Universal Epic Universe: Touring Strategies, Tips, and Tricks
“I bought my ticket to Epic Universe. What now?"
With Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe still being so new, there are many questions about how best to experience all it has to offer. “Is one day enough, or do I need two?" “Should I purchase an Express Pass?" “Where should I go first?"
We visited for multiple days mid-summer, as part vacation, part research trip. While visiting, we spent two full days at the park - one with Express Pass and without. I’ll give you my honest take on what worked best, along with some touring strategies, tips, and tricks to help you make the most of your time in this brand spanking new theme park.
How Many Days Should I Spend in Epic Universe?
The answer to this question can be a bit subjective. Epic Universe offers one hub world in Celestial Park. From there the adventure extends through four different portal worlds, including SUPER NINTENDO WORLD, Dark Universe, How to Train Your Dragon - Isle of Berk, and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Ministry of Magic. Each of these worlds appeals to uniquely different tastes.
If you’re not fully familiar with the worlds and attractions open in Epic Universe, check out Inside the Worlds of Epic Universe for a quick primer.
For purposes of this discussion, let’s assume the goal is to experience every attraction in the park at least once. My short answer is - one day should be enough to experience all of Epic Universe, if you are willing to be among the first at the gates for early morning hours, and also choose to stay in the park beyond the posted closing time. It’s a long and busy day, but it’s doable and can be rewarding. That being said - several of the new attractions have experienced major inconsistencies with run-time. Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry often opens late, and is often down during the day. We found Hiccups Wing Gliders to be very unpredictable during our visit, and it was down more than any other attraction during our visit. We’ve read and heard the same thing about Mine-Cart Madness, though it was running fine during our visit.
The bottom line here is - Epic Universe is still new, along with all of its attractions, and therefore unpredictable. If you are visiting the park during its first year of operation, bring your patience and a backup plan, just in case your must-do attraction is experiencing a meltdown of cosmic proportions.
Using Express Pass in Epic Universe
For our first ever visit to Epic, we were hedging our bets. We planned to spend two days in the park, and we wanted to use Universal Express Passes for our first day there. Unfortunately, Universal’s Signature Collection hotels do not offer complimentary Express Pass for Epic Universe, the way they do for Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. And Express Pass isn’t cheap - we shelled out over $250 per person for the day (thankfully we were only a party of two, so the expense was doable). All attractions at Epic Universe accept Express Pass with the exception of Dragon Racer’s Rally (though when we visited, Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry and Mine-Cart Madness were not yet accepting Express Pass).
Keep in mind - Express Pass does not offer front-of-line access. It shortens the wait to about a third of the posted wait time. So when we visited Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge at 2pm, we waited about 40 minutes to ride, instead of two hours. We enjoyed similar experiences with Yoshi’s Adventure, Stardust Racers, Hiccups Wing Gliders, and Curse of the Werewolf.
Was Express Pass helpful? Sure. Was it necessary? No - considering we planned to visit for two days and therefore had time (aka second chances) on our side. But having Express Pass in our pocket allowed us to strategically hit several attractions during Early Park Entry (including Mine-Cart Madness) without using Express Pass, while lines were short, then return to hit the major attractions a bit later using Express Pass. For us, this included earlier rides on Stardust Racers, Curse of the Werewolf, and Monsters Unchained all without Express Pass, then second rides on each attraction later using Express Pass.
Overall - Express Pass can be critical during busy times of year, like summer, school vacation weeks, and the holidays - especially now with the addition of Battle at the Ministry and Mine-Cart Madness to the roster. During less busy times of year, Express Pass is more of a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. Spending two days in Epic (and making use of Early Park Admission for Universal hotel guests) may be a better use of vacation money than paying big bucks for Express Pass.
Early Park Admission
If you don’t want to shell out the dough for Express Pass, then Early Park Admission is a must. At Epic Universe, Early Park Admission offers Universal hotel guests one-hour early access to Celestial Park, Dark Universe, and SUPER NINTENDO WORLD (though Mine-Cart Madness doesn’t officially start running until regular guest hours). On the days we visited, Early Park Admission translated to 9am access, vs. regular park opening at 10am.
At the time of our visit, the two headliner attractions not offering Express Pass were Mine-Cart Madness and Battle at the Ministry (this has since changed). Guests looking to beat the lines at those two attractions do one of two things: 1) Flood into SUPER NINTENDO WORLD for early access and then straight into Donkey Kong Country to wait for Mine-Cart Madness to open, or 2) Charge to the Ministry of Magic portal and wait there until the land opens at regular time, then run (and by “run" I mean “hustle as fast as you can without Universal Team Members yelling at you for running") to Battle at the Ministry open opening. These early entry strategies may change a bit with the addition of these two attractions to the Express Pass system. However, due to the persisting popularity of both of these attractions, wait times for both are expected to remain consistently higher than most other attractions, meaning this early riding strategy will still work well for guests wanting to experience either attraction with minimal wait without Express Pass.
