When Will Epic Universe Have Annual Passes?

“When will Universal Orlando include Epic Universe in Annual Passes?” is a common reader question. Many theme park fans are itching to purchase APs, especially Floridians or those who have avoided buying regular 1-day tickets to visit the new park. We’ll share the company’s official position and speculate as to when APs might be sold.

Let’s start by covering what has and has not been officially announced. Universal Orlando has confirmed that Annual Passes for Epic Universe will be available at some point. Back when tickets first went on sale, they shared that “more details regarding Annual Passes that include Universal Epic Universe will be announced at a later date.”

So it’s really not a matter of “if” when it comes to Epic Universe, but rather, the logistics: when, with what conditions, and how much? Of course, we don’t have the exact answers to those questions. This post is purely speculative, and also explains the why of APs at Epic Universe. If you’re only interested in official news, sign up for our free newsletter and we’ll notify you when Epic Universe APs go on sale.

Let’s start with the latest update, which is that Universal Orlando is surveying current Annual Passholders as of Spring 2026 and asking some curious questions about potential APs for Epic Universe. We’ll start here with the normal caveat that most surveys don’t lead anywhere, and even when they do, the lag between surveying guests and action is often several months, at best.

With that in mind, the survey presents three options: an Annual Pass upgrade that doubles the cost of current APs to include Epic Universe (highest cost), ticket bundles that allow multiple visits throughout the year on select dates (middle cost) or discounted 1-day tickets (lowest cost/status quo).

The highest price option is an Annual Pass with Epic Universe access, and it also comes with a 3-year commitment. Universal claims that this results in a lower per-year price than an actual annual pass. But wait, there’s more! Reservations would also be required to visit Epic Universe, and blockout dates apply.

It’s not the least bit surprising than any Epic Universe Annual Pass would be both very expensive and require reservations. We expect both whenever Universal finally rolls out an AP. The wildcard here that catches us by surprise is the 3-year commitment. I do not think this will come to pass, and is probably Universal reaching to see just how far they can push it.

Personally, there’s no way on earth I’d buy an Epic Universe AP with a multi-year commitment. Even though I fully intend to keep visiting for that long (or longer), the problem is the wildcards of park reservation availability and crowds. I have zero interest in an AP that has incredibly limited reservation availability over a month in advance, and for a park that faces similar (or worse once APs are introduced!) crowding 3 years from now as it does today. And both of those things are unknowable until Annual Passes are actually introduced and a bit of time has passed.

I’m just not dropping over $1,000 for an Epic Universe Annual Pass that might be functionally unusable for a park that remains overcrowded and continues to suffer from ride reliability woes and breakdowns. Accordingly, if that’s the AP that Universal Orlando releases later in 2026 or 2027, I’ll be sitting on the sidelines watching how it unfolds at first.

Either way, we’ll keep you posted. Here’s our full updated analysis and likely timeline for Annual Passes at Epic Universe…

When Universal Orlando will offer Epic Universe Annual Passes is basically a math problem. Or rather, a few math problems. Originally, one upside of delaying the rollout of Annual Passes for Epic Universe was capturing more 1-day ticket sales from locals or having the needed bandwidth for tourists.

That’s more revenue on a per visit basis than an AP would generate, even an add-on with an aggressive pricing structure. There was a period of time in the early days of Epic Universe when this was savvy, as it pushed locals to spend more on single day tickets.

Based on crowd trends, this demand has been long-since exhausted. Locals and theme park fans are largely sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Annual Passes or other discount admission to become available. This makes sense.

As exciting as Epic Universe is, there are only so many times even the most diehard fan will pay full-freight to visit. Some might still go seasonally as a special treat (so perhaps there will be another burst of interest among Floridians this holiday season), but weekly or even monthly visits are uncommon.

For Universal Orlando, the downside of delaying the rollout of Annual Pass sales would be reduced revenue if or when the parks have surplus capacity. If they are no longer capturing this single-day ticket revenue from locals, Annual Passes provide a nice boost and a new revenue stream that does not come at the expense of regular admission.

On top of revenue from the sales of Annual Passes themselves, having this local population would also help fill Celestial Park’s surplus of restaurants (all of which do have excess bandwidth). And if there is excess capacity, APs help put a floor under wait times that incentivizes sales of Express Pass to tourists.

However, the massive caveat there is the “if or when the parks have surplus capacity.” It was precisely this asterisk that prevented Walt Disney World from selling APs for a while during the phased reopening and pent-up demand period, back when the parks were still not operating at full capacity.

With per visit spending being significantly higher among tourists, there’s a tremendous opportunity cost in allocating park capacity to Annual Passholders if the bandwidth does not exist. Allocating capacity and balancing tourists versus locals or frequent visitors is really the whole ballgame.

If capacity is a scarce resource, it’s always going to be tourists who are prioritized over locals. Capacity is no longer scarce at Walt Disney World for 350+ days per year in 3 of 4 parks, hence the relaxation of reservations and no restrictions on AP sales.

Thus far, it has been a totally different story for Epic Universe.

