacity for the demand they were expected to receive.

I'm all for innovative attractions, but there's also a need to have attractions that are far more consistent in operations and capacity so even when guests miss out on the innovative ones, you have backup experiences and guess feel fulfilled with their day.


This is theoretical hourly capacity.

This graph shows "peak efficiency" capacity on an 12-hour operating day with no weather related impacts. This also assumes that all shows take place without being cancelled, which Epic is unfortunately seeing 1-2 a day for Cirque/Untrainable.
FYI - I excluded Animal Kingdom's various exhibits and walkthroughs (like Maharaj and Gorilla Falls) to have a somewhat fair comparison. Also excluded parades and nighttime shows since not all parks feature one.

I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I think this is why some of us on here have brought up the idea of wanting more "traditional" dark rides at the Universal parks. Less likely to see downtime and weather related shutdowns, while offering something UOR doesn't have much of yet.

 

[OrlandoGuy]

I love Epic, but even with the existing attractions operating at peak efficiency, park capacity is not great. Going back to Epic's construction, I and others were significantly concerned over it with attractions like Yoshi & Donkey Kong being way too low capacity for the demand they were expected to receive.

I'm all for innovative attractions, but there's also a need to have attractions that are far more consistent in operations and capacity so even when guests miss out on the innovative ones, you have backup experiences and guess feel fulfilled with their day.

View attachment 27297
This is theoretical hourly capacity.
View attachment 27298
This graph shows "peak efficiency" capacity on an 12-hour operating day with no weather related impacts. This also assumes that all shows take place without being cancelled, which Epic is unfortunately seeing 1-2 a day for Cirque/Untrainable.
FYI - I excluded Animal Kingdom's various exhibits and walkthroughs (like Maharaj and Gorilla Falls) to have a somewhat fair comparison. Also excluded parades and nighttime shows since not all parks feature one.

I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I think this is why some of us on here have brought up the idea of wanting more "traditional" dark rides at the Universal parks. Less likely to see downtime and weather related shutdowns, while offering something UOR doesn't have much of yet.

These are interesting graphics. For all the touting of Hollywood/Animal Kingdom as half-day parks, these charts suggest what, half to 3/4-day parks over at UOR?

I’d argue Epic doesn’t actually need any filler attractions…those already exist (Yoshi, Werewolf, Carousel, Frye Drill, Dragon flat ride…heck I’d even argue DK) but are carrying the load of major headliners because they’re new. Now that the park is open, you won’t see smaller experiences added because those will be harder to advertise. More E-tickets will help spread everything around and let the role players fill in the way they’re supposed to, which was smart on Universal’s part because you really only get one chance in a park/land’s development to add smaller experiences, and it’s all in the upfront development.

 

[Rhian]

Excuse the bitterness, but horrible operation day at epic atm.

Started the day on Monsters with not much of a problem except both preshows were down, still not a huge deal.

Tried to get on stardust but was delayed for a grand bit of time, also seems only green is running today for whatever reason. Had to leave.
Hiccups went down while we were in line and also had to leave that. According to the app it’s still down and it’s been like that for the past two hours.
Hopped in line for Mario Kart, waited an hour and then hit with another delay of about 45 minutes. Not sure how much of this I can use to make a case for a refund later but I saved some of the ride status from the app on my phone. Don’t really like to complain but when you spend a lot of money and time to come to the park you expect some delays, but nothing like it’s been today.

Honestly awful.

It was pretty bad and the afternoon storm which came in didn’t help either. I spent the day hoping the yellow side of Stardust would come online at some point but never did. That coaster doesn’t feel the same when both sides aren’t running.

Hiccup’s was operating that morning until sometime after noon and never came back up. The ride wasn’t running at all until a few hours before park close and finally some trains started running empty and even a few times with ride techs onboard. It was a bit of false hope to think the ride would open for the last couple of hours though that’s exactly what happened a few times during previews.

Even the windmill on the Burning Blade wasn’t spinning though I’m not sure if it was related to the inclement weather. It continued to burst into flames at regular intervals and later that evening was spinning again.

