Universal’s brand-new, state-of-the-art theme park Epic Universe is now open just outside of Orlando, Florida.
This isn’t just a big deal for the general public and ride enthusiasts, but a monumental event for the entire themed entertainment industry, as it marks the first major theme park opening in the United States in nearly 25 years. In those 25 years, we’ve seen the rise of social media, a growing dependence on mobile phones and a pronounced emphasis on immersion, to not simply experience attractions based on your favorite movies but to lose yourself fully in imagined worlds all while parent company Comcast faces headwinds in its linear and studios businesses.
Parks generated $8.6 billion in revenue in 2024 alone for Comcast, and with the opening of the $7 billion Epic Universe the company expects that number to boom over the ensuing years.
The new park, which now expands Universal Orlando Resort to four parks in total, synthesizes all these ideas, relying on a combination of fresh concept and beloved IP, existing attractions and things that have never been seen before.
The result is a theme park experience that is both high-tech and old fashioned. It’s a beautiful, sprawling space that encourages exploration and one that was very much worth more than two decades of waiting.
A brief history of Epic Universe
The parcel of land that Epic Universe sits on was once owned by Universal, but a previous corporate regime had sold it to Lockheed Martin. About a decade ago, when Universal, now owned by Comcast, started to search for a spot where they could build another park and effectively turn what used to be a few-day vacation into a week-long destination, they bought the land back from Lockheed Martin and got to work. The space is near the heavily trafficked Orlando Convention Center, and not far from Universal’s other theme parks (Universal Studios Orlando and Universal Islands of Adventure) and its water park (Volcano Bay). With Epic Universe, Universal’s Florida resort, like its chief competitor Walt Disney World, could become a full-on Orlando-area juggernaut.
As for the narrative around Epic Universe, a group of interplanetary explorers, known as the Celestials, have touched down and opened a series of portals to other worlds – worlds dedicated to characters from Nintendo video games, Universal’s roster of classic monsters, the Ministry of Magic from “Harry Potter,” and the Isle of Berk from “How to Train Your Dragon.” Each land is uniquely suited to the specifics of the intellectual property, full of bespoke food and merchandise offerings.
And the land that connects the portals – Celestial Park – features original stories and characters, along with a pair of the very best attractions in the entire park. (If you’re wondering how we interface with the Celestials, the main entryway is a portal from our world to their world.) Everything is wrapped up in this overarching narrative and it’s easy to get lost; a Christmas store near the front of the park is explained by the fact that Santa Claus fell through a wormhole and introduced the Celestials to the concept of Christmas. A barbeque restaurant is heavily themed after woodland animals because a portal opened up in a tree and they came through. It’s unclear what the explanation for the Chinese restaurant is.
The concept of portals is one of the new, never-been-tried-before elements of Epic Universe. For one, it eschews the hub-and-spoke layout of virtually every major theme park since Walt Disney opened Disneyland in 1955. Instead of a central “weenie” guiding you, there are a number of “spires” designating each land. They can be craggy (like the “How to Train Your Dragon” land Isle of Berk) or foreboding (like the monster-filled Dark Universe), but, for all the potentially cumbersome mythology, they cleanly identify each place – geographically but also spiritually. The vibes in Epic Universe are tremendous. And that cannot be overstated.
Initially the idea was that, when a land reached capacity, it would be closed off to the rest of the park. This also extended to corporate functions, although that idea, which makes Celestial Park something more like a cosmic waystation and not the vibrant land that it actually is, has been put aside – for now.
Instead, the park is choosing to focus on making sure the experience, in total, is a knockout and that each land will leave you breathless. And they did that in the most technologically advanced way possible – a way that, incredibly, doesn’t have you tethered to your phone. But instead uses technology to make your vacation even more thrilling.
Bustling with tech
“We have the most technologically advanced park we’ve ever built. I can say that with some confidence, because I’ve built six of them for the company,” Mark Woodbury, chairman and chief executive officer of Universal Destinations & Experiences, remarked at a small-scale lunch event shortly before the park’s official opening. And he’s talking about everything – from the ease of buying a ticket, ordering food within the park and scheduling a vacation, to the actual interactions guests have inside the park. Unlike Disney, which has made you increasingly tethered to your smart devices just to get through basic tasks, Universal is instead putting a premium on a sense of play.
Each land has something to do that involves technology, but in the least obtrusive way possible. In Super Nintendo World, you can grab a power band that you wear on your wrist, which allows you to take part in various things throughout the land, including a challenge quest that results in a boss battle that is just as fun as anything else in the park. They introduced new wands in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, which provide the wizard wielding it new haptic feedback, lights and increased accuracy. There’s one particularly incredible effect where an off-screen crew member speaks to guests through a magical painting. And the amount of interactive dragons in Isle of Berk is truly absurd, culminating in one of the most jaw-dropping and emotionally enriching character interactions ever attempted in a theme park, between yourself and Toothless, the main dragon from the animated (and soon-to-be live-action) franchise.
