Universal's Epic Universe - News and Discussion

[Disneylover99]

I would be more worried about a potential hurricane.

That was my first thought as well. I would be more concerned with the weather than crowds.

I say that cause we typically travel down to Florida that time of year, and there always seems to be something brewing weather wise. So I could be wrong of course, but I’m thinking, Labour Day crowds won’t be too bad.

 

[VicksMc]

Just got home...Did 1 day with express...and 1 day without express. On the day with it, we had everything done except mine kart madness by 3:30 (thats with eating lunch, and doing both shows). On the day without it, we still did a good bit, but by 1PM lines were more or less over 90 minutes for pretty much every ride except Monsters Unchained and curse of the werewolf. Even fyre drill was pushing 90 minutes. Then the thunderstorms came and basically shut down the whole park for 2.5 hours. If you're going during rainy season, I would get it just because of that factor. A few storms and your day will be wiped out, but it could at least be salvaged with express during the non rain periods. They actually were giving 50% refunds yesterday due to all the ride downtimes and storms (we personally didn't ask for one, but several people we talked to that night said they went to guest services and received them, and I saw other people in the facebook group saying the same thing.

Thank you for this reply. It’s making me think I’ll go for it.

 

[sandam1]

Two questions for that I'm hoping someone can help me with:

- I don't currently have an active annual pass. I have a two day, Epic focused trip at the beginning of September. However, I will probably activate my new annual pass during this trip for the hotel discount. If I have regular one-day Epic tickets, can I get a refund or credit or whatever on the difference between that price and the AP price once my AP is active? (It's $20 per day that I would rather spend on a meal if possible)

- Are there any queues (either regular or single rider) at Epic that are tight like Hagrids? I cannot do the Hagrids line due to being claustrophobic (the low ceiling and tight walls and not being able to move is just a no go for me) and was wondering if there was anything that might cause a similar problem.

 

[Philsfan77]

Two questions for that I'm hoping someone can help me with:

- I don't currently have an active annual pass. I have a two day, Epic focused trip at the beginning of September. However, I will probably activate my new annual pass during this trip for the hotel discount. If I have regular one-day Epic tickets, can I get a refund or credit or whatever on the difference between that price and the AP price once my AP is active? (It's $20 per day that I would rather spend on a meal if possible)

- Are there any queues (either regular or single rider) at Epic that are tight like Hagrids? I cannot do the Hagrids line due to being claustrophobic (the low ceiling and tight walls and not being able to move is just a no go for me) and was wondering if there was anything that might cause a similar problem.

Battle at the ministry gets tight in a few spaces (especially if you do single rider). Mine-Kart Madness also gets very tight once you enter the building...it's a long stretch of hallway thats basically 1 person wide (we were in that area i'd guess for about 20 minutes entering), then it opens up again more. Nothing else off the top of my head stood out to me as potentially being tight. A lot of the queue spaces are outside or fairly wide open room spaces.

 

[Philsfan77]

My goodness HP sounds like Black Friday vibes. No thank you. Given what you said we'll definitely start with Dark Universe instead. Appreciate you!

I mean we were on the ride by 9:11 on Thursday at park opening (14 minutes in the queue and thats just how long it took to walk it because we basically walked all the way onto it from entering the queue). We then did both rides in Dark universe during the rest of early entry. Personally Dark Universe isn't where I'd go. Monsters unchained rarely got over 30 minutes in the 2 days we were there, outside of rain periods. We also rode it back to back at night (entered line at 8:56 and walked right on) and then when we came off (about 9:15 at this time) they were still letting people enter the queue, so we jumped back on again). This land is easily the least crowded, and lowest wait times of any of the lands.

Black Friday vibes are fairly accurate though. One lady was yelling at people because she had her kids inhaler (kid was about 100 people ahead I'd guess) and the cast member actually told her to stop cutting line twice, that the kid could wait in his spot and let people past him until she got to him, but she just kept tyelling at people trying to push through. There was a lot of that, where kids/teenagers sprinted ahead of older family members and then rather than waiting, the older family members just tried to push through everyone. They really need a better system for opening this land up and letting people stampede through.

 

[tony67]

- I don't currently have an active annual pass. I have a two day, Epic focused trip at the beginning of September. However, I will probably activate my new annual pass during this trip for the hotel discount. If I have regular one-day Epic tickets, can I get a refund or credit or whatever on the difference between that price and the AP price once my AP is active? (It's $20 per day that I would rather spend on a meal if possible)

I did this during the preview and it was not an issue.