For the first few months of the park’s existence, Epic Universe ticket data could be obtained by scraping the Universal Orlando backend website. Unfortunately, Universal finally wised up and closed the loophole that allowed this data to be acquired, so we no longer can see how many tickets are available and how many have been sold.

Prior to the data lockdown, we knew Universal Orlando was originally limiting attendance at 12,000 to 15,000 guests from the start of previews through the end of June, depending upon the day. That then expanded to roughly 22,000 guests per day in July. That’s where the upper limit stood through the remainder of last year, per the data.

There were some changes to those allocations that expanded the number of tickets available, but the bottom line was that Universal Orlando has been selling around 15,000 to 20,000 tickets (with a few outliers that expand the range to 13,000 to 22,000) per day. This is despite Epic Universe having a theoretical capacity of 35,000 to 45,000 guests.

Given this, it would seem like Epic Universe did have excess bandwidth, right? Not at all. Even though the regular tickets were available for purchase most days, Universal Orlando was purposefully introducing a lot of friction to discourage guests from purchasing them.

The reason for that is simple: Epic Universe wait times have been awful.

Since opening, the park’s monthly wait time averages have been 56 to 66 minutes. Weekly numbers have been 44 to 82 minutes. Daily numbers have been even more extreme. And it’s not getting any better. Epic Universe’s busiest two months have been January and February 2026.

Some of those days have been absurdly busy. In January, Epic Universe had its busiest day ever. Not just the highest wait times ever for Epic Universe, but for any park at Universal Orlando or Walt Disney World since at least 2019–and by a very wide margin. The average wait on that date was 107 minutes, with peak waits of over 300 minutes and multiple headliners hitting 200+ minutes throughout the day.

To put these numbers into perspective, it’s also worth noting that Walt Disney World’s two busiest days since 2019 have been 71 and 70 minute waits–both came during the weeks of New Year’s (early 2020 and late 2023). Walt Disney World’s average wait time since Epic Universe opened has been less than half of Epic Universe. The same goes for Universal Orlando’s other parks.

This may seem contradictory, but Epic Universe has been seeing New Year’s Eve level wait times on a near-weekly basis since opening despite having attendance that’s one-third to half of the park’s theoretical capacity.

Wait times at Epic Universe are worse than any other park at Universal Orlando or Walt Disney World despite the likelihood of lower daily attendance than any of them. As we’ve stated countless times before, the high wait times at Epic Universe are due to ride reliability and operational efficiency (or lack thereof), and not overwhelming demand.

This isn’t speculative. Universal has stated as much. During the company’s most recent earnings call, Comcast CFO Jason S. Armstrong shared that Epic Universe is “not yet operating at full run rate capacity, but we’ve made meaningful progress expanding ride throughput and remain focused on scaling further over the next several quarters with higher attendance, stronger per-caps, and additional operating leverage over time.”

Here’s what he previously said last August: “We expect Epic to continue to scale over the course of the year, with higher attendance and per caps as well as significantly improved operating leverage.” On a subsequent earnings call, one of the executives suggested it’d be a few more months before the park fully hit its stride.

At the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference, Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh shared similar sentiment, boasting about Epic Universe, but also conceding that they want to see the park and workforce continue to “mature.” He added that ride flow and capacity still need to get to their “maximum potential,” and that there’s “room to grow capacity, which will unleash…more attendance possibilities, giving us sort of a path to continued growth in Epic.”

In all likelihood, Cavanagh is referring to Annual Passes or perhaps Florida resident tickets. We suspect the latter will come at some point in Summer 2026, especially with Universal Orlando recently releasing stackable hotel and ticket discounts that include Epic Universe. That leaves locals tickets and APs as the final frontiers, with the latter being the big one. But in our view, capacity remains the biggest impediment to that.

It’s unclear why leadership believes it’s going to take another full year to ramp up Epic Universe, but it isn’t uncommon for a brand-new theme park–especially one with several envelope-pushing attractions–to have growing pains. Regardless, if Comcast leadership thinks it’s going to take until late 2026 to hit maximum capacity, it’s only appropriate for us to revise our predictions accordingly.

As for when Universal Orlando will start selling Annual Passes to Epic Universe, there are other things that will happen first.

The first is that operational efficiency needs to improve. This will happen gradually over time. It always does with a new park. Team Members will become more adept at dispatching ride vehicles at faster intervals, maintenance teams will reduce ride breakdowns, and uptime will increase. It’s impossible to predict when this will occur; it’s a gradual process.

The other thing that will happen first is Universal will pull other “levers” for increasing attendance at Epic Universe. They’ll reduce friction and make it easier for tourists to visit the park.

The first step in this direction came with the release of 2026 Epic Universe 1-Day, Multi-Day, Park Hopper & Discount Tickets. This means you can now visit Epic Universe multiple days or portions of days; you could spend every waking hour at Epic Universe, never doing the legacy parks at all.

This is quite the contrast to last year, when multi-day tickets all offered only a single day at Epic Universe, regardless of duration. You could buy a 14-day and still only get one visit to Epic Universe. (The most extreme example, for guests from the United Kingdom.) This made Epic Universe visits even higher stakes and more stressful, which is compounded by crowds, downtime and delays, weather closures, etc.

