SOME TEETHING ISSUES AS EPIC UNIVERSE OFFICIALLY OPENS

Florida’s new theme park is now officially open. After years of construction, months of previews, and plenty of hype, Epic Universe has opened its doors to the public. This is Universal Resort’s third theme park in Orlando and features distinct new lands themed to Harry Potter, Universal Classic Monsters, Nintendo, and How to Train Your Dragon. There is also a central hub called Celebstrial Park linked to interdimensional travel.

Cards on the table I have not visited yet, but cannot wait to try this park out. It looks like Universal have taken the most successful aspects from the other parks and given their most brilliant minds a chunky budget to take them up another level. From the outside it looks like an experience built with confidence and without cutbacks. Sign me up.

In truth many theme park fans have been able to test out the experiences for the past couple of months as part of ‘previews’. The key difference here is that people are warned not to expect the final product as the rides and staff undergo rigorous testing and inevitably rides are more unreliable. With the park now ‘open’ expectations, along with the entry prices, are understandably higher. Given that there have been a few teething problems to go with the general acclaim for this ambitious new park.

EPIC UNIVERSE IN THE HEADLINES

Here in the UK, which is a core target market for Universal’s marketing push, sensationalist news headlines have appeared in the past 24-hours. Both the Independent and Mail Online have run pieces focusing on the lack of shade for visitors and bemoaning the number of rides available. 

Whilst there is some valid criticism, the Independent’s piece titled ”Not so Epic? Universal’s $6 billion new theme park slammed over ‘lack of shade’ and ‘not enough rides’” has chosen to cherry pick only the most negative comments from Trip Advisor and Reddit and report on them. The British media love to give new attractions a good kicking, so any sniff of trouble was inevitably going to get them going. The poor Millennium Dome never recovered, it’s safe to say that Epic Universe has a much better chance.

There are some frustrated people leaving reviews, my eyebrows certainly raised when I saw an average review rating of 3.0 on TripAdvisor, and much of this seems linked to the ride availability.

BATTLE AT THE MINISTRY WAIT TIMES

Various reports have suggested that Epic Universe is currently allowing in only a fraction of its final capacity. A sensible approach for any new theme park. With all rides operating this means short wait times for early visitors, with nearly all the attractions reporting queues of under an hour, and some headline attractions such as Stardust Racers well below that. The exception? Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry.

This new spectacular dark ride wasn’t ready for the earliest previews, signalling a team racing against time to be ready for the grand opening. When it did operate during previews those who got to experience it were effusive with praise. Not everyone did get to ride it though. Reliability was poor from the outset, and when it was open the capacity was obviously well below expected. A virtual queue was utilised to avoid extensive lines, but was soon removed in favour of the classic stand by solution. This attraction uses a lot of new technology and is very ambitious, and that comes with some challenges. It’s fair to say they have not been overcome yet.

Five hour wait times for Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry have become common shortly after the park opens, and that’s with Epic Universe at reduced capacity. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that half of the entire park’s attendees could be in the queue at one time. The waits do tend to get down to below a couple of hours late in the day for those who have the stamina to keep going, and are willing to take the risk that they might not ride at all. With the ride still being unreliable there’s no guarantee it will be open when you want to ride it, and when it does have downtime, that huge queue of people needs to find something else to do.

Epic Universe has not coped well (yet) when key attractions are down with queues elsewhere quickly going from pleasingly short to frustratingly bloated. There might not be a quick fix for this, but if the rides they have currently are not able to suck up the current limited crowds, how are they going to step up in the summer without damaging this fledgling park’s reputation? I can imagine there are already some desperate meetings being arranged to discuss solutions. We wouldn’t be surprised to see one or several of these introduced:

• Additional hours

• Virtual queue(s)

• Timed entry tickets for certain portals (most likely Potter and Nintendo)

What a fascinating situation to follow over the next few months. To have something so brilliant and ambitious, that presumably works in all your projections, but isn’t working in practice. We’ll let you know if and when any changes get announced.