Universal's Epic Universe General News & Discussion

[Jake S]

The wrongest I have ever been is when I said the cruise industry was cooked in May of 2020.

 

[Parkscope Joe]

The wrongest I have ever been is when I said the cruise industry was cooked in May of 2020.

I remember someone saying Epic would be turned into condos and apartments. They even posted in this thread.

 

[OrlLover]

True to an extent. WDW parks are more comfortable than they were with the higher attendance before covid. The lines are also decent since the crackdown on disability fraud. Yeah, both Disney and Universal keep rising prices higher than the inflation rate which results in higher revenue even with lower attendance. But there is a point where, if hotel vacancies get too high, there can be issues. But, another issue is people are taking shorter vacations than they used to. That has implications.

I think the WDW CFO talked about this recently.

 

[Cup_Of_Coffee]

The wrongest I have ever been is when I said the cruise industry was cooked in May of 2020.

Given how a large portion of the population in this country responded to the pandemic, it’s oddly not shocking in hindsight. People don’t give an F. I was with you at the time though.

 

[DragonSlayer]

Interesting day today. Crowds fairly low — plenty of waits posted around 30 mins all day, actual wait times often 10 even for Mario Kart at one point. Ministry mostly around 40-50 but it feels to me like operations have improved massively here.

Quite a bad day for show quality and upkeep, though. Creature, first wolfman, hunchback, all static but visible. Ygor disappeared too later in the afternoon, second preshow down all day. On Ministry, the erumpent was also on view but static, which honestly just makes that part of the ride awkward. Looks like there’s a lot more tolerance for leaving show elements on view when broken than there was last year, which is a shame, because I overheard plenty of people comment on how weird things looked when getting off both rides. Rode Stardust four times and only managed to get working audio once.

Another new one for me was Untrainable with recorded audio instead of live singers — leaves the stage oddly empty in some parts of the show. Is this just last-resort cover for illness etc or have they removed those roles entirely? And the one screen which I’d assumed had a temporary glitch before still has a massive misalignment half way down it — surely that’s fixable.

Growing pains are interesting. Still lots of positive sentiment around during the day, and lots to applaud — reopening Stardust after a long closure even though there was only 5 mins of opening time left is really positive. But I hope the willingness to keep things at their best will be sustained more consistently over the long term, and that they’ll have the people / resources to do that.

 

[Dapale]

Another new one for me was Untrainable with recorded audio instead of live singers — leaves the stage oddly empty in some parts of the show. Is this just last-resort cover for illness etc or have they removed those roles entirely?

I went on Sunday and they were performing.

On Ministry, the erumpent was also on view but static, which honestly just makes that part of the ride awkward

I agree. From what I’ve gathered, it’s been down for weeks…

 

[Jake S]

I’ve been really bummed to hear Monsters Unchained has been suffering with so much unreliability.

 

[Clive]

I agree. From what I’ve gathered, it’s been down for weeks…

This is frustrating to hear. The ride should not be running with that down.

 

[belloq87]

I was certainly hoping that I'd be in the clear holding off my first visit until 18 months after opening, but I'm mildly concerned.

 

[sonoma15]

I’ve been really bummed to hear Monsters Unchained has been suffering with so much unreliability.

It's in great shape as of today!

This is frustrating to hear. The ride should not be running with that down.

Sometimes it's just not practical to bring an entire ride down because one animatronic is broken. The way I view it is that 99% of the people going to the park, whom most of them will only ever get to go once in there life, would rather get on the ride then not be able to ride it at all because one effect is broken. Also the park already suffers from a lack of capacity and having ministry down for weeks would be a major blow.

 

[OrlLover]

I’ve been really bummed to hear Monsters Unchained has been suffering with so much unreliability.

I am too but at the same time it’s a very complex ride so things are bound to break or not work occasionally.

 

[Clive]

It's in great shape as of today!


Sometimes it's just not practical to bring an entire ride down because one animatronic is broken. The way I view it is that 99% of the people going to the park, whom most of them will only ever get to go once in there life, would rather get on the ride then not be able to ride it at all because one effect is broken. Also the park already suffers from a lack of capacity and having ministry down for weeks would be a major blow.

I guess I just fundamentally disagree if there's no B mode, which there isn't. This animatronic is the central feature of a key scene. It being obviously motionless reflects incredibly poorly on Universal. Take down the ride and get it fixed. If it can't be fixed in a few hours due to a part missing or some other major fault, work out why and how that happened so it never does again.

 

[Mike S]

I went on Sunday and they were performing.


I agree. From what I’ve gathered, it’s been down for weeks…

It was down when I went at the end of March.

 

[DragonSlayer]

It’s clearly a difficult balance to strike between rides being closed altogether and rides being available but only at 50% quality. But I hope the higher-ups are spending time in the park and listening to what guests are saying when they decide where their thresholds are for taking a ride down to fix show elements.

One telling comment the other day at the exit to Monsters was “I thought this was the best ride in the park?” — closing rides might be bad for guest satisfaction, but having people getting off and thinking things like that will also put people off revisiting, or will cause them to tell their friends it’s not worth it. So ‘just keep the ride open’ isn’t necessarily the best option all of the time.

I guess I just fundamentally disagree if there's no B mode, which there isn't. This animatronic is the central feature of a key scene. It being obviously motionless reflects incredibly poorly on Universal. Take down the ride and get it fixed. If it can't be fixed in a few hours due to a part missing or some other major fault, work out why and how that happened so it never does again.

Agree with this.

 

[Brian G.]

Lug designers share how Celestial Park's iconography and characters inspired the new Epic Universe anniversary collection.

Lug Shares Design Details Behind Epic Universe Anniversary Collection

As part of Universal Epic Universe's first anniversary celebration, guests can find a new collection of Lug bags inspired by one of the lands, Celestial Park. The collection includes the Epic Skeeter Mini Bag, a limited-edition design created to commemorate Epic Universe's one-year anniversary, alo

www.insideuniversal.net

 

[Mad Dog]

As I said in the Monsters thread, we rode it 6 times on June 21st, and it was running well. So, I'd guess, performance is a day to day thing.

 

[Midnight Detective]

The only real comparison is stand by times in the app. They've been about the same as any other non holiday week daily stand by times, except for those freezing cold days when lots of outdoor rides had significant shut down times. They're still capping the attendance levels at this point in time so the only real difference is if 17,000 guests show up or 25,000 show up. This weekend, and following days, will probably be at the busy day level, even Sunday, since Presidents Holiday week has become quite busy for both WDW and Universal.

Adding onto what MD said, go during the last week of the month or mid-May.

Just want to say we ended up going mid-May and it was awesome! I don't think we waited more than 20 minutes for anything the entire day and it was way better than we both hoped for. Thank you!