We chose to prioritize Mine-Cart Madness during early access for two reasons. In the weeks before our visit, we had read and heard from several sources that the attraction opens fairly early before the posted park opening, despite no official guarantee. In addition, reports of the Battle at the Ministry being plagued with delayed openings discouraged us from taking that route. We were rewarded by our choice, as Mine-Cart Madness started running at 9:10am - only ten minutes after Early Park Admission, and almost a full hour before the posted opening time. Buoyed by our good fortune, we hopped off Mine-Cart Madness to ride both Dark Universe attractions, then Stardust Racers - all without needing to use Express Pass - before heading into Berk with the rest of the day guests, where we started putting our Express Pass to use.
Following our time in Berk, we returned to SUPER NINTENDO WORLD armed with our Express Passes to take on Bower’s Challenge and Yoshi’s Adventure. Note: Given that Mine-Cart Madness and Battle at the Ministry are two of the most popular attractions in the park, this plan for Early Park Admission is sound even without the addition of Express Pass.
Guests not interested in fighting for either of these two headliner attractions will enjoy low crowds in the spaces open during Early Park Admission. Super Mario Land is a true joy to explore, interact with, and photograph - and it’s much better in the morning when it is cooler and you’re not surrounded elbow to elbow with people. Not to mention, you can ride Bowser’s Challenge and Yoshi with reasonable waits.
Regardless of which strategy you use - make sure you take advantage of this precious hour of the day. It’s worth the early rise and hustle. In fact - I recommend doubling down on the early morning plan and getting to the front gates over an hour before Early Park Admission opening time. The park security gates open approximately one hour before Early Park Admission. If you can be at the front of the rush through security, you’ll end up near the front of the pack for entry into your selected world, and you’ll be on-and-off your first attraction in no time!
Evening Hours
At the end of a long, hot theme park day in Orlando, the temptation to melt back to the hotel in the early evening is hard to resist. But if you want to do everything in Epic Universe all in one day (especially without Express Pass), the evening hours are indispensable. The park really starts to empty out around 8pm, and crowd levels become much more manageable than they are during the mid-afternoon peak.
On the days we visited, the park closing time was 9pm. That means 9pm was the latest time guests could enter the park. However - most attractions continued running until long after 9:00. In fact, while we were visiting, most attractions were allowing guests to hop in the queue lines as late as 10pm - meaning, guests were actually riding many attractions as late as 10:30pm or even later.
This additional time - call it two hours between 8pm and 10pm - was amazingly productive for us during our visit. On one of our two days, we experienced every ride in Isle of Berk (Hiccups, Dragon Racer’s Rally, and Fyre Drill) - as well as Stardust Racers - all within the span of an hour. And this was without Express Pass. Use your mid-day time to rest, eat, and maybe catch one of both of the show attractions. Heck - you can even go back to your hotel for a bit while the crowds are at their thickest. Then, surge through Epic during the evening hours to get some bif bang for your theme park buck.
Bonus: Leaving Epic after 10pm helped us avoid the mass rush to the shuttle bus area. We hopped right on our bus and headed back to our hotel with almost no waiting.
Epic Universe Touring Strategy in a Nutshell
To boil all this down - If you only have one day to visit Epic Universe, purchasing Express Pass is nice insurance to guard against ride downtimes and weather interruptions - when guests tend to flood the standby lines of certain indoor attractions and restaurants and spike the wait times. If you don’t have Early Park Admission, then Express Pass becomes even more important, as crowd levels swell quickly once the park opens to all guests.
Early Park Admission is a huge asset for Universal hotel guests, and can be used to target headliner attractions first thing in the morning, to avoid waiting in the long mid-day attraction lines. Likewise, later evening park hours contain far fewer guests, and attraction wait times drop sharply after 8pm (even a bit earlier).
Save the shows (The Untrainable Dragon in Isle of Berk and Le Cirque Arcanus in Ministry of Magic) for mid-day or high heat/foul weather. The shows are easier to attend, and offer nice respite from the elements and a break from the hustle of theme park touring.
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I truly hope this strategy guide helps you navigate the adventurous worlds of Epic Universe. Wanna know which attractions are the best? Here’s my take on the five best attractions in Epic Universe.
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