jzarley

I saw that as well! Here’s the link to the event page (it’s a limited time thing) https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/hhn/en/us/things-to-do/entertainment/ffn-star-trek Years and years ago (prior to Paramount purchasing the KECO chain) USH used to have a Star Trek attraction—if I recall correctly, it was a live show? EDIT: Guess I could have just done a 2-second Google search before posting Here’s a link to some info about that older Universal attraction: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Adventure

^ I’m doing the AP preview on 5/3 (then a post-opening visit on 6/20)—I’m concerned about getting the virtual queue for “Battle”. Back when Hagrid’s at IOA was on VQ, I had horrible luck at snagging a time. (But, then again on Guardians at Epcot I think I was able to snag a VQ boarding group like 24/25 times, so hopefully my luck will hold out at Epic)

That one sounded a little too good to be true The wording of the parking description seems a little confusing (“Valid at Universal Orlando parking garages (inclusive of Universal Epic Universe) only. Not valid for parking at any Universal Orlando Resort hotel.”) I’m assuming that means parking at Epic IS included (even though it’s a parking lot instead of a garage)—just seems like the wording on that could have been a little clearer

Thank you for posting this! Since they haven’t announced any AP tiers that will include Epic yet, it never even occurred to me that they may still honor Premier after 4p Express at Epic like at the other parks! For my visit on 6/20 I’ve already purchased Express (but, I plan on that being a full park day and probably wouldn’t want to wait until after 4p anyway), but that’s GREAT to know for future trips! Thanks again for posting!!

Universal started selling preview tickets for AP holders starting 4/17 and going until right before opening day. I saw the announcement yesterday but didn’t look at the offerings until this morning and I was still able to get two tickets for Saturday, 5/3 (cost with tax was $130/each). It looked like the initial week/ten days or so was pretty much sold out, but there still seemed to be availability most days after that.

I’m kind of glad that I had only seen a few still photos before I visited the park. If you can withstand the temptation—WAIT and experience it in real-time for the first time

One other thing I thought about in relation to your question about two days for Epic, I think Universal Orlando overall is now easily a 5-day visit (especially for first-timers or people who don’t get to go very often)—2 days for Epic, 1 day each for USF & IOA, then a 5th day to bounce back & forth between IOA/USF to pick up missed things or re-rides. (Well, maybe 6 days if you want to have a day at Volcano Bay too )

Sure—happy to give my perspective How long did you wait for the rides you did experience? Not counting Monsters Unchained (which we invested about 90 minutes) I think the second longest was Werewolf at around 50-60 minutes. It was interesting because that queue time had big peaks and valleys all day—sometimes it would be 75 minutes, then later 15 minutes, then later up to 60 again—it seemed to fluctuate a lot. We waited around 20 minutes for Wing Gliders and probably less than 10 for Star Dust Racers (and most of that was just walking thru the queue, putting stuff in the locker and going thru the metal detector). Of what you did see of Monsters Unchained (very unfortunate you couldn't ride it) was the queue cool? YES! We made it up to just outside the first pre-show (someone in line who had ridden before said there are two pre-shows) so we got pretty far into the manor. It was *very* cool and well done—almost an attraction in itself. How large were the queue lines? They’re built for quite a bit of overflow—if we would have actually gotten to ride Monsters I’m guessing our total wait would have been about an hour. There were large areas of overflow queuing that we completely bypassed. I’m guessing that ride alone probably has a 3+ hour queue capacity before its even close to expanding beyond the attraction’s footprint. How long would you wait for each ride? That answer was different at 10:30a than it was at 5:30p . I would willingly wait 2 hours to ride Monsters. By the end of the day I was feeling pretty wiped—it was a hot day in Orlando yesterday. (But nothing compared to what its going to be like in July!) Were there any blow-away moments for you? How did it feel entering the worlds? I don’t think there were really any blow-away moments—but that probably has a lot to do with reading so much about it over the past several years, the fly over videos, and just the general hype probably made it hard to top. I have a feeling that the GP who go into the park not really knowing much detail about it definitely will be blown away. Entering the worlds thru the portals were pretty much what I anticipated—although, I think the Nintendo one was the most immersive & with the coolest effects. Were you able to go into the Battle at the Ministry queue? Was the Floo Network effect working? (if so, how was it?) Unfortunately, the queue was “down” (not sure how ) and they were not letting people in. The show there wasn’t running until a few hours after we were there and the only thing really open in that world were the restaurants and retail. That area actually felt the most empty of people, so you could really enjoy the detail. That will probably never happen again Do you think you would need 2 days to do all of Epic? (wands, food, rides, shows, etc.) Yeah, I think definitely this first year or so, 2 days would be warranted. There’s a lot of detail, and I imagine there will be things you’ll want to do twice, so two days would be helpful. How's the parking situation? Was it easily accessible? (unlike Magic Kingdom) There’s a giant, open parking lot with a wide (and landscaped) pedestrian walkway down the center of the parking lot which leads to the entry plaza. Signage and roads in were very easy to follow. I came in off of Destination Parkway, but there will also be entrances off Universal and Kirkman. Unlike the original campus, Epic doesn’t seem nearly as walkable. I asked my friend how guests would walk from Stella Nova and Terra Luna to the park and her answer was “they won’t”. Of course, Helios will be easy walking since its actually sitting in the park

