Epic Universe is Dead.

Epic Universe is almost empty. Dead. Devoid of guests. A ghost town. Etcetera. We’re talking COVID-era attendance. The newest park at Universal Orlando has been the least busy of the three gates over its opening weekend (and slower than Walt Disney World, for that matter), with 1/10 crowd levels at worst, and most attractions being walk-ons or having minimal waits regardless of their posted times. This covers what we’re seeing thus far over Memorial Day and a few takeaways.

For starters let’s make our perspective on this clear: huge kudos to Universal Orlando for choosing to have low crowds for the opening weekend of Epic Universe. Some cynical Walt Disney World fans are somehow criticizing Epic Universe for this, calling it a flop or pointing to the current crowds as “proof” of the park’s unpopularity. This is utter nonsense.

We have been vocal detractors of Universal Orlando’s high-friction approach to Epic Universe park tickets, warning since last summer that Universal risked repeating the same “crowdpocalypse” mistake with Epic Universe as Disney did with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and other highly-hyped theme park additions. We’ll have a lot more to say about those missteps and the crowd consequences in the days and months to come, but that is not what is happening right now. Not at all.

Universal Orlando could have sold out Epic Universe at full capacity over opening weekend. Probably multiple times over. Organic demand likely would’ve supported the sale of 100,000 tickets to Epic Universe each day of this holiday weekend. Instead, Universal Orlando appears to have sold about one-tenth that many tickets.

In short, it absolutely was a choice to have crowds be this low for opening weekend. At the risk of stating the obvious, the easier decision would’ve been to sell many more tickets, take short-term profits, endure heavier crowds and whatever else came with that. The word-of-mouth wouldn’t have been as positive, so it would’ve come with a tradeoff. But it was nevertheless a choice–and not due to lack of demand, unpopularity, or the result of Epic Universe being a flop. Again, all rubbish.

How attendance at Epic Universe plays out in the weeks and months to come will be a totally different story. It’ll also be a result of deliberate choices by Universal Orlando, specifically, those to introduce excessive friction into ticket sales. But that’ll be more indirect, and less a matter of Universal choosing to keep the capacity cap incredibly low (although both will play roles).

The bottom line is that we should be praising guest-friendly decisions like the one Universal Orlando made with opening weekend of Epic Universe. That’s true even as Walt Disney World fans, as the competitors learn lessons from one another. Instead, I’m fairly convinced that criticism from some Walt Disney World fans was preordained.

They would’ve complained if lines were too long, pulling a Chapek and calling it a sign of failure; instead, they’re complaining that the lines are too short. Thankfully, it’s a vocal-but-small minority of Disney zealots. The rest of us see this as a good thing.

I’ve been watching this closely via the Universal Orlando app and also talking to several friends on the ground at Epic Universe. We’ve also been enjoying eye in the sky coverage from friend-of-the-site bioreconstruct, the go-to source for aerial theme park photography (a highly recommended follow who graciously provided the helicopter shots here and has hundreds more on Twitter).

Anecdotally, most attractions are walk-ons or close to it by mid-afternoon, regardless of the posted wait times. The only exceptions to that are Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, Mario Kart, Mine-Cart Madness, and the Meet Toothless & Friends character greeting.

The actual wait times for those are all over the place, with Battle at the Ministry and Toothless being the only things averaging posted wait times that are over an hour long. Even Mario Kart and Mine-Cart Madness, which have averages of 30-45 minutes, are routinely walk-ons in the second half of the day. Even the parking lot has been relatively empty over opening weekend!

The obvious question is why are crowds so low at Epic Universe? How did Universal Orlando let this happen? Given the wait times, wouldn’t it have been fine to sell a few thousand more tickets? Why leave so much money on the table?

As you might recall, ticket sales to Epic Universe were a hassle. We have used the phrase high-friction a lot, and will continue to do so often in the months to come. But for right now, all we really need to cover is that Universal Orlando announced the opening date of Epic Universe, started selling multi-day tickets plus vacation packages to the general public, and single day tickets for Annual Passholders all within quick succession in late October of last year. All of this–from announcement to release–occurred in the span of a single week.

