The coasters coming to Epic Universe opening May 22, 2025, at the Universal Orlando Resort are:

Stardust Racers - Mack racing multi-launch coaster with a 48-inch height requirement.

Hiccup's Wing Gliders - Intamin family multi-launch coaster with a 40-inch height requirement.

Donkey Kong Mine Cart Madness™ - BOOM coaster cantilever effect with a 40-inch height requirement.

My personal least anticipated: Curse of the Werewolf - Mack family spinning swing launch coaster with a 40-inch height requirement.

Werewolf should have been a Mack extreme spinner to counteract stardust. Epic Universe is already set to debut as the most family-friendly universal park, with the highest height requirement being 48 inches. Super Nintendo and HTTYD are lands dedicated to kids. I get werewolf was last minute, but still.

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

I'm glad I didn't listen to all of the negative reviews and wait a year for Epic. Seems like lines are better as the kids went back to school. Despite that, I really hate lines. I don't think many rides are worth waiting 2 hours. And I didn't do all of the rides in Nintendo land. But Epic is the best Universal park. I just wish they had at least one more roller coaster.

1. Stardust racer in the first row at night - this is by far the best ride. We rode it multiple times. But it's best at night, especially in the first row. I heard the last row is good too.

2. Monsters Unchained - Our entire group thought this was far better than Battle at the Ministry. I get dizzy on 3D rides very easily. I can't handle the 3D Harry Potter ride at IoA. It might be because the ride moves you to a horizontal position several times throughout the ride that I didn't get dizzy. It actually reset my senses. And there is a great mix of 3D and animatronics, with the animatronics being the best I've seen in a ride.

3. Hiccup's Wing Gliders - it's not as good as Hagrid's but it's similar. That's all I can say about it. It's also cute. But not nearly as good as Stardust.

4. Mario Kart - Bowser's Challenge - The game aspect of the ride didn't make a lot of sense to me. And I wasn't sure if I was competing against other people in my cart. But the ride itself was very nostalgic, especially the end where you go on Rainbow Road. That part alone was worth the wait.

5. Battle at the Ministry - The interior is beautiful and looks like the movies. But the waits are insane for the ride itself. I know I'm in the minority, but I found it very overrated. It also relies way too much on 3D screens, and I got very dizzy, especially in the beginning. It also broke down three times during the ride. My group are massive HP fans and did not think the ride was a memorable experience. A one hour wait is fine, but I do not think it's worth a 2 or 3 hour wait.

6. Constellation Carouse - Pretty cool but don't wait an hour for it. Do it at night.

7. Mine Cart Madness - This is one of the worst coasters I've ever seen. It's slow but tries to be more intense by jerking you around during turns. I knew it would be disappointing because they let you bring your bags on the ride. If the wait is more than 20 minutes I would skip it.

Overall the park is great considering the rides at some of the other parks can be kind of dated. It just needs two more coasters to be perfect. But I don't think it's worth waiting in 2 or 3 hour lines for anything at this park.