Epic certainty needs another high-capacity ride or two to handle the influx of crowds shifting as a result of weather delays. Once the weather turns almost half the rides go down and the rest, which are either hit or miss with their reliability or can’t adequately handle that many people rushing to them at once, end up creating the perfect environment for a less than stellar experience. A lot of enthusiasm for the park dies back during excessive amounts of waiting.

 

[Captain Spaulding]

Since everyone states the duel coasters racing makes Syardust goat category for them, agree or not, removing that does make it a slightly above average coaster.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

These are interesting graphics. For all the touting of Hollywood/Animal Kingdom as half-day parks, these charts suggest what, half to 3/4-day parks over at UOR?

This chart isn't the best way to measure how much time you can experience a park in, more so to show that the park needs a bit more capacity when its major E-tickets are plagued by technical and weather delays. The park has a lot of experiences, but those experiences are unfortunately hurt by lower throughput.

I think Epic Universe is a full day park once everything is working efficiently, but right now it's rough.

I’d argue Epic doesn’t actually need any filler attractions…those already exist (Yoshi, Werewolf, Carousel, Frye Drill, Dragon flat ride…heck I’d even argue DK) but are carrying the load of major headliners because they’re new. Now that the park is open, you won’t see smaller experiences added because those will be harder to advertise. More E-tickets will help spread everything around and let the role players fill in the way they’re supposed to, which was smart on Universal’s part because you really only get one chance in a park/land’s development to add smaller experiences, and it’s all in the upfront development.

I think Celestial Park could benefit from additional flat rides, but the portals themselves have a decent amount of "filler" content in the A-C category as well as supplemental experiences like character interactions and what not. If the park can get 2 high-capacity indoor experiences and additional shade structures, they will be fine for a decade before touching the large expansion pad.

 

[velocicoasterswife]

I haven't been yet (going for my HHN trip in September), but I have to say, from the outside looking in, all the major problems seem to feed into one another so severely that fixing one of them would be a huge help. I think they should prioritize longer hours - the park has awful capacity, inconsistent operations, no shade, a complicated nighttime package that nobody ever gets to see, and for the entire back half of August it's only open for ten hours a day, literally all of which are going to be in miserable daylight? Getting capacity up is going to be a long-term technical issue, same with getting everything to ride reliably all day long, shade is going to take either some time or a decent amount of effort. But there's truly no good reason for these hours, which make all of those problems considerably worse.

 

[Alicia]

I haven't been yet (going for my HHN trip in September), but I have to say, from the outside looking in, all the major problems seem to feed into one another so severely that fixing one of them would be a huge help. I think they should prioritize longer hours - the park has awful capacity, inconsistent operations, no shade, a complicated nighttime package that nobody ever gets to see, and for the entire back half of August it's only open for ten hours a day, literally all of which are going to be in miserable daylight? Getting capacity up is going to be a long-term technical issue, same with getting everything to ride reliably all day long, shade is going to take either some time or a decent amount of effort. But there's truly no good reason for these hours, which make all of those problems considerably worse.

My take on it is opening later and closing earlier allows them to work on and correct some of the issues that are causing the ride downtimes in the first place.

 

[UAN17]

Some of these rides are technical masterpieces so I can understand the downtime, they'll work that out. Annoying when you're visiting but I can't complain when they're pushing boundaries.

The lack of planning around rain was a strange choice.

My hope is they're maximising profitability right now for the right reasons - to justify expansion, and not to be greedy. There'll be many who are having dreadful days at the park which is obviously unfair.

What I don't understand, same for Disney really, is why they don't bulk out lands with flats. I understand in some lands, it would be immersion breaking so it's a no go, but for others I don't think there's an excuse. These rides are CHEAP for companies like Disney and Universal. Literally a few million for a custom themed flat - regional parks who earn a lot loss manage to pop them up. I couldn't understand why Disney, with Toy Story Playland, didn't add 2 or 3 themed flats to really bulk out capacity and experiences to a park that needed it. They had one ready made - the carousel from DCA. It just feels like such an easy win.

Flats aren't going to change your life, but they're important fillers between the highlights. There's also some very very good flat rides out there. One of the most fun rides I've been on at Port Aventura - Magic Fish.



There's a world of easy theming opportunities in lands like Nintendo.