Five months later, Universal Orlando finally started selling 1-day Epic Universe tickets to the general public, only a couple weeks after starting multi-day ticket sales to Florida residents. When that happened back in mid-March of this year, only dates on or after June 1, 2025 were available. Meaning that opening week (or so) was already “sold out” by the time regular guests could purchase single-day Epic Universe tickets.

There are air quotes around “sold out” because, if you really wanted to attend Epic Universe this weekend, you could find a way. Stalking the ticketing page has revealed pop-up availability, so being diligent about that would’ve eventually yielded results. Just a couple weeks ago, Universal Orlando ‘restocked’ tickets for most dates that were previously sold out.

Aside from Helios Grand (and even that came up from time to time), there was also still hotel and vacation package availability. Of course, that would come with the restrictive ticketing policies that are pushing away many tourists in the first place, but the point is that it was still possible for highly motivated fans to visit on opening day/weekend.

Most interestingly, Universal Orlando has made same-day Epic Universe tickets available, without limitation, every single day since opening (see below). This is downright funny to me, as it’s a sharp contrast to the high-friction sales approach of the Epic Universe rollout that started last summer.

I can almost imagine my very offline dad watching Law & Order: Big Bad Crime City Spinoff Show on NBC, catching an Epic Universe commercial between Detective Stabler taking names & kicking assassins, and deciding to drive down and see the new park. Totally oblivious to all of the ticketing policies, and inexplicably having none of the issues or hurdles hardcore fans encountered when they waited in virtual queues several months ago–many still coming away empty-handed!

That type of scenario could’ve played out in theory, but is probably rare in actuality. I cannot imagine there is much overlap between this type of offline individual and actual theme park enthusiasts in the year 2025. I’m going to go out on a limb and say those same-day, walk-up sales account for less than 5% of attendance at Epic Universe thus far.

The die was cast months ago with restrictive ticketing policies followed by months of previews. Very few locals are going to buy last-minute given the previews plus prohibitive pricing, and tourists don’t change or make plans on such short notice.

If now is too late to move the needle on attendance, the next question is why Universal Orlando didn’t release more tickets months ago?

In a normal scenario, that’s precisely what we would’ve expected to see happen–Universal throttling sales significantly at first, and then ‘opening the valve’ and releasing more over time as operations became more confident about the crowd-load the park could bear for the official opening.

My best guess is the previews gave Universal significant pause, as opposed to confidence. As we explained in Why You Should Skip Epic Universe, ride reliability and breakdowns have been big and persistent issues–and not just with Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry. Pretty much every single one of the park’s marquee attractions has levels of downtime higher than what guests would consider reasonable.

During previews, there have been some really rough days. Between breakdowns and weather delays (which close 7 of 11 rides), there were occasions when only 1-2 rides were operational. This had a cascading effect on crowds, and even on days attendance is heavily capped.

A couple of days were so bad that Universal Orlando actually issued refunds. It was for this reason that we warned about being in Epic Universe on the first day when there was an operational meltdown at higher capacity. It’s going to be a nightmare.

Over the course of previews, reliability seemed to get worse instead of better. A couple of the worst days came towards the end. Between the timing of that and a growing chorus of guest complaints, I’d hazard a guess that Universal chose to take the cautious approach. Instead of releasing another huge batch of tickets towards the end, they might’ve released a few hundred. Even with same-day availability so that the park isn’t officially “sold out,” we know that the caps are still pretty low by virtue of leaked ticket data.

As for the “why” of crowds being so low, the obvious answer is capped capacity. Just as with the paid previews, Universal Orlando is significantly limiting attendance. Based on the aforementioned ticket data, it’s our understanding that current limits are less than one-third of total park capacity.

That’s only part of the answer, though. Because, again, ticket sales were throttled during paid previews and there were some days that had significantly higher wait times. The single biggest difference between then and now is ride reliability.

Epic Universe has enjoyed its best stretch ever–the last few days have seen absolutely incredible uptime. This doesn’t look like a brand-new park, it looks like one that’s found its operational groove and been running smoothly for years. I would say it’s a miracle, but this is almost exactly what I experienced during previews.

It remains to be seen whether those technical rehearsals served their purpose and what we’re observing now is the new normal, or the theme park gods smiling on Epic Universe for its opening weekend. Either way, this is the outcome-determinative factor as contrasted with the worst days of the previews (which also means that those bad days could return).