Elsewhere, Celestial Park, as Woodbury said, “puts the ‘park’ back in theme park.” It’s centered around a 1920s boardwalk amusement park, but with a unique, out-of-this-world spin that will keep you wandering around and finding new things. Woodbury describes the area as “a world of its own where people can come and explore and enjoy and find a respite between the super high energy of the other worlds.” (It’s not totally quiet, the Constellation Carousel has one of the best soundtracks of any theme park attraction, including an upbeat dance number that was so good I recorded part of the audio on my phone to listen afterwards.)
The way that technology, both within the attractions themselves (like Dark Universe’s signature ride Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment) and just within the park, with the various interactive elements and things like ordering lunch, is perfectly balanced. It’s never overwhelming one way or the other and gives you an experience that feels very modern but also not wholly dependent on your cell phone or other device.
Karen Irwin, President & COO of Universal Orlando Resort, said, “We want you to not have to think about what you’re doing, but to put away your phone and just feel what we’re doing here. And I think what you’re going to find when you lean into that experience, we offer this opportunity for people to come together with people that they love, the people that they care about, and just connect and be together and have those moments and those experiences that people remember for a lifetime.”
Worlds beyond
Part of what makes Epic Universe such an overwhelming accomplishment is just how different each land is.
The “How to Train Your Dragon” land, Isle of Berk, is expansive, with tons of water and a dynamic central island. The attractions housed within the land are aimed at smaller adventurers, but quality is never sacrificed. It’s also home to The Untrainable Dragon, a holdover from Universal’s Shanghai park and one of two stunning live shows in the park. It’s one of the biggest, most photogenic areas, and the one that is so rich and dense that the three hours that I initially spent there simply wasn’t enough.
Dark Universe’s fictional setting of Darkmoor is more intimate but still impressive, anchored by Frankenstein’s Castle, which periodically crackles with electricity, and a tavern adorned by burning blades, which really ignite every few minutes. (If you pay close attention you can watch as unseen villagers bring the torch ever closer to the tavern.) While Berk feels sunny and full of life, Darkmoor is creepy and creaky, full of ominous, shadow-drenched spaces – while set in the modern day, it feels ripped from a classic Universal Monsters movie.
Ministry of Magic, the “Harry Potter”-themed land, bucks conventional theme park wisdom about size and scale in the most grandiose way possible. The buildings are actual size, not shrunk down or employing forced perspective. The queue for the land’s big ride, Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, feels like an attraction in and of itself (and features some of the biggest screens this side of the Sphere in Las Vegas). And the magic trick of the other big draw for the land, the live show Le Cirque Arcanus, is that you walk into an intimate circus tent that gives way to a cavernous (but still cozy) theater – and that’s before you even watch the spellbinding show.
Super Nintendo World is a supersized version of the land that opened at Universal’s west coast park in 2023. Whereas that land felt intimate, squeezed into the lower lot next to the “Transformers” ride and a Panda Express, this version, which hews more closely to the version at Universal Studios Japan, is bigger and more enveloping, with an entire area devoted to Mario’s barrel-throwing nemesis Donkey Kong.
Each land is, of course, filled with merchandise locations and treat stands and restaurants (both the kind you sit down at and the kind you walk up to and away from), each with items devoted to that land. There are plushies for Super Nintendo World and the Isle of Berk, edgier T-shirts in Dark Universe and Potter-specific items in the Ministry of Magic. All of the merchandise and shopping options reinforce the themes of their respective lands, including the charming miscellanea of Celestial Park. It all makes sense, even when it doesn’t, and the merch further drives the park’s revenues up, up and away.
Old school charm
But perhaps the greatest thing about Epic Universe is how old school it occasionally feels.
Sure, this is the most technologically advanced theme park Universal has ever designed or built. And you feel that while visiting Epic Universe. But this is also a park where one of the big draws in Dark Universe is a face-painting stand and where a chance encounter with one of the walk-around monsters is just as electrifying as the super expensive E-ticket attraction. One of the best, most emotionally satisfying areas of the entire park is a quaint, quiet park with turn-of-the-century details and a beautifully designed carousel. Also, while not technically attractions, the two stage shows are truly wondrous, combining time honored traditions with cutting edge trickery.
Nothing is quaint, exactly, but there is an if-it-ain’t-broke willingness to luxuriate in things from the past and to import things that have worked in other Universal parks around the world. This doesn’t take away from anything Epic Universe is trying to do. Instead, it creates a harmonious unity, with international properties sitting snugly alongside homegrown hits. For a park whose central narrative is about sharing gateways to worlds beyond, it makes perfect sense. The Celestials would be proud.
Are there issues? For sure. There is a decided lack of shade that can turn a jaunt through the park into a punishing slog and the downside of such a technologically forward-thinking park is that more stuff can break all the time. But Universal’s oversized ambition and their delivery of a park packed with detail, suffused with meaning and full of magic, is something that should absolutely be applauded.
It feels like a park that is from out-of-time and far into the future, a themed entertainment mecca and one of the greatest things Universal has ever done.
