One year ago, Epic Universe opened its gates to the public. Universal Orlando’s new theme park added four roller coasters, five immersive lands, stage shows, restaurants and other attractions to the Central Florida tourism mix at a cost of $7.7 billion.
It was the first new park in a generation to open in Orlando, complete with technologically advanced attractions, familiar franchises and a high-end hotel attached.
Yet amid all the new stuff, a burning question looms: Will there be more Epic?
There are signs but no official announcements.
“I like being inside of Epic Universe. I think the theming and the way that it’s designed is very inviting, and it makes you want to stay all day and all night,” said Alicia Stella, owner of Orlando ParkStop website, who said she has visited Epic about 20 times.
“The worst thing, though, is that sometimes the lines get long,” she said. “You may enjoy the ambiance, but you feel like there’s not enough to do because you don’t feel like waiting in the three-hour line.”
Epic demand and operational challenges such as technical woes have sometimes created hours-long waits for attractions, particularly Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry ride and Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment ride in the park’s Dark Universe section.
“There’s a lot of complexity, and I even call it muscle memory that has to be developed, both technical and the operational side. There are just those types of things that you have to learn your way through,” Jeff Polk, Epic Universe’s general manager, said.
“I really feel like we’ve done a good job of balancing the demand, attendance and capability,” he said.
Guests arrive at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic at Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests ride the Hiccup’s Wing Gliders roller coaster in the How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk world at Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Universal Orlando park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests arrive at Super Nintendo World at Epic Universe Thursday as the theme park neared its one-year anniversary. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Theme park visitors stream through the Celestial Park section of Epic Universe at its 10 a.m. opening on Thursday. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Epic visitors explore The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic. (Joe Burbank/Orlando
Guests arrive at the entrance of Epic Universe, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Exchange students greet guests at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, at Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests arrive at the entrance of Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests meet and greet with Toothless, in the How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk world, at Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests arrive at the entrance of Epic Universe, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests ride the Hiccup’s Wing Gliders roller coaster, in the How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk world, at Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
The lagoon at the How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk world at Epic Universe, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests walk through the portal at the How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk world at Epic Universe, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Universal Orlando visitors snap a selfie at the entrance of Epic Universe, which has now been open for a year. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Guests ride the Hiccup’s Wing Gliders roller coaster, in the How to Train Your Dragon world, with the Stardust Racers in the background, at Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Super Nintendo World at Epic Universe, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
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Guests arrive at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic at Epic Universe on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the park’s debut, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
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Options beyond those marquee attractions include the Stardust Racers coaster and Constellation Carousel in Celestial Park, Curse of the Werewolf thrill ride in Dark Universe, three rides in the How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk area and three rides in Super Nintendo World, which features interactive stations using Power Up bands. There are stage shows in the Potter and Dragon sections. Epic also includes multiple restaurants and merchandise stores.
“Technologically, thematically, visually, I think the park is just spectacular,” said Dennis Speigel, CEO of International Theme Park Services. “It boils down, to me, one sentence: more capacity,” he said.
Adding rides and other activities could increase the Epic capacity, provide options when attractions have downtime and encourage visitors to stay longer and spend more.
The money spent to build Epic is evident in its design details and the advanced technology in attractions, such as augmented reality, high-resolution projections and limber, lifelike animatronics, Speigel said. Universal secured more than 150 patents for Epic innovations, the company says.
“These places are expensive to operate, but the one thing you have to do, you have to give the people enough entertainment value,” Speigel said.
Crowd control
Managing Epic Universe capacity has been a first-year priority.
“We don’t want to have so many people here that they just can’t get through stuff on any given day,” Polk said.
“We know that we want to be able to accommodate the demand that we have and the ever-increasing demand. … That’s why we have to look at future development within the parks,” he said.
“A lot of what we’re really trying to focus on is building more of the interstitial moments with live entertainment and with live shows and things to really fill in the gaps between the checkbox of attraction to attraction,” Polk said.
“Right now, that’s, I’d say, my primary focus.”
The current public perception is that Epic has good days and bad days, especially when it comes to wait times, said Tharin White, a theme park fan and lead publisher of Everything You Need to Know platform.
“I do think you could get a full day out of it. … I think they need more,” he said. “I think they need rides that are indoors, and they need stuff to be working more consistently.”
Florida’s threatening weather can knock several Epic attractions, particularly the outdoor ones, out of the lineup, said White, who has visited the park 21 times.
“I just think that the park could really set itself up for success if it added three new indoor attractions,” he said. “They don’t need to be E-ticket, life-changing attractions.”
Stella agrees.
“If I was in charge, I would add two smaller flat rides to Celestial Park to add more kinetic energy and more things for little kids to do,” she said. “I think it would really flesh out the central area of the park.”
Passholders on hold
Currently, Universal Orlando annual passholders have daily access to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure theme parks — but not to Epic Universe.
“The challenges of kind of allowing that audience full access at all times is very high, just because the park has a limited capacity,” Polk said.
Universal Orlando started out by selling only single-day tickets, then rolling out multiday packages with an increasing amount of Epic access. Polk expects this sort of process to continue into next year.
“Overall, we want to make sure we’re doing right by them (passholders), and doing right by them also means not bringing them into a park condition that is very uncomfortable and not fun,” he said.
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“Our ticket product, including how we mix annual-pass products, will evolve, and it will get us into a new place,” Polk said. “Will that be absolute unfettered access? I can’t say yet. We want to make sure we do this at baby steps, so that we don’t disrupt the overall experience.”
Grow and behold
Government documents, local observers and the theme-parks rumor factory have stirred unofficial speculation about an Epic expansion. Construction trailers have been sighted, and there are permits for an unidentified 150,000-square-foot building near the park’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter area.
And activity on nearby company-owned land on Universal Boulevard has people hypothesizing about non-Epic additions such as an entertainment complex, hotel or transportation hub between the north and south ends of Universal Orlando. Already, Elon Musk’s Boring Company has been selected to build what could be a network of tunnels through which electric vehicles would shuttle resort visitors from place to place.
The company owns multiple parcels in that stretch area and “It’s almost becoming like its own bubble,” Stella said. It loosely connects the original parks and the Endless Summer hotels – where Wet ‘n’ Wild stood – to Epic Universe and its three adjacent hotels.
“And now there’s something in the middle, so I think that that’s a pretty good theory,” she said.
“I think we’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that Comcast (Universal’s owner) wants to continue to leverage this business. It’s doing well,” Polk said.
Epic Universe timeline: From dragons to butterbeer, here’s how theme park evolved
Bottom line: The company thinks Epic is helping Universal Orlando become a weeklong destination for vacationers. That’s been the stated goal since the park was announced in 2019.
Epic Universe “has become exactly what we had hoped for, particularly from a business standpoint. It has yielded great attendance across our resort as a whole, certainly helped with the additional hotel rooms that we’ve got on site now … and it, by all measures, is helping, I think, the Orlando marketplace,” Polk said.
“People are absolutely loving the experience overall, but at the same time, people use the park the way they want to,” he said. “We have to adapt to that … and that goes on forever.”
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