Universal Great Britain

[tommyhawkins]

Ive half jokingly referred to my ride concept as Rivendell Adventure but I don't know enough about the story to know what the ride could actually be except that it seems water appears in multiple movies and I think Rivendell would be their obvious choice for first land with room to expand to more rides later.

Fwiw the footprint is the same as Blutos at IOA

I have loved my visits to Orlando in the past and I'd love to go back (I'm desperate to see Epic) but I just can't see how I'll afford it any time soon. It is a very expensive holiday from the UK.

LotR wise, I was talking to someone who knows the franchise much better than me and they said in the Hobbit there's a barrel ride the characters take down a river from the realm of the Wood Elves to Laketown. Sounds like a perfect rapids style ride to me. Maybe you can have an indoor Moria coaster as well as an outdoor boat ride?

 

[Steeb]

Spotted this on Instagram just now

 

[tommyhawkins]

Spotted this on Instagram just now

wow that didnt take long

 

[yepthatguy]

Orlando is ridiculously expensive, it’s becoming more expensive for Americans to travel and visit domestically never mind international tourists. Our salaries over here are also a lot lower.

Tbh I don’t know if I ever will go, spending thousands and thousands on a trip to Orlando right now is way down on my list of priorities and I can’t see that changing for the foreseeable.

So if I don’t see potter here I doubt I’ll ever see and there’s millions more like me.

Will we ever get to a point where Orlando becomes so expensive for international tourists they want to push this park and DLP more so they sit alongside Orlando and their crown jewel parks instead of slightly under them as teasers?

To lots of people the money needed is eye watering.

I reckon 14 nights at a standard hotel, return flights, hire car, unlimited park tickets package for just universal, and spending money…

maybe £9000 for 2 adults and a child?

You could buy a car for that! Or put down a deposit on a house…

I’d be interested in anyone else’s numbers from experience and if I’m way out..

 

[tommyhawkins]

To lots of people the money needed is eye watering.

I reckon 14 nights at a standard hotel, return flights, hire car, unlimited park tickets package for just universal, and spending money…

maybe £9000 for 2 adults and a child?

You could buy a car for that! Or put down a deposit on a house…

I’d be interested in anyone else’s numbers from experience and if I’m way out..

Tickets for all Parks in Orlando 2026 are now £1400
Flights are over £1000
Accommodation £100/night - OFF resort for a moderate level of comfort
Spending Money and Food money.

Accomm price stays the same for a family or solo but you add the cost of park tickets to each person that goes right

 

[Steeb]

I think the thing to remember here isn't that Universal expect everyone to be magically able to afford trips to Orlando after building the UK park.

It's more that they don't want to discourage the people who already can afford Orlando trips from continuing to go.

 

[Jake S]

You could buy a car for that! Or put down a deposit on a house…

not in orlando you couldn’t, haha.

 

[yepthatguy]

Tickets for all Parks in Orlando 2026 are now £1400
Flights are over £1000
Accommodation £100/night - OFF resort for a moderate level of comfort
Spending Money and Food money.

Accomm price stays the same for a family or solo but you add the cost of park tickets to each person that goes right

Everyone has a different approach no doubt, but my loose workings were based on say

14 nights moderate level comfort hotel and return flights for 3 people £3500 (package holiday with British Airways)

Hire car upto £1000 but of course optional.

Park tickets x 3 people poss up to £2000 total

Spending money for food drink and souvenirs £2500

Rough total £9000.

Plus any clothes, gadgets, visa’s, travel insurance prior to the holiday, hotel at Gatwick, airport parking…

Petrol in the US is very reasonably priced tho!!! lol

Personally I think it’s worth every penny, it’s just an unreal out of this world experience. But going every year from the UK means you need to have some decent money in the bank.

I only brought it up because I saw someone post about wanting to go to Orlando, but it’s so expensive they can’t see how they’ll get there, and I 100% feel that. It just adds up I guess.

I think whatever Universal do for this UK park will be spectacular, and I cannot wait, so just really happy with this news.

I’d be interested if anyone has done it on a lot less of a budget and still made it an awesome holiday..