But yeah, more dark rides needed for sure. And to be honest, the rain was so bad a few weeks ago, even constellation carousel eventually flooded & closed.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

My take on it is opening later and closing earlier allows them to work on and correct some of the issues that are causing the ride downtimes in the first place.

But it seems like they are running the park currently as late as 10PM (unofficially announced)? Unless they see August as a mini-downtime period between the heart of summer and a boost expected by HHN trips?

What I don't understand, same for Disney really, is why they don't bulk out lands with flats. I understand in some lands, it would be immersion breaking so it's a no go, but for others I don't think there's an excuse. These rides are CHEAP for companies like Disney and Universal. Literally a few million for a custom themed flat - regional parks who earn a lot loss manage to pop them up. I couldn't understand why Disney, with Toy Story Playland, didn't add 2 or 3 themed flats to really bulk out capacity and experiences to a park that needed it. They had one ready made - the carousel from DCA. It just feels like such an easy win.

Flats are unfortunately the easiest "major" cost to cut in development. But I 100% agree with you, Disney & Universal need to add more of them throughout the parks. The ones that do exist (Constellation Carousel, Caro-Seuss-el, heck even Aladdin with its awful placement) provide a lot of great kinetic energy to the park. As long as they're done tastefully, they will be received well.

 

[Disneyhead]

Some of these rides are technical masterpieces so I can understand the downtime, they'll work that out. Annoying when you're visiting but I can't complain when they're pushing boundaries.

The lack of planning around rain was a strange choice.

My hope is they're maximising profitability right now for the right reasons - to justify expansion, and not to be greedy. There'll be many who are having dreadful days at the park which is obviously unfair.

What I don't understand, same for Disney really, is why they don't bulk out lands with flats. I understand in some lands, it would be immersion breaking so it's a no go, but for others I don't think there's an excuse. These rides are CHEAP for companies like Disney and Universal. Literally a few million for a custom themed flat - regional parks who earn a lot loss manage to pop them up. I couldn't understand why Disney, with Toy Story Playland, didn't add 2 or 3 themed flats to really bulk out capacity and experiences to a park that needed it. They had one ready made - the carousel from DCA. It just feels like such an easy win.

Flats aren't going to change your life, but they're important fillers between the highlights. There's also some very very good flat rides out there. One of the most fun rides I've been on at Port Aventura - Magic Fish.



There's a world of easy theming opportunities in lands like Nintendo.

But yeah, more dark rides needed for sure. And to be honest, the rain was so bad a few weeks ago, even constellation carousel eventually flooded & closed.

I think they actively avoided Dumbo style "spinners", kind of.

There is one spinner, and it goes upside down.

Universal is gonna Universal.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

I think they actively avoided Dumbo style "spinners", kind of.

There is one spinner, and it goes upside down.

Universal is gonna Universal.

Hoping they revert course and add one as a short-term capacity improvement. Park Lore has a great concept for one to be located in Celestial Park.


Speaking of capacity, I'm trying to determine park capacity/guest attendance by working backwards. Len at Touring Plans is working on a similar approach since he too is interested in what UOR is doing attendance-wise. I'll add additional detail in the spoiler below. If anyone wants to help or check my math/logic, gladly appreciate it!

Spoiler: Epic Universe Estimated Attendance Results

Quick summary on how this is all calculated - essentially we take a "live" look at what wait-times currently are (these results are for today at 4:00PM). Based on the posted wait-time, we can calculate backwards how many guests are in the standby line. We know Universal tends to inflate wait-times, so we roughly assumed that waits are exaggerated by 25%. We also know that the rides are not operating anywhere near "perfect" efficiency, so the Operating Efficiency column drops the attraction's hourly capacity for a more realistic output. From there, we assume that any posted await above 5 minutes means that the attraction is "full" with active riders, so we add those guests as well into the calculation.

Top chart has various scenarios to estimate what the park is handling at the moment. For example, it's typical to see 40-45% of park guests actively experiencing an attraction or in a queue for it. So based on all of our backwards math for each individual ride, we can assume that there are roughly 2.6K guests on attractions (including shows) and another 6.9K in queues. So at 45% participation, we can roughly estimate that park attendance at the moment is approx. 21K guests or so. Based on total daily expected capacity (barring any weather delays) the average guest can experience about 7.9 attractions today. This does not take into consideration walking time, early park admission, eating and any other non-attraction activities.