I was able to visit Epic Universe on Monday as a guest of my friend who works for UO resorts. There’s still no photos allowed and they’re trying to keep things under wraps as much as possible, so I’ll give some impressions, but no real spoilers. (That’s also why I’m just adding this to this thread, instead of posting something new under Trip Reports…) Design & Theming: The park is just absolutely gorgeous, and I’m guessing at least 95% complete. They were still doing some random painting and work around, but it felt very “done”—including landscaping, water features, theming elements, etc. The park definitely has a familiar Universal aesthetic—from a visual standpoint it reminds me a lot of IOA (especially in its early years)—just “plussed”. I think if you were dropped in the middle of that park without being told where you were, you’d realize you were in a Universal park. I was surprised at how big and expansive Celestial Park feels when you enter the park—normally a park’s “Main Street” acts more like a funnel to pull you into the center of the park, but this feels so wide open and free-form in where you can go. The Helios Grand is beautiful—and definitely very grand looking. The lands all feel very independent and immersive. There are a few places where you have sight lines outside the land (i.e., you can see the top of Helios from Dark Universe and can see the skyline of Harry Potter from Isle of Berk) but otherwise the immersion is pretty complete feeling. Attractions: My biggest disappointment was I didn’t get to experience Monsters Unleashed (despite giving it my best attempt). The ride was down in the morning and we got in line as soon as it was back up—about 45 min into the wait it went down again. We continued to wait (for probably another 45 minutes) until they finally dumped the queue because it wasn’t coming up anytime soon. It came back up later the in the afternoon and we made a beeline there again—just to get there and find out it was down again because of a fire alarm in the building. We left the park around 6p (it closed at 7p) and it was not operational again before we left. Oh well, that’s why it’s a technical rehearsal—hopefully I’ll get to ride it when I return in late June. A few rides which surprised me a bit as being much more fun than I anticipated—Curse of the Werewolf and Hiccup’s Wing Gliders. Both were really fun. I had thought Werewolf might be a good time because of the spinning, but Wing Gliders really surprised me. It was a zippy “story coaster” with good visuals and fun elements—sort of reminded me of Hagrid’s at IOA. Stardust Racers was definitely the coaster star of the show. From a speed and intensity perspective it reminds me a lot of Velocicoaster, but with the visuals of the close fly-bys (which are AMAZING) from the other train. It’s an awesome coaster—and a fast loader. I did not ride Dragon Racer’s Rally, Bowser’s Challenge, or Mine-Cart Madness. Mine-Cart was up & down all day (and, to be honest—my line patience was getting limited by the end of the day), and I had ridden Bowsers at USH last year, so didn’t feel the need to yesterday. Operations: Well, as you should expect in a rehearsal like this there were some rough edges—particularly with food service (which is still not all fully open yet, so there’s a lot of stress on the open locations) and guest entry. In fact, the thing that surprised me the most about the whole park was that entry security was still using the old fashioned metal detectors instead of the new Evolv scanners that WDW, SeaWorld and many stadiums are now using. Epic is really the first major destination park to be designed and open in the US since all the new security started after 9/11 and I thought they’d really use that opportunity to do something state-of-the-art efficient for security, but nope—still the same old metal detectors and item x-ray machines that requires them to hand wand probably 25% of the people going in. The one operational area where they are really advanced are with the ride lockers (required for all items on Star Dust Racers and available on Wing Glider)—they’re facial recognition controlled and work great! You just walk up, touch the button to start—it scans your face and opens a locker. Then, after the ride you’re on the back side of the lockers, scan your face again and your locker opens to retrieve your items. It’s amazingly fast & smooth. (CP could learn a LOT about how to do lockers at Steel Vengeance from them!) I think that’s a pretty succinct summary. All-in-all it’s a world class park and a wonderful addition to the UO Resort and the Orlando market.