There are other variables. Another big one is that the opening weekend crowd is not representative of regular guest dynamics. This much should be obvious by all of the hoops these people jumped through to be there (virtual queues to buy tickets, packages, etc). By and large, these are not regular tourists–they’re locals, Annual Passholders, and hardcore fans.

Many probably already attended previews, got their fill of rides then, and are at opening weekend for the memories and being part of history. They’re there to buy opening merchandise, take photos, eat at Pizza Moon, etc. On a much different scale, we’ve seen something similar at Disneyland since the launch of the 70th. If you go by wait times data, the parks are dead. As someone who has spent several days there in the last week-plus, I can assure you that isn’t the case.

Another factor is that Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry now has a standby line as opposed to a virtual queue. This means that it is now absorbing crowds, as opposed to allowing guests to be in two places at once. This is a not-insignificant factor at times, as Battle at the Ministry has a massive physical queue, and has had a posted wait time as high as 300 minutes (when in actuality, it was just broken down).

Speaking of Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, that’s a good place to segue into strategic takeaways from the first few days of Epic Universe. There aren’t really many, but the big one is that you should absolutely not rope drop the new Harry Potter E-Ticket. This isn’t a totally new piece of advice–it’s already mentioned in our Epic Universe Morning Strategy: Rope Drop Rides to Do & Avoid to Save Time!

It’s nevertheless worth reiterating because we now have another week’s worth of data points. If you would’ve disregarded our advice in the days since that was published, you would have either encountered the highest average wait times of the day for Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry or stood in line for nothing, because the ride was actually broken down even when the line was open. Absent an incredible amount of luck, you would’ve been much worse off starting with Battle at the Ministry than literally anything else. Even if you got lucky, the opportunity cost would’ve made it unadvisable.

Maybe this will change in the weeks or months to come, but as of right now, the best strategy for Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry is doing it in the mid-afternoon. We wouldn’t recommend doing it too late, as the ride is still prone to extended downtime; if it breaks down at 4 p.m. or later, there’s always the possibility it never returns–or has a multi-hour wait once it does. Right after it returns from a breakdown is the best time, assuming you can move fast and beat the rush.

Other than that, the biggest change from previews is that Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge has a higher average wait time than Donkey Kong Mine-Cart Madness. This has been fairly consistent over the course of several days, and is notably different from previews.

I do not believe this is the start of a permanent pattern. Again, demographics of opening weekend skew more towards locals and regulars, and Mario Kart has better re-rideability than Mine-Cart Madness. As discussed in our Ride Rankings & Reviews for Epic Universe, we view the Donkey Kong coaster as the biggest disappointment of the Epic Universe headliners. While I love the characters and will do it again on their account, I would never wait more than 30 minutes for Mine-Cart Madness.

Mario Kart is also polarizing–but most guests will want to ride it more than once since it’s interactive. You also pretty much need 2-3 ride-throughs to experience both the gameplay and see the great dark ride environments. With wait times so low everywhere else, I could see Mario Kart being one of the top attractions that guests repeat once they’re “done” with everything else at Epic Universe. About the only thing with higher re-ride potential is Stardust Racers.

In the end, my expectation is that Mario Kart and Mine-Cart Madness both settle into being top 3 wait times, alongside Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry. But I expect Donkey Kong to take the crown over Mario Kart due to capacity and first-timer demand. Mine-Cart Madness might be second-banana to Harry Potter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s #1 over time, despite being the inferior attraction. We shall see, though!

Finally, I’d note that if you’re visiting in the near future and purchased Express Pass for Epic Universe, you might be able to get a refund should these low crowds persist. We’ve heard several reports of guests receiving refunds for Express Pass over opening weekend; apparently, these have been granted fairly freely with zero pushback.

This should be yet another sign that it wasn’t originally Universal’s intent for the crowds to be quite this low opening weekend. Were that the plan, they probably wouldn’t have sold Express Pass in the first place, since it’s been utterly useless. (Note that Mine-Cart Madness and Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry are not eligible for Express Pass, so 2 of the only 3 attractions where it would’ve been useful don’t accept it in the first place.)