 

[Philsfan77]

That's interesting because people could have some mobility issues but not need an actual device. My step-father-in-law for example doesn't use a mobility device but tends to need assistance for stairs, escalators at times, small curbs even especially after his stroke last year, that combined with his type 2 diabetes has made certain things harder for him.

I can understand if they were getting too many people through for early entry but going for visuals when we these days actively try to implement policies that don't use visuals to make assumptions about people is an odd choice

I hear ya...I can only tell you what I was seeing as we walked into that area. The cast member was making it very clear with her wording, if you are in a mobility device or a stroller you can enter through these doors. So one parent would push the stroller through, and the rest of the family would take the escalators, or the person in the mobility device would go through and the rest of their party would take the escalator. Now I didn't see anyone push back on this, so maybe they would have let people through if they simply asked, but in the 2-3 minutes it took us to clear that area, we saw 2 mobility devices go through and i'd say 4-5 strollers.

In general, the stairs are going to be a problem in this land, I get that people are saying there are elevators, but we saw lines for them, to the point that daily (we probably hit mario land area 6-7 times in our trip at different points of the day trying to get mine-kart madness done) and without fail as we were in that area, we'd see multiple dads carrying strollers down the steps, or older parents/guests struggling up steps. Basically pushing through, or solving the problem on their own in the quickest way possible rather than waiting for elevators. This is the only area where we saw this issue. There are stairs on basically every attraction (mine-cart madness may have been the only one without them off the top of my head), but there weren't lines/people waiting for those, like there were in general in mario area.

 

[PrincessV]

Two questions for that I'm hoping someone can help me with:

- I don't currently have an active annual pass. I have a two day, Epic focused trip at the beginning of September. However, I will probably activate my new annual pass during this trip for the hotel discount. If I have regular one-day Epic tickets, can I get a refund or credit or whatever on the difference between that price and the AP price once my AP is active? (It's $20 per day that I would rather spend on a meal if possible)

I don’t have any firsthand experience with this one, but I think it’s worth asking when you get there! They seem to be trying hard to do what they can for guests.

- Are there any queues (either regular or single rider) at Epic that are tight like Hagrids? I cannot do the Hagrids line due to being claustrophobic (the low ceiling and tight walls and not being able to move is just a no go for me) and was wondering if there was anything that might cause a similar problem.

Okay, this one I have experience with, though I haven’t done every ride at Epic yet, so there are a few holes. But I have serious issues with feeling “trapped” in a queue full of people - it’s not really claustrophobia for me, but the same types of spaces are problematic.

I only walked through BatM, but could see a few spots in it that would be challenging if I were to be stuck there more than 5-10 minutes. But they were spaced between more open spaces, so, as long as the queue is moving, I think they’d be okay, A major issue if things were to halt entirely for a prolonged time, though.

Wing Gliders’ queue is outdoors but got tight within its space about halfway through a 60-min wait. It’s shaded but the ceiling (canopy?) is quite high, so while you get pretty penned in by switchbacks full of people, you don’t have the added pressure of no space above. I was struggling by the time I got on the ride, tbh.

Stardust has a short bit of semi-confined space, and some tight switchbacks on the loading platform - like Wing Gliders, though, a high ceiling with lots of space above: the penning in is from the queue full of people. I was able to position myself toward the outside of most of the queue, with plenty of free air and space just by looking away from the queue.

I did SR on Mario, so I only saw a small bit of the queue - that one looked like it could be problematic. Nowhere near as confined as Hagrid’s, but indoors and tight in some spots. I watched a video walkthrough of the full queue and could see potential for difficulty. SR skipped a LOT but was a good trade-off for my needs.

Monsters was a non-issue, despite being indoors. There are two pre-show rooms that were a little dicey, but positioning myself at the outside of the crowd, against a wall did the trick. Think conditions like the room before the elevators at Gringott’s, and about the same amount of time - maybe a few minutes.

Cirque was questionable once inside the tent. I wasn’t prepared for that one. It felt TIGHT in there, very loud, and difficult to exit if needed. I was stuck in place for maybe 15 minutes before we started moving at a good clip into the pre-show room, and that was about my limit. The pre-show room is HUGE and holds a ton of people: get yourself to one side or the other of the mass of people and you’ll have some breathing room and an emergency exit close by.

I had no issues with Werewolf or Untrainable Dragon. I hanve’ done Mine Cart, so no info there.

Hope this helps!