A Day at Epic Universe

My Top Tips (To Avoid Spoilers)

• Get there early and go straight to Battle at the Ministry if you don’t have Early Entry.
• Get all the outdoor rides done ASAP.
• Prioritize attractions first, even if it means running around the park. Use the afternoon to revisit the lands and take everything in.
• Minecart Madness’ Single Rider won’t save you much time.
• Battle at the Ministry’s Single Rider will save you time.
• Take a break in the day at Bar Helios, the bar atop Helios Hotel.
• Rank your top attractions and try to get them done first. Between weather delays, lines and mechanical delays, you probably won’t get to do everything.
• Buy your tickets online, they’re more expensive at the gate.
• As of publication (October 2025) Saturdays and Sundays are usually the least busy days to visit.

August 2019

Epic Universe, Universal Orlando’s newest theme park, was announced a week before I moved to Florida. 18-year-old Jonathan wanted to study Theme Park Management and the announcement coincided perfectly. With an opening day coinciding with my college graduation and a construction site literally across the street from my school, it felt like the park was created for me.

I spent my college years watching the park break ground and go vertical. Friends who worked in the park’s development traded park secrets, as bits of information leaked here and there. Eventually, I sat in my room at 2 a.m. watching them test the rides.

My last semester saw me in an internship working with Universal Destinations and Experiences, where I got to help break news on the park a few years before its opening. I got to be the secret-holder of all the park’s wonders.

Flash forward and it’s 2025. I’m living in Washington, D.C. and the park has been open for three months. I decided it was finally time to make the trek to Epic Universe.

September 6, 2025

Before we begin, some background on the trip. Our group for the day was four people. I brought Levie down from DC and two of my Florida friends drove up from South Florida. We I opted not to stay in a Universal Hotel, a decision that saved us hundreds of dollars. The group had planned to buy Express Passes beforehand, but made an executive decision the night before to hold off until the next day.

We chose to visit on a Saturday. The park opening was set for 10 a.m. so we had a goal to be at the park gates by 9:30.

If you are staying at a Universal Hotel, you get an hour extra in the park. This is known as Early Entry, more on that later.

We did pretty good with our goal and were parking the car a few minutes before 9:15. I was elated to see that we were deceptively close to the front of the lot.

With it already starting to get steamy out, we applied a ton of sunblock. The humidity was thick as we watched Stardust Racers testing in the distance.

It was surreal to see this place after watching the construction for half a decade.

My tickets had been purchased beforehand, so we needed to grab them from Will Call. There was no wait and they even had a separate security area and ticket scanning that also had wait. It was a great workaround to the building security lines outside.

Right after we were met with the iconic Chronos park entrance. It finally hit me that I was here. I was about to be in Epic Universe.

As we weren’t staying in a hotel, we thought we had a few minutes before we were allowed in, but we tested our luck and were let into the park.

It turns out Early Entry is only set in Super Nintendo World, so the rest of the park is free to roam.

We beelined straight for Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry and made it there around 9:40.

The posted wait was 15 minutes, so we hopped in line.

Most of the backups in the line were from people stopping to take photos, which makes complete sense. The grandeur of this space was incredible!

We only ended up waiting about 15 minutes before being led onto the ride.

Now, I had very low expectations for this, but was absolutely blown away. What an incredible ride!

The way it blends screens with the attraction movement and practical effects is insane. It also held several of the most realistic animatronics I have ever seen.

Already having been on one of the park’s busiest attractions, we found ourselves starting to be dissuaded from the almost $300 Express Pass.

We decided to head toward Hiccup’s Wing Gliders in Isle of Berk. The posted wait was 45 minutes and the line looked about as long. Figuring now was still the best time to do it, we got in line.

It ended up only being about 20 minutes!

For what I thought was a small coaster, the ride was cute and packed quite a punch.

At this point it was about 11 a.m. and we had almost sold ourselves away from Express. We walked across the park to Dark Universe and beat the wait times there as well!

