Heard a lot of problems with this launch, mainly the lack or shade/things to do if it rains, long wait times, and rides breaking down. How does the overall exercise compare to the 4 Disney parks?

Ever since epic universe has released, i’ve seen a lot of long time Disney fans, cast members, and Disney adults discussing how Disney is losing its magic and that the release of epic universe might have Universal taking the throne in the best theme park for now. What are y’all’s thoughts and opinions?

I want to hear who has the better theme parks and why?

Currently have a Disney pass holder and looking to swap to universal

I have now been to the park several times and have managed to get on all rides, some of them multiple times. I like the park a lot but it doesn't quite live up to the influencer hype.

Here is my breakdown of attractions in my order of preference:

Startdust Racers - Great ride! Night time rides were amazing. Not sure I'd put it above Velocicoaster but it's close and still stands on its own. I'm still a little shocked that Duelding Dragons closed yet this was created because this two cars seem to collide closer than Dragons ever did.

Monsters Unchained - Well done attraction! Not quite as amazing as some have made it out to be, as more movie screens than I expected, but by far the stand-out dark ride at this park. Cars are exactly the same as FJ but I prefered this to FJ as it didn't make me as queasy.

3.Hiccup's Wing Gliders - What a fun coaster! Not getting a lot of attention but I feel like it should.

4. Donkey Kong - It's bouncier than it should have been but still fun. Really cool looking at night.

5. Mario Kart - I wish this was a fast moving roller coaster ride like Test Track. It is still pretty good. Took me a while to learn how to play the game. I would probably put it over Monsters but I had ridden the Hollywood version so it wasn't new to me and while that shouldn't factor in to my ranking it still does.

6. Yoshi's Adventure - I feel like I'm starting to run out of rides here, which is another issue with this park, so I'll just put this one next because it's cute and I like Nintendo.

7. Curse of the Werewolf - My least favorite of all the roller coasters. It was lame and it seemed the most Six Flags of all the rides there. This should have gone to Sea World.

8. Dragon Racer's Rally - I've ridden this ride at Mall of America and it spinned like crazy. I've ridden both sides, twice each now, couldn't get the thing to flip once.

9. Fyre Drill - Rode it once. It's cute but lame.

10. Constellation Carousel - I forgot about the carousel because that's the impact it left on me.

11. (Hot Take) Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry - Worst ride in the park. It made me so sick. I never want to ride it again. The line was amazing. But when you have a ride where the line is 10x better than the ride, that's a problem. I saw all the hype from the influencers and I waited nearly 3 hours to ride it and never again. It just wasn't that great of an experience overall. I prefer the other movie based potter rides and even Spider-Man and Transformers are better rides.

Other takeaways:

There isn't enough to do at this park.

Nintendo area is too small. Gets way too crowded and this is during previews.

Ministry area looks really nice, but it is my least favorite of the three Wizarding Worlds.

Both the How To Train Your Dragon and Ministry shows were enjoyable but forgettable. I like the pre-show to the Ministry show better than both of the actual shows.

How to Train Your Dragon land looks great. Probably my favorite land but only because I had seen the Nintendo land before. There just isn't that much to do in this land tho. Kind of a problem with the whole park imo.

Toothless is just sitting there in the open and you watch everyone go through the same show. Why wasn't this in a building where you couldn't see what was happening?

Celestial Gardens area is nice but if we are comparing gardens the new Epcot area looks more impressive than this.

Monsters area looks really nice. The castle reveal was strange though. Was expecting it to be right out of the portal but it isn't.

The park is very nice, a great addition to the variety of Orlando parks, but it is no way the best park in Orlando, not even the best Universal park. I still prefer Islands of Adventure.

I’m hoping that Disney is paying attention to Universal and the fact that in just a bit more time it took for Disney to put up two new rides Universal built a whole new park!
The concept video they released today looks amazing and a 2025 opening date is awesome.
My family has never done Universal and we have been out of state WDW AP’s for 12 years, (and DVC owners for 4) with 3-5 trips a year to Disney every year during that time. But as my son gets older and is more into bigger rides we may convert over to Universal annual passes.

