Universal's Epic Universe General News & Discussion

[Mad Dog]

GAMBIT over here wanting to rename the park EPIC I ACCIDENTALLY FELL ASLEEP UNIVERSE with those ride selections!

I jest because it's true. This park is in dire need of some 'simple-but-long' rides that are low on thrills and easy for anyone to ride both in wait time and duration. Just imagine if this park had been built with a Captain Cacao universal-train-of-sorts (A PEOPLE MOVER, one could say) that traveled through all portals in the back of each land, not stopping at any of them but showing individual little scenes in between each portal as a snippet for something not found inside... A 'duna-duna-duna' segment of Mario land showing Luigi lost in the underground, an extra look at Ygor in the catacombs preparing the experiments for riders about to come in, the background of some ministry offices trying to ignore the muggle onlookers, some dragons nesting in caves under berk, etc. This is where screens would be welcome because it's not about advanced levels of immersion, it's about simplicity for the rides' sake!
ahhhh... to dream

Definitely needs a high capacity family dark ride. Capacity, even once the tech is fixed, will be a problem. Too many real
low capacity attractions, in a park with a small number of D/E ticket, high capacity, rides.

 

[GA-MBIT]

Epic isn't quite at DHS levels of "Oops, All E-Tickets!", but it's certainly on the scale.

At the very least, every ride in the park is being hit with enough traffic to make every ride feel like a D/E. That honestly might be even worse. So when you spend 70 minutes in line for Yoshi or Werewolf, it stings even more. Because despite that wait, you aren't getting Rise, Tower, M&M, or Slinky, you're riding something considerably shorter and less engaging. There's that capacity problem again.

 

[Stonecoldfreak1]

Was leaving Cinemark last night and found this in the freestyle machine. Weird, but the thing that makes it super weird is that this was in Texas.

 

[Mad Dog]

Epic isn't quite at DHS levels of "Oops, All E-Tickets!", but it's certainly on the scale.

At the very least, every ride in the park is being hit with enough traffic to make every ride feel like a D/E. That honestly might be even worse. So when you spend 70 minutes in line for Yoshi or Werewolf, it stings even more. Because despite that wait, you aren't getting Rise, Tower, M&M, or Slinky, you're riding something considerably shorter and less engaging. There's that capacity problem again.

yeah. Lots of Epic C ticket rides have D/E ticket waits. Nice that Epic has two large theater shows, but DHS has Mermaid, Indiana Jones,
Beauty & the Beast, Frozen, Villains and Fantasmic....plus all those real D/E tickets. And DHS still gets crowded with long lines. What was UC
thinking when they designed all these low capacity C ticket Epic attractions. I don't see how they'll ever be able to handle crowds in the 30,000
plus numbers.

 

[GA-MBIT]

yeah. Lots of Epic C ticket rides have D/E ticket waits. Nice that Epic has two large theater shows, but DHS has Mermaid, Indiana Jones,
Beauty & the Beast, Frozen, Villains and Fantasmic....plus all those real D/E tickets. And DHS still gets crowded with long lines. What was UC
thinking when they designed all these low capacity C ticket Epic attractions. I don't see how they'll ever be able to handle crowds in the 30,000
plus numbers.

I honestly don't know where smaller attractions could even go. The park feels built to expand only in the largest possible ways (Creature boat ride, 2nd Potter E-Ticket, Luigi's Mansion, extra portals.) Lands like SNW and Potter are so compact, where could they expand even if they wanted to? Could they even add something like a simple flat ride or Unicorn kiddie coaster anywhere?

E/D-Tickets are also seemingly the only new attractions we get anyways. Poppins, Play!, Potter VR, most smaller attractions get cancelled and cost-cut along the way. Besides maybe Rat at EPCOT, when was the most recent >C-ticket expansion?

 

[Jones14]

I actually think the park is better set up for the long run because they built the C-tickets (Yoshi, Carousel, Dragon Racers, Werewolf) in from the start.

As much as I like them, the bigger parks don’t tend to add smaller-scale rides very often (when was the last flat ride at the OG resort built? Kang and Kodos?), and as the park fills out with new headliners over time those four will settle into being the easy 30 minutes or less waits.

 

[Mad Dog]

I honestly don't know where smaller attractions could even go. The park feels built to expand only in the largest possible ways (Creature boat ride, 2nd Potter E-Ticket, Luigi's Mansion, extra portals.) Lands like SNW and Potter are so compact, where could they expand even if they wanted to? Could they even add something like a simple flat ride or Unicorn kiddie coaster anywhere?