 

[rob@rar]

I’ve been to Orlando 10+ times, as a couple and occasionally with another family. We’ve never spent that much, nowhere near. Typically had unlimited passes for Disney and Universal for a fortnight’s holiday (although sometimes we bought annual passes for 2 x 2-week holidays 11 months apart); car hire; rent a holiday villa. I’d say for two adults we’re paying less than £5K.

 

[EllieB]

And if you're a family with school-age children, and want to go for two weeks, you've essentially got to go in the Easter holidays (spring break) or Christmas holidays, unless you fancy Orlando in August. And of course, being peak visitor times, those are some of the most expensive times of the year to travel. A lot of Disney/Universal offers are (understandably) not available then, which further pushes the price up.

 

[Altonsky]

To lots of people the money needed is eye watering.

I reckon 14 nights at a standard hotel, return flights, hire car, unlimited park tickets package for just universal, and spending money…

maybe £9000 for 2 adults and a child?

You could buy a car for that! Or put down a deposit on a house…

I’d be interested in anyone else’s numbers from experience and if I’m way out..

I’d say that’s minimum tbh. I’ve seen videos of a family of 4 with 2 young children spending 15K, granted they’re buying fast tracks for epic or whatever else and paying for character dinners and all that jazz but it’s insane money to me.

There will always be people that can afford it, but the days of it being ‘achievable’ are coming to a close imo. Salaries in this country haven’t kept up with those in the US, the exchange rate isn’t what it was 15/20 years ago.

I understand they don’t want to put those that’s can afford it off from travelling but tbh I think those type of people would anyway, because they’re not just going for universal they’re going for Disney.

 

[Altonsky]

I’ve been to Orlando 10+ times, as a couple and occasionally with another family. We’ve never spent that much, nowhere near. Typically had unlimited passes for Disney and Universal for a fortnight’s holiday (although sometimes we bought annual passes for 2 x 2-week holidays 11 months apart); car hire; rent a holiday villa. I’d say for two adults we’re paying less than £5K.

Is that per trip because that’s still 10K over the year even if it is two trips

I don’t begrudge those who can, I would if I could but there’s millions of people living here who never will be able to go. So I guess what I’m saying is I hope this park does become something of a resort over the next few decades because there’s a market for it.

 

[GAcoaster]

Meanwhile all of us Americans are trying to ponder how you get so much time off and cursing our capitalist society…

 

[Altonsky]

Meanwhile all of us Americans are trying to ponder how you get so much time off and cursing our capitalist society…

We’ve all got a 4 day weekend starting to day (well apart from those who work in hospitality/retail) so we do have that I guess

 

[EllieB]

I’d say that’s minimum tbh. I’ve seen videos of a family of 4 with 2 young children spending 15K, granted they’re buying fast tracks for epic or whatever else and paying for character dinners and all that jazz but it’s insane money to me.

There will always be people that can afford it, but the days of it being ‘achievable’ are coming to a close imo. Salaries in this country haven’t kept up with those in the US, the exchange rate is what it was 15/20 years ago.

I understand they don’t want to put those that’s can afford it off from travelling but tbh I think those type of people would anyway, because they’re not just going for universal they’re going for Disney.

So I've just done a couple of costings to give you an idea...

If you want to take two adults, one child, in the Easter holidays 2026 and fly Virgin Atlantic, staying in All Star Movies with Disney 14 day tickets that'll cost you £9355 with the Walt Disney Travel Company. That's before any food, airport transfers, airport parking or visiting anywhere that isn't Disney.

For the same dates you could stay at Terra Luna with Universal 14 day tickets and flights for about £4500. Though again, that's before any additional costs.

This shows how much more expensive it is to stay at Disney I guess.

In both cases, the 14 day tickets for the other set of parks will set you back around £1500. So add that onto either price if you want to do both Disney and Universal.

 

[yepthatguy]

Is that per trip because that’s still 10K over the year even if it is two trips

I don’t begrudge those who can, I would if I could but there’s millions of people living here who never will be able to go. So I guess what I’m saying is I hope this park does become something of a resort over the next few decades because there’s a market for it.