In addition to going to the preview on Monday (*so* excited ) my partner and I bought single day AP tickets when they first went on sale months ago for 6/20. I saw on the news this morning that Universal Express just went on sale for Epic so thought I’d look at adding Express to our trip on 6/20–the cost for that date (and pretty much all of June/July) is $240 *EACH* and does NOT include Dragon Racer’s Rally Mine-Cart Madness™ Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry I’m still debating (hate the idea of 4 hour+ lines for everything) but have to say I’m a little sticker-shocked by almost $500 for two people in addition to what I already spent on the single day tickets (which, I can’t even remember how much they were since it was months ago that I bought them) EDIT Update: yeah, I went ahead and bought the Express for 6/20. I rationalized it because my partner’s and my birthdays are a week apart and our Epic visit falls between them, it’s kind of like a birthday present…we want to have time to spend some time at the rooftop bar at Helios Grand, etc., etc. (You know—the normal rationalizations when you’re attempting to justify an extravagant purchase )

In Hollywood it works pretty much as Diamondback described in the earlier post—there’s the main “pipe” entrance, then there’s another tunnel beside it that’s designed as an exit (I had forgotten about that). I was there on a Sunday in September and the park was busy but not extremely so (it was one of their first nights of HHN so was closing early). When I was there, they weren’t really regulating the in/out tunnels—in fact in my first time in the land I went back out the pipe the same way I came in because I didn’t notice the exit tunnel. However, I’m sure they do a much more regimented forced traffic when attendance warrants it.

^^ yeah, sorry—I shouldn’t have used an acronym without defining it

^ yeah, I was wondering about the non-park holdings as well. I wonder if Herschend will hold on to the park side of the business but sell-off the FECs and other non-park assets?

This is a good thing for those parks—Herschend is a quality operator (their quality and approach reminds me of the old Busch Entertainment Corp back in the day ) I thought maybe SeaWorld (aka United Parks) would pick up those parks considering John Reilly is at Parques Reunidos and his history with SeaWorld. (Although, that history may have made it *less* likely that he wanted to strike a deal with them )

If I recall correctly, I think they did virtual access to Super Nintendo Land when it opened in Hollywood. The single in/out access via the portals to each land is the thing I’ve always questioned how it would pan out operationally in a packed park. The way it is, getting into and out of the HP lands at both USF and IOA can feel a little claustrophobic and there are multiple ways in/out of those lands. I just wonder how it will be with one in/out “tunnel” for each of the lands. (Not to mention the traffic patterns in Celestial Park since you have to keep coming back to the center to move to a new land…) The good news is that from the aerial footage it looks like the walkways *within* the lands are pretty spacious :-)

I’m going to the preview on 3/31 My friend who works for the resorts is taking me during her TM preview visit. I’ve been warned that there are no photos allowed, and there’s an embargo on when trip reports can be posted. But, I’m psyched!