Ultimately, a great opening weekend for Epic Universe and a big win for guests. Here’s hoping that the positive coverage of crowds garners more attention than the 300-minute posted standby wait for Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry. Universal Orlando deserves it after erring on the side of caution and limiting ticket sales to such a degree that, even were there more ride downtime, guests in the park still would’ve had a positive experience.

We’d caution against extrapolating too much from opening weekend for the exact same reason–ride reliability and downtime might still be a wildcard. That’s one of the big reasons why we pushed off our planned opening weekend trip to Universal Orlando, and while we’re kicking ourselves for that decision now, hindsight is 20/20. Given the possibility of breakdowns more on par with later previews, high heat & humidity, and the practical reality that the park doesn’t have a ton for toddlers, it was probably the right decision for us.

However, the next few months could be a fantastic time to visit Epic Universe for theme park fans and low crowd enthusiasts with a bit of flexibility and risk tolerance. We’ll cover that very soon, with specific recommendations about when to visit. Stay tuned!

Need trip planning tips and comprehensive advice for your visit to Central Florida? Make sure to read our Universal Orlando Planning Guide for everything about Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida. Also check out our Walt Disney World Vacation Planning Guide for everything about those parks, resorts, restaurants, and so much more. For regular updates, news & rumors, a heads up when discounts are released, and much more, sign up for our FREE email newsletter!

YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of Epic Universe’s insanely low crowds for opening day and weekend? Do you expect attendance to increase over the coming couple of weeks as summer kicks into high gear? Think Universal Orlando bungled the ticket and package rollout of Epic Universe? Did that dissuade you from attending this summer or year? Agree or disagree with our analysis? Any questions? We love hearing from readers, so please share any other thoughts or questions you have in the comments below!

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36 Comments

  1. Excited to go this year yet lets be honest if this was Disney every grifter would have videos all over it.

  2. The biggest crowd-factor for Universal has been annual passholders. Universal prices its APs at incredibly low prices particularly for locals. The sense I have it that an unexpectedly large percentage of daily visitors are APs. (I think even Disney underprices its APs, but that is a different subject.) I think a lot of locals are willing to pay for one-day Epic tickets 2-3 times but are otherwise going to wait for the Annual Pass. Combined with Universal’s high friction ticketing strategy (initially only 3 day tickets, and now no multi-day Epic tickets), this is going to be the biggest factor driving down crowds. I think it is very smart. Universal wants word-of-mouth nation-wide, not among Orlando or even Florida residents, who already likely know about the park. They want out-of-staters to have a good time and tell their family and friends.

  3. I’ve been watching preview vlogs and it looks incredible. I’m not in the US so realistically I’m not traveling to Florida for at least 3 or 4 years anyway. But I was curious and checked out the Universal website I see in Canada to price out a 3 or 4 night package at one of the new value resorts with tickets for the new park. The only ticket packages I could find limited attendance to only 1 day at Epic and the other days all at the older parks. I’ve been to the 2 legacy parks and don’t need to go back. Perhaps there’s an easy workaround instead of buying the more $ day of ticket to Epic at the gate each day but after 30 minutes fussing with the website, I lost interest. Everyone understands Universal wanting to funnel new guests into the older parks but limiting packages to 1 Epic day is a nonstarter for many.

  4. We are fortunate to have family in the Orlando area and have an easy direct flight from New England and travel 5-6 times a year. On a whim we decided to go to Epic this weekend. It was an amazing park and we made so many nice memories with our 12 year old daughter. EPIC has that charm that reminds me of Disney, which I don’t find in the other Universal Parks. The lands each have their own personality and the employees and actors were very friendly! We easily got into the park at 8:30 and no wait through security and rope dropped Dark Universe. We scored a butterbeer crepe, Mac n cheese cone, and our daughter could do several interactive wand activities without queuing. The toothless meet and greet caused me to laugh and giggle with pure joy, he’s amazing! Both shows were world class and thoroughly entertaining. Some trouble spots, Ministry was posted for 90 minutes (stayed that way) and it was down a bit and took us 2.5 hours. Pizza moon is “doing it wrong” the place was over half empty and made you queue outside in the heat, then inside and then sat you at a table. The food was decent. We had weather and the entire park