Yes I agree.

I’m interested in people’s thoughts in the profitability of actually including some of the Epic Universe IPs.

If a UK customer thought “hey why go to Orlando if it’s in the UK park 2 hours away..”, wouldn’t they be more likely to repeat visit the UK park potentially earning Universal more profit off that UK customer than they would have if the UK customer only visited Orlando once every 3 years due to the big outlay costs?

Surely more money would go directly into Universals pockets from UK customers visiting a UK park 3/4 times a year at a lower outlay, than the UK Customer saving up to go to Orlando every other year or every three years?

 

[rob@rar]

Is that per trip because that’s still 10K over the year even if it is two trips

I don’t begrudge those who can, I would if I could but there’s millions of people living here who never will be able to go. So I guess what I’m saying is I hope this park does become something of a resort over the next few decades because there’s a market for it.

£5K for one trip. My point is that you can have a very nice holiday for a lot less than the £9K you suggest. Certainly not cheap, and for many families still an unachievable luxury even if they cut every expense to the bone. For other families the cost is less of an issue, so for them there’s plenty of opportunity to boost the budget to the equivalent of a King’s Ransom.

 

[EllieB]

Yes I agree.

I’m interested in people’s thoughts in the profitability of actually including some of the Epic Universe IPs.

If a UK customer thought “hey why go to Orlando if it’s in the UK park 2 hours away..”, wouldn’t they be more likely to repeat visit the UK park potentially earning Universal more profit off that UK customer than they would have if the UK customer only visited Orlando once every 3 years due to the big outlay costs?

Surely more money would go directly into Universals pockets from UK customers visiting a UK park 3/4 times a year at a lower outlay, than the UK Customer saving up to go to Orlando every other year or every three years?

I'd agree. I also think that by including one or two things from Orlando you're unlikely to stop anyone who really wants to go to Orlando from going there, because the chances are they have more than just those couple of reasons to pay £10k+ to go to America. For example, no one is going to say "oh well I've met Toothless and ridden Velocicoaster in the UK so I needn't bother booking that Orlando holiday now" are they?

But we'll see how strict they are with the "no clones" idea when we get a more detailed master plan I suppose.

 

[Altonsky]

£5K for one trip. My point is that you can have a very nice holiday for a lot less than the £9K you suggest. Certainly not cheap, and for many families still an unachievable luxury even if they cut every expense to the bone. For other families the cost is less of an issue, so for them there’s plenty of opportunity to boost the budget to the equivalent of a King’s Ransom.

Yeah and I get that but I don’t buy the idea that people who can afford that would stop going to Orlando if this park becomes an option that’s of a similar calibre.

People go for Disney as well, people that have the money want to just get out of the country, some people do it for the prestige and some just do it because they can I guess.

So are those people this parks main market in the first place? If they’re not and there’s millions of people living here who never will go to Orlando then I’m hoping this park becomes a resort with a huge offering over the next few decades. Why have one crown jewel in Orlando and North America when you could have two, the other being in the UK and Europe.

 

[yepthatguy]

So I've just done a couple of costings to give you an idea...

If you want to take two adults, one child, in the Easter holidays 2026 and fly Virgin Atlantic, staying in All Star Movies with Disney 14 day tickets that'll cost you £9355 with the Walt Disney Travel Company. That's before any food, airport transfers, airport parking or visiting anywhere that isn't Disney.

For the same dates you could stay at Terra Luna with Universal 14 day tickets and flights for about £4500. Though again, that's before any additional costs.

This shows how much more expensive it is to stay at Disney I guess.

In both cases, the 14 day tickets for the other set of parks will set you back around £1500. So add that onto either price if you want to do both Disney and Universal.

I just did a very fast costing on British Airways for End of March next year as they won’t show anything after 7th April on BA website for some reason.

Endless Summer 14nights Room Only + Hire Car - £5000

14 day unlimited Universal all parks inc Epic Universe - £1500

+ spending money (£2000-3000 optional)

The most value is the Universal tickets, £500 for unlimited park visits per person for 14 days is pretty good in my opinion. The parks are top class.