Yes! I think I visited a total of three times—2x before they added the Borg 4D film and once after. It really can be considered the predecessor of the current day fully integrated single themed lands (like Harry Potter at Universal, SW Galaxy’s Edge at the Disney Parks, etc.) that combine attractions, retail, food & beverage and employees “acting the part” around a common storyline. They were really years ahead of their time. I totally agree with you—ST:TE showed exactly what Paramount Creative could do when given the resources. I also could never understand how the Paramount Parks were never able to produce anything even reasonably close. (Despite the announcement hype coming every year with each new PKI announcement that never even came close in reality.) I realize that ST:TE was a year-round attraction in one of the largest tourist destinations in the world vs. regional seasonal theme parks, but still—the parks never produced anything close to that quality. I also never could understand why the Star Trek brand (arguably, probably the most valuable IP Viacom/Paramount owned) was never really utilized to its potential in the parks. Sure, they did the half-assed themed relocated coaster at Carowinds, but that was about it (aside from the walk-around characters early on the Paramount Parks life). I’m curious as to what the annual attendance at was at ST:TE in its best year? I’m sure it was still dwarfed by the attendance at (P)KI.

I think another interesting question might be who the potential buyers would be. SeaWorld (aka United Parks) made a play for Cedar Fair ahead of the SF merger, so that’s a possibility for some of the parks if any come on the market that would be complimentary. At their latest earnings call they noted that they were once again putting the resorts development activity on hold again (I’m convinced they’re never actually going to build a hotel at this point) so maybe that pause is to free up some capital. Although, it’s been rumored since late last year that Parques Reunidos was putting Palace Entertainment on the market and I thought that would be more of a big bang of an acquisition for them. A few years ago I would have thought Merlin would be a definite possibility and maybe still are, but they’ve been doing a lot of cost cutting and RIFs lately. Still cutting costs in one area doesn’t mean you aren’t going to spend for an acquisition. They just hired a new CEO (internal promotion who previously ran the international Midway attractions business) so that’s may be a way for her to make an immediate impact.

Have you heard anything about AP previews for pass holders? I bought a single day AP ticket (for 6/20) back when they went on sale but hadn’t heard anything else about AP previews. A friend of mine is in management for Universal Resorts (aka Loews) and have heard they’ve started some Team Member previews, but I’m not sure what that all entails. Personally, I’ll just be happy when the construction on Sandlake is finished and the intersection of Universal & Destination Blvd reopens again!

I’m a little disappointed to hear about Famous Daves—not that FD was that spectacular, but mostly since if nothing goes into the old Melt space they will be down one more full service restaurant this year. In our annual trip to CF we usually go on a Thursday/Friday in late August and stay at the Breakers—usually hit Fridays the first night then dinner at FD on Friday evening—guess we’ll need to come up with a new plan this year :-)

Did the standardized corporate logos for the parks start with the Paramount branding, or did it occur before that? I wasn’t really aware of the parks as a “chain” (only KI as a standalone) prior to the Paramount acquisition.

I’ve now worked for three theme park companies, of which Merlin is one. Of the three, it was by far the worst professional experience.

There are few things more fun and whimsical than minor league hockey promotions I remember years ago, the Columbus Chill (predated the NHL Blue Jackets) would play at the fairgrounds arena which was a crappy venue, but the games were packed and always a lot of fun! I love the Blue Jackets and Nationwide Arena is great, but it just doesn’t have the same scrappy, fun upstart feel that the Chill always had. I live in Orlando now and the Orlando Solarbears give off a similar vibe.

They’re really restricting the packages they’re selling right now. Currently, the only thing on sale to the GP is a 3 or 4 day UO multi-park ticket, but only one of those days (for both 3/4 day packages) can be used at Epic Universe—the remaining days can be used in any combo you want for USF & IOA. They’ve only opened true single day tickets so far for AP holders. Now, I imagine that will change before you go next November and there will be more flexibility. I’m waiting to hear how much the AP will be going forward once you can add on Epic.

Single day Epic Universe tickets went on sale yesterday morning for current UO annual pass holders. I got my two for 6/20–since Universal is sort of famous (infamous?) for troublesome park opening operations, I thought I’d give them a few weeks to work out the bugs