Some locals noticed that discounted Annual Passholder tickets for Epic Universe are available throughout 2026, and concluded that meant APs won’t be available at all next year. That’s one sign, but we hardly view it as conclusive. If Universal felt the need to sell Annual Passes, they’d change policies on the fly and deal with refunds or applying the value of tickets to APs. It’s not like they’re selling many of those 1-day tickets at this point; cleanup of that isn’t going to dictate their business plan.

The next step is puling other levers that Universal Orlando to entice demand and fill the park with excess capacity. There are a lot of potential stops between 1-day tickets only and unrestricted Annual Passes. We’re starting to see this with the aforementioned stackable Universal Orlando 2026 deal, which reduces the cost to visit Epic Universe to $65 per day, albeit on longer duration tickets.

Universal might try discounted Florida resident tickets, package deals, “free” days with new AP purchases or renewals (that otherwise exclude EU), and a variety of other promos. Simultaneously, they will need to find ways to prevent the other parks from hollowing out as a result of the less restrictive Epic Universe tickets. (The 2026 Universal Orlando Military Freedom Pass is a good example of this.)

Selling APs strikes me as the measure of last resort, once they’ve exhausted all other options for increasing revenue and attendance. Universal has plenty of other, better levers they can pull first. But on the other hand, Universal has not historically been as patient and methodical as they have with Epic Universe. At some point, they could revert to their norm.

As for an answer to the titular question, my best guess is that Annual Passes to Epic Universe won’t be sold before August 2026. This is the absolute earliest date we’d predict that any APs will be sold.

A better baseline scenario is January 2027. Although we just wrote that the 2027 ticketing policies aren’t conclusive, there is something attractive about a clean, calendar year break–just as there was with regular ticketing and park hopping.

The difference is that regular tickets are part of the annual product, whereas Annual Passes (ironically enough) are more revolving in nature. Even so, January 2027 gets Epic Universe past its second holiday season, and the single busiest week of the year.

With that said, Universal might want to wait even longer. Winter has become busier and, as noted above, the two busiest months ever at Epic Universe were January and February 2026. With summer becoming the new slower season, it might make more sense to wait until after Spring Break 2027 to start offering Annual Passes.

That puts a realistic start date around April 7, 2027. That’s a week after Easter, which is around the time when Spring Break should be winding down and shoulder season should start. This seems like a good sweet spot, and more realistic than early 2027 in light of what Comcast executives have recently said about the slow-going efforts to ramp up capacity.

Depending on how badly operations continues, even the 2027 shoulder season might be too soon. If Epic Universe is continuing to perform poorly, especially during storm season, Universal might elect to put off pulling the AP lever until August 2027.

Color me skeptical on that. Even if it would be a good idea from a crowding or guest satisfaction perspective, I doubt Universal leadership will have the patience to wait that long. They want/need to recoup the investment in the third gate, and they’re historically more aggressive than they’ve been to date with Epic Universe.

Coming out of COVID, Universal Orlando didn’t use park reservations and pushed AP sales. More notably, Universal Studios Japan did the same thing even as its Super Nintendo World opened to record crowds. USJ is now the third-busiest theme park in the world, despite it not being able to comfortably accommodate 15 million guests annually. They’re being more measured with Epic Universe, but how long that lasts is anyone’s guess.

The introduction of an Annual Pass could happen earlier in some extremely limited capacity, such as a new ~$1,500 top tier AP like Walt Disney World or with a restrictive reservation system.

Even though that isn’t Universal’s style, I don’t know how they get around reservations unless the first AP is incredibly expensive. In which case, they run the risk of pricing too many people out, and then having to decrease prices in the future. Relaxing reservations in the future is much easier.

Without question, Epic Universe add-ons will be to their top tiers of Annual Passes at first. The bigger wildcard is whether it’s as strict as the Disneyland (not Walt Disney World) reservation system. My guess is probably. I do think anyone expecting Epic Universe access at anything close to the current price points or extras like included Express Pass is in for a rude awakening.

Of course, Epic Universe could get APs earlier. If attendance is much softer than expected in early 2026, maybe Universal hastily rolls out APs then. If parent company Comcast is disappointed with the ROI on its new $7 billion theme park, perhaps the beancounters push for a quick fix. It’s also entirely possible that an externality, such as an economic slowdown or a recession, accelerates Universal’s plan.

My gut is that’s not what happens. That more realistically, we’re looking at sometime between mid-January 2027 and mid-April 2027. That seems like a reasonable timeline for the rollout of Epic Universe APs. There’s still an outside chance that they roll out this August, especially if Universal gets desperate or (conversely) operations finds its footing and capacity improves faster than expected. Anyone hoping for earlier than August 2026 shouldn’t hold their breath, though.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

When do you expect Universal Orlando to start selling Annual Passes that include Epic Universe? Think sometime in August 2026 is a safe bet, or will Universal be more cautious this time, waiting all the way until 2027 to ensure there’s ample capacity for more lucrative tourists? Would you purchase an Epic Universe AP right now? How much would you pay for access to the third gate? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!