There was literally no wait for Curse of the Werewolf, a short but fun spinning coaster, or Monsters Unchained.

Set inside a giant castle, the high-tech dark ride was incredible. I’d rank it just below Battle at the Ministry in my ride rankings. The world-class animatronics and freighting storyline really stood out.

By the time we were off Monsters Unchained, the wait time for Curse of the Werewolf had shot up to 45 minutes, so we didn’t get to do it again.

Before taking a pitstop for food, we swung by Stardust Racers to take advantage of the 10 minute wait.

By the time we were off the coaster, it was only 12:15. I had heard so many horror stories of people visiting the park, but we were technically only two hours into the day with just one more ride I really wanted to do.

From here, we decided to grab Starbucks (my first coffee of the day) and lunch.

To put it lightly, Starbucks was a disaster. We waited in line half an hour (our longest wait thus far) and it took another 20 minutes to get our drinks. I would definitely recommend getting coffee before the park.

Looking at the wait times, we saw Mario Kart was around an hour and Minecart Madness was well over two. The group wasn’t too keen on waiting this long for either of these, so we opted for lunch at The Oak and Star Tavern. I got a salad, which was perfect.

I was actually amazed with the quality of the food, it was so good! All around the park everything looked delicious. Coupled with the immersive lands, I can definitely see this park becoming an Epcot of sorts.

After lunch, in the heat of the day, we decided to brave Nintendo. Mario Kart had fallen to a 45 minute wait, so with nothing better to do, we decided to just wait it out.

Unfortunately, everyone else in the park had the same idea and by the time we got there it was back to 90 minutes. I’d been on the ride in Universal Studios Hollywood and didn’t need to wait that long for it.

We decided to spend a bit exploring Super Nintendo World before the heat overtook us.

In hindsight, we should have just jumped in the multi-hour wait for Minecart Madness. I could see storm clouds building on the horizon and I knew the ride closed in the rain.

But on the flipside, who wants to wait in a multi-hour line in 90-degree weather? I later learned that the queue is shaded, but the only cooling comes from overworked fans. It would have been miserable

Anyway, we left Nintendo and went to Celes-Tiki (a tiki bar in Celestial Park) and got some overpriced Daiquiris. We were kind of at a loss of things to do and decided to return to Paris and meander around the Harry Potter section of the park.

One complaint I frequently saw was the lack of physical stores in the land compared to facades. I didn’t see this as too much of an issue, but I could visualize the complaint.

The sweetshop called our name and we spent a few minutes browsing the candy before buying a small bag to try.

After finishing our drinks, we went back to Battle at the Ministry and hopped in the single rider line. This is by far the best way to do this ride, we walked through the Ministry past the backed-up standby line and straight to the stairs leading to the ride.

Unfortunately for us, we were stopped and alerted that the ride was currently down. Assuming it would be a short closure, as the app still showed the ride as open, we waited for about 20 minutes before the work lights turned on. This is never a good sign for a down attraction, so we made the decision to bail.

As we walked back into the park we could all sense an impending downpour. The dark clouds looked menacing on the horizon as the wind started to aggressively pick up.

Making a split second decision, we decided to run across the park to pass the storm in Mario Kart’s single rider. Raindrops started to pick up as we ran across the park, but we made it into the line right before the downpour.

Unlike Battle at the Ministry, the line moved incredibly slow and took about half an hour for all of us to get on.

Though considering it was one of two open rides in the park and the posted wait was about two hours, we weren’t complaining! Christina ended up getting the highest score, but I feel like a second time on the ride would have done us all favors.

My friend Courtney had gone back to the hotel for a bit and we had agreed to meet her at the rooftop bar on Helios Hotel. When we left Mario Kart, she texted that she was about an hour away from coming back.

The three of us decided to start making our way back with a few pitstops. The first, Monsters Unchained through single rider.

I will say, Darkmoor in the rain had really good vibes. I can’t help but think this is the way the land was meant to be experienced.

As for Monsters Unchained, there was literally no one in the Single Rider line. We were through the line and off the ride in about five minutes.

