This trip report is a little delayed, but I think that it's kind of timely, considering the current discussion. Caution: This is LONG!
My travel partner and I did our first trip to
Epic on Tuesday, September 2 and Wednesday, September 3 (i.e. the two days immediately after Labor Day). We bought two single day tickets, but no Express Pass. As long-time Universal passholders who have been eagerly watching this park being built since it was just a pile of dirt, to say we were excited leading up to this trip was an understatement.
After taking a super early flight in, we dropped our bags off at our hotel (Terra Luna) and got the park just as it was opening to the public.
Our first impression was that the park is absolutely gorgeous. The colors, the design and the details make it a thing of beauty. I wanted to soak it all and take a million photos.
Also, it was HOT! I hadn't had much to eat and having been up for almost 6 hours so I needed something. Our first stop was the Isle of Berk so we grabbed a mac and cheese cone. Here was our first experience with baking in the sun, but this wasn't unexpected. Then we headed for Hiccups Wing Gliders which was an awesome ride (I found it to be the equivalent to Hagrids which is one of my favorites), but waiting outside in the heat for 60+ minutes was rough. Afterwards, I needed to sit in some air conditioning so we headed to The Untrainable Dragon show, only to be met by a bunch of team members telling us that the next show had been canceled. Then we tried to see about meeting Toothless - also delayed! Wait times were mounting all over the park so we headed to the carousel (which was neat, but also something that didn't have air conditioning). By that point, I was approaching meltdown point. I was hot and hangry and needed to sit. We headed to the Oak & Star for lunch and to (hopefully) text the hotel and see if our room was finally ready. The food at lunch was good and the air-conditioning was very welcome, but somehow my friend's mobile order got lost and she waited almost 20 minutes (and had to ask three different people) to get it.
We went to our hotel for a long break to get a nap and wait out the heat and the crowds. While we were there, I kept watching the wait times and at one point there were 5 different rides delayed (none of them due to weather). Not good! As you would expect, wait times skyrocketed for the rides that were open.
We finally headed back to the park around 6 p.m. and it felt significantly less crowded. We got on Dragon Racers, saw the Untrainable Dragon, went on Monsters Unchained, I went back on Hiccups and got a butterbeer while my friend went on Stardust. My friend was just about done at that point, but I saw that Battle of the Ministry was at 20 minutes so we headed there and then did the fountain show to close the park. This evening was, by far, the most productive part of our trip.
The next morning, we got up to do Early Entry, but when we got to the park, Yoshi's was the only thing that was open. (Mario Kart opened mid-morning and by Minecart didn't open until well after noon) Not a good start, but whatever. After doing that, we headed to the Curse of the Werewolf and we started baking in the heat again. While waiting we decided where we wanted to eat (
Das Stakehaus won). We had hoped to see Le Cirque before leaving the park, but that went down again before we finished eating. The park was having another bad day with virtually every ride going down at some point.
During our afternoon break, it rained briefly - not enough to close any rides, but also not enough to clear out the park. Wednesday evening was not nearly as productive as the night before. We would decide on where to go, head one way, and then find out that what we wanted to see was delayed. We went to see Le Cirque and it stopped twice before they finally canceled the show (we wound up never seeing it). We got a single Express Pass in compensation, which we later used on Mario Kart. We wandered around the Harry Potter area, which was amazing, and got on Battle of the Ministry again with a short wait, but as the night wore on, we were just defeated. Every ride that we went on was top-notch, but the constant re-calculating plans, watching wait times, seeing if rides were open, was just too much like work - or as I said at one point, too much like being at Disney. I felt like I always had my phone out. We've always loved Universal for being a very relaxing vacation and this wasn't it.
As we wrapped up our night, I decided that I wanted to talk to someone at Guest Services. Not to complain per se, but I felt that they needed to hear how we felt about Epic and what we experienced. We are as big of pro-Universal people as there are and if we were disillusioned by our trip, well, they might want to know how big of a problem they have. The person we spoke to at Guest Services was professional, taking down all that we had to say (we gave the good as well as the bad), asking some questions, and then she acknowledged that the park had had a couple of bad days. When we mentioned that we had another big trip planned for November (a larger family trip for a big "0" birthday) and that we weren't sure that we were going to even come to Epic based on this trip, she offered us something to encourage us to "try again." That was unexpected and, I felt, generous.
The crazy part is that right now, how you experience Epic can truly depend on whether the park is having a good day. I had been watching wait times for weeks before we went and everything looked to be doing really, really well. The day before we went (Labor Day), I didn't see many rides above 30 minutes all day. But on the days we went, the whole park fell apart and it got very bad very quickly.
So, will I go again? Yes, but I'm definitely tempering my expectations. My best friend and I are going to Universal in January for her first trip to Epic and instead of an Epic focused trip, we'll probably spend a day or two there and then the rest of time at Islands and Studios. We were originally booked at Stella Nova and I've switched us back to Cabana Bay (if anyone wants to read it, I also posted my comments about Terra Luna on that thread). Everything that the masses have been saying about Epic (good and bad) proved true for me. It is a beautiful park with amazing rides and great food. It is also an unreliable mess at times and doesn't have enough attractions for the crowds.