This is a very rough calculation, but just wanted to share it here as I'm sure some of you are interested in figuring out what crowds are like at the moment.

 

[Mad Dog]

I've been trying to get a handle on the attendance, looking at Thrill's data, which unfortunately, can only track half of the ticket plans/types.
I'm guessing they're getting an average of 25,000 to 30,000 plus just about every day through now. That number would give them 9 to 10 million a year if it continues, which I doubt. But Epic, like IOA and USF, isn't built to handle those kind of crowds comfortably, as we saw in 2022 with USF & IOA. And with the huge amount of technical and weather downtime, Epic's lines, except for Monsters, are a mess. I think there's way too much daily Epic attraction downtime and technical decreased attraction capacity, to try to use ride capacity to estimate attendance. Plus, guests don't all walk in the park at the same time, so the numbers spread out a bit. But those capacity problems will remain, even when everything starts working better. The only near hope is that attendance will decrease on most weekdays soon, since the future ticket sales don't look all that great, and there appear to be lots of available rooms in the non deluxe hotels, with a lot of AP rates at $90 to $120 a night for non HHN weeks out there.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

I've been trying to get a handle on the attendance, looking at Thrill's data, which unfortunately, can only track half of the ticket plans/types.
I'm guessing they're getting an average of 25,000 to 30,000 plus just about every day through now. That number would give them 9 to 10 million a year if it continues, which I doubt. But Epic, like IOA and USF, isn't built to handle those kind of crowds comfortably, as we saw in 2022 with USF & IOA. And with the huge amount of technical and weather downtime, Epic's lines, except for Monsters, are a mess. I think there's way too much daily Epic attraction downtime to try to use ride capacity to estimate attendance. Plus, guests don't all walk in the park at the same time, so the numbers spread out a bit. But those capacity problems will remain, even when everything starts working better. The only near hope is that attendance will decrease on most weekdays soon, since the future ticket sales don't look all that great, and there appear to be lots of available rooms in the non deluxe hotels, with a lot of AP rates at $90 to $120 a night for non HHN weeks out there.

Definitely not the best way, but it's the only publicly available data we can utilize.

And to your point, I think Epic's actual daily attendance is lower than 25K once you take into consideration downtime and other factors. The more striking number that's harder to calculate at the moment is how many attractions the average guest can do each day.

 

[Mad Dog]

Bottom line, right now capacity is a mess. But it's expected. We talked about it even before the park opened. Operational new attraction difficulties also, are a given, since everything is soooo high tech. Multiply that new attraction issues by thirteen ( 11 plus two shows). And....this is why I'm not going until November, even though I vacationed in Orlando in June (WDW). I didn't want to experience that opening months aggravation, especially in the Florida extreme heat/humidity.

 

[velocicoasterswife]

My take on it is opening later and closing earlier allows them to work on and correct some of the issues that are causing the ride downtimes in the first place.

If they absolutely need a ten-hour day to allow for maintenance, wouldn't it make more sense to move the operational hours a little later so there's at least an hour or... like... even a few minutes where the park isn't 90 degrees and sunny?

 

[Alicia]

If they absolutely need a ten-hour day to allow for maintenance, wouldn't it make more sense to move the operational hours a little later so there's at least an hour or... like... even a few minutes where the park isn't 90 degrees and sunny?

Opening a theme park in Orlando at 10am instead of 9 is already unheard of except during Covid times. They can’t push it to 11am without causing complaints.

They extended operating hours to continue till 10pm anyway.

 

[Captain Spaulding]

Aaaand, back to 8pm closing on the 18th of August, a couple days before we have availability to visit.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

We should get September hours in 2 weeks or so, and I'm curious to see how the hours are handled during HHN. My assumption is we'll still see the 10AM-8PM hours that we're seeing at the end of August.

I personally really like the idea of a 10AM opening, but that's with the caveat/expectation that the park will also be open later.

 

[velocicoasterswife]

I'm there September 2 so I'm crossing my fingers and praying they go back to 10pm for the rest of the year, but I'm readying myself for some early evenings