We took the extra time to stop by Battle at the Ministry’s single rider, a fifteen minute wait that had Levie and I sitting next to each other with Christina right behind.

The line took about an eighth of the time as the standby and even on the second time, this attraction blew me away.

When we got off, it was still storming so everything was still closed. We went to Helios and met Courtney at the rooftop bar.

The views from this bar were absolutely incredible.

The high vantage point doubled as the perfect spot to watch for attractions to start reopening. Once we saw Stardust Racers testing, we ran back into the park and over to our final attraction: Minecart Madness.

This is where our day took a turn.

When we got to the ride, we saw the coaster testing but were assured by the Team Members out front that nobody knew how long it would be until the ride reopened.

We decided to wait for 20 minutes amid frequent announcements that the attraction was currently closed. The second we stepped out of line, they announced that the ride would reopen immediately.

Thankfully, everyone around us in line let us return to our spot. We made the mistake to optimistically let ourselves get excited to ride.

This hallway is deceptively annoying. You’re physically so close, but it takes SO LONG.

We moved slowly for about 15 minutes before another announcement shared the attraction was experiencing technical problems and was facing a brief delay.

We were annoyed, but decided to wait it out. It took about 30 minutes before they announced it was open again.

After the cheers generated by the reopening announcement subsided, they played another sharing that approaching inclement weather might cause another delay.

A very large groan from everyone around.

Now here is where the stress kicked in.

We were relatively close to the front of the line, yet the ratio of Standby vs. Express was incredibly skewed. The line was moving even slower than before and with the impending inclement weather announcement, it was not a fun time.

Not to get into the specifics of theme park operations, but the employees at this attraction had no clue how to group people and keep lines moving. There were very large open spaces caused by slow Express Pass scanning, all of which led the standby line to move even slower.

When we were literally one group away from getting on the ride, it closed because of “rain.”

To build an OUTDOOR headlining roller coaster which can’t operate with any moisture in FLORIDA was an incredibly stupid move by Universal.

A few members of our group wanted to wait it out, but we decided to go ride MarioKart. I had very little faith in the attraction reopening.

On the way out of the ride we ended up ranting to this employee at the front of the attraction. She was very sweet and empathized with us regarding the attraction’s operation and gave us special Express Passes (most others don’t work for Minecart Madness) to return. It was about 90 minutes from closing at this point and I had very little hope on actually using them.

When we got to Mario Kart, it was also closed. Annoyed, we decided to get some drinks and explore the park after dark.

On the way out, we rode Yoshi. It was cute, but I wish they had added an interior dark ride scene.

I got the Mead from Berk, which was very okay. The land stunned at night, which made up for the mid and expensive drink.

I wanted to see Darkmoor at night, so we trekked across the park again.

Contrary to my expectations, it was kind of a let down. Aside from the main strip of shops, the lighting seemed off and killed any bit of a spooky vibe it seemed they were trying to create.

We regrouped and were on the way to ride Battle at the Ministry when I saw that Minecart Madness was open.

I yelled to my friends and several other groups around overheard us and quickly followed to Nintendo.

The wait time was posted at 35 minutes, but we used the Express to breeze past.

Literally the second we got into the building they played the same impending weather announcement again.

Thankfully, with the evil express passes, we were on the ride in a matter of minutes.

It was a good ride, but after the stress it had caused, I was mildly disappointed.

We ended the day by going over to Stardust Racers for a night ride on the coaster. On our way out of the park, we walked past the lagoon that was showing the nighttime show.

We would have stayed, but it had been a while since I had done an entire day at a theme park and I was exhausted.

Nevertheless, I had to snag a picture of the park’s entrance on the way out.

Overall, I really enjoyed my day at the park! My favorite ride was Battle at the Ministry.

Is Epic Universe the best theme park? No, it’s not even close, but I’d still recommend a visit. It showcases some of the industry’s most cutting-edge technology and has some of the country’s best rides and most immersive lands.