What’s the consensus here? Will Epic universe pull the crowds away from Disney? Is this the savior event the hardcore Disney fans are waiting for? Will this be the catalyst for Disney to make changes in prices to bolster monetary value for their guests?

I have heard some amazing things from some people, and many valid critiques from others. Recently I saw a tiktok of a girl criticizing the park for many things, and many people in the comments flocked to say they were just a Disney adult and shouldn’t compare it to Disney.

However to me, her criticisms seemed valid. She received a lot of hate for this, so I was just curious what your alls genuine thoughts on epic universe is and how it compares to other theme parks across the globe and the other Universal/Disney parks in Orlando!

I was lucky enough to attend a preview of Epic Universe and I wanted to share my thoughts on the park as a whole.

Overall, it's a really great park. Universal did really well with the design overall and I felt like it flowed well from one land to the next.

The Bad:

No shade - Now this I think will be fixed with time once all the trees grow. In the meantime there literally isn't any shade unless you go inside of a building. Same for some of the outdoor queues, about half of the queue is shaded and the other half is left out in the sun. Brutal.

Not family oriented - if you're a family with small kids, do no waste a day on Epic Universe especially if your child isn't 40" tall. There really isn't a lot to do with small kids at the park. A playground in dragons, the boat ride, and the carousel are the only attractions that small kids can do. I feel like Islands and Studios both have better small kid dedicated areas.

Nintendo guest flow - escalator up into the land and steps back down, this is going to be a nightmare especially with the number of strollers we see in Orlando parks.

The Good:

Cutting edge attractions - Monsters is amazing, so is almost every other ride in the park. Universal really knocked it out of the (theme) park with these attractions.

Rides designed well to handle crowds - Hiccup's has 2 loading stations, Monster's is a people eater just like Forbidden Journey, Stardust has a THRC north of 3000 people per hour, we were even surprised by the amount of people able to ride the carousel at the same time. With the exception of Mine Cart Madness and Dragon Racers Rally, this park's attractions are really built to handle crowds.

The park is designed to handle crowds - while the paths are not as wide as Tokyo Disneyland, they are wider than both the other Universal parks and will handle the crowds well.

The food - I would put Epic Universe up there with Dollywood and Knoebels for the best theme park food in the US. Everything we saw looked amazing and the pizzas we had at Pizza Moon were the best theme park pizzas (Via Napoli included) I have ever eaten. Another dining note was that we didn't find a freestyle machine out of ice all day (a big problem for the existing parks).

Standouts:

Stardust Racers - a really great coaster with really good capacity. I really enjoyed getting to race with the other train each time and the Celestial Spin is such a great element. Loads of airtime and some really cool views of the park. The coaster is somewhere in my top 10 (out of 354).

Monsters Unchained - Amazing. Great animatronics, great use of screens. A perfect take on a old school ghost train ride. I will say this is the best use of projected faces I have ever seen anywhere.

I didn't get to ride Battle at the Ministry but I'm sure that will be a standout when it eventually opens.

Untrainable - probably the best theme park show on the planet right now. The perfect length to keep little ones engaged and all of the special effects were perfect. Great use of large LED screens.

Musings:

So there was a lot of hype around this park and I think it lived up to most of the hype. I heard a few people think this park would be a Disney "killer" but I don't think that's the case. It's good, don't get me wrong. I don't think it will compete with the nostalgia and brand Disney has created from a general public (GP) perspective. I'm an enthusiast so I think just about everything in this park is better than what Disney has created in recent years. This park is so very good at world building and placing you in the middle of a movie accurate world and I can say that Universal does this way better than Disney (except for Cars Land, but that's a discussion for another day).

I think out of the park, Nintendo will be the hit with the GP while enthusiasts will gravitate towards Dark Universe.

Out of everything we rode, Mine Cart Madness was both my wife and I's favorite ride. I think it was really innovative and Universal executed it well (except for the low capacity).

I'm really interested on how Epic will affect market share/guest flow in Orlando. I'm confident that families would add an extra day to their Universal vacations to go to Epic. I am less confident that it would take a day off of a families Disney vacation. I think the biggest looser is probably SeaWorld in this situation since it's usually the park people add on to their vacations if they have an extra day.