E/D-Tickets are also seemingly the only new attractions we get anyways. Poppins, Play!, Potter VR, most smaller attractions get cancelled and cost-cut along the way. Besides maybe Rat at EPCOT, when was the most recent >C-ticket expansion?

Not so much that they have so many low capacity C ticket rides, but mainly that Epic doesn't have a higher proportion of indoor D/E ticket high capacity attractions. Epic is kind of overweight on the lower end stuff and underweight on the higher end. Lots of nice attractions but out of whack
on the mix, which creates a capacity problem. I'm sure the fire code capacity is pretty high, rumored to be in the high 40,000's, but the attraction/
restaurant realistic capacity is probably well under 30,000. Even if Ministry ever achieves its theoretical capacity, that's only a little help in the overall picture.

 

[GA-MBIT]

That definitely sounds like a more promising future for the park. And to be fair, some of relaxed >20 minutes EPCOT attractions I mentioned previously, notably Soarin', were at some point the E-Ticket's to rope-drop or rush for Fastpasses for. Hopefully as the park evolves we see queue times get more reasonable across the board. I could definitely see current major rides like Mario Kart or Stardust evening out to 30-60 minute queues similar to how Toy Story Mania, Everest, or Hulk aged.

Even still, I struggle to imagine how rides like Mine-Cart, Racer Rally, Werewolf, Yoshi could actually improve wait times in a meaningful way. Those seem like fundamental quirks of those attractions. They could build a second Space Mountain, Toy Story Mania, Soarin', but that's just not really an option for anything at Epic.

I've mentioned a lot of my least favorite quirks of EU in the past few days, but the park is a fairly solid base and I'm certain that in 20 years time it'll be firmly cemented as one of the very best Orlando parks. There will be some definite growing pains though. I just hope wait times can figure themselves out.

 

[SkiBum]

yeah. Lots of Epic C ticket rides have D/E ticket waits. Nice that Epic has two large theater shows, but DHS has Mermaid, Indiana Jones,
Beauty & the Beast, Frozen, Villains and Fantasmic....plus all those real D/E tickets. And DHS still gets crowded with long lines. What was UC
thinking when they designed all these low capacity C ticket Epic attractions. I don't see how they'll ever be able to handle crowds in the 30,000
plus numbers.

This was one of my thoughts as well. As popular as these parks and as popular as management would like them to be, having multiple rides that will not exceed 1,000 pph is, at best, an odd choice, or worst, an ignorant choice. The park has four coasters and two of them have low throughput. Plus, I would imagine Hiccup's coaster doesn't have great throughput. It's one thing when you have multiple other rides that have 2-3000 pph capacity but Epic's offerings are three higher capacity rides (Monsters, Harry Potter, and Stardust Racers) and then several that are around 1,000 (Yoshi, Werewolf, Hiccups gliders, Dragon Racers Rally, Fyre Drill, etc.). I understand that the park is new but this just doesn't translate to a park that can handle a busy day.

 

[Mad Dog]

This was one of my thoughts as well. As popular as these parks and as popular as management would like them to be, having multiple rides that will not exceed 1,000 pph is, at best, an odd choice, or worst, an ignorant choice. The park has four coasters and two of them have low throughput. Plus, I would imagine Hiccup's coaster doesn't have great throughput. It's one thing when you have multiple other rides that have 2-3000 pph capacity but Epic's offerings are three higher capacity rides (Monsters, Harry Potter, and Stardust Racers) and then several that are around 1,000 (Yoshi, Werewolf, Hiccups gliders, Dragon Racers Rally, Fyre Drill, etc.). I understand that the park is new but this just doesn't translate to a park that can handle a busy day.

Exactly....My theory of why the mix is bottom ticket heavy. Like most new parks, the number of attractions is small (13 in Epics case).
But a decision may have been made to get to that 13 number with a large number of B/D ticket attractions (low capacity rides,outdoor queues)
to keep the budget at a certain level. One reason there's so few indoor attractions, even though the Florida weather is a significant issue.
Those D/E indoor attractions are expensive. But they may have shot themselves in the foot since they really can't accommodate crowds over
30,000, and even mid 20,000's are an issue. Epic is very much underbuilt in the D/E ticket range. And the Donkey Kong D ticket ride has
terribly low capacity. Its probably a mistake build for the money it cost.
Still sounds like a great beautiful park.....as long as daily attendance is only in the high teens and it's not the hottest 7 months of the year. The
growing shade will help, but outdoor queues are a problem in high heat, and ride shutdowns kill capacity when the storms pop up.