Listening to Len Testa on the Disney Dish Podcast, he indicated that Epic has the same capacity and things to do as Animal Kingdom did opening day. Based on our experience at the park, that seems about right. I wouldn't say that Epic is a half day park though, it still took all day (10-7) to do everything. I could see however, if they let in too many people, it would make for a really miserable experience.

Where it ranks:

So I really like theme parks with flowing, tree lined paths that look like they have been integrated into the environment (see Efteling, Europa Park, Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, Tweetsie Railroad, Alton Towers, etc.) and parks with good capacity (see Europa Park).

While Epic doesn't quite fit into these categories—it's flat and lacks shade—it's still a world-class theme park that I highly recommend everyone visit if they get the chance. There's really nothing I dislike about Epic (aside from the points I mentioned earlier); I just happen to prefer 11 other parks a bit more.

Based on what we experienced from our preview visit, I would rank Epic Universe #12 out of 73

1 Europa Park - Rust

2 Silver Dollar City - Branson

3 Efteling - Kaatsheuvel

4 Dollywood - Pigeon Forge

5 Disneyland - Anaheim

6 Alton Towers - Stoke on Trent

7 Tokyo DisneySea - Tokyo

8 Universal Studios Islands of Adventure - Orlando

9 Tokyo Disneyland - Tokyo

10 Walt Disney World - Magic Kingdom - Lake Buena Vista

11 Parc Astérix - Piailly

12 Epic Universe - Orlando

13 Phantasialand - Brühl

14 Busch Gardens Williamsburg - Williamsburg

15 Liseberg - Gothenburg

16 Tivoli Gardens - Copenhagen

17 Knoebels Amusement Resort - Elysburg

18 Walt Disney World - Disney's Hollywood Studios - Lake Buena Vista

19 Disneyland Paris - Disneyland Park - Marne la Vallée

20 Epcot - Orlando

Which do you think?

1. Epic Universe will take traffic away from WDW. Some guests may only have time/money to visit Universal OR Disney so will choose the new shiny one. Plus with a third gate, it’s possible people could spend their entire vacation at Universal, meaning guests who previously visited both properties will be able to choose to reject Disney World altogether.

2. Epic Universe will (temporarily) increase traffic to WDW as guests from further afield will be in Orlando anyway and choose to visit Disney also while they’re there.

3. Little to no impact, or a combination of the previous two options meaning they cancel each other out.

Universal didn’t build an entire theme park faster than 3 year renovations will take.

I’ve seen the lazy argument that ‘Universal built a theme park faster than Disney built Tron’ or ‘meanwhile Universal built an entire theme park in half that time’

First of all. No they didn’t.

Focusing on one Disney ride or even land while comparing it to Epic is just horrible logic. Disney is building multiple projects at once across the globe.

Epic universe is delayed beyond its original 2023 opening just like Disney was delayed in construction.

You can be critical but please be realistic with your points

Edit: Well that escalated quickly.

What can Disney do to keep Universal from overthrowing it as the best set of Orlando theme parks?

I was thinking about this the other day. There’s going to be a BRAND new theme park in Orlando in a few years, with MAJOR IP. My question is will Disney build a 5th gate in response, or will they do something different?

I just decided to do this because ever since their D23 Park Panel, many people were thinking Disney screwed up and are gonna be kicked to the curb when Epic opens. However, other people think otherwise solely for how popular Disney currently is. I just wanna know, do you think Epic Universe will have any major impact on Disney?

Do you think people will skip Disney in favor of Universal this year, or do you think more people will head to Orlando in general and make all the parks busier? Just looking for speculation!

I have the opportunity in June coming up to spend about 8 hours in an Orlando park before heading home. But I can't decide between them:

• Epcot is chill, there's just enough rides I think I can conquer them all. I'd be happy to pay for the Cosmic Rewind ticket which is priority. Disneyland is in my backyard so MK and DHS not super interesting

• Epic Universe is busy, and still working the new kinks/bugs? How much can I realistically get done in a short time? Ticket avail comes and goes for the day I want, but express pass cost is nuts so probably won't do that

Runner Up: Do Universal+IOA w/ express pass, but that was insane expensive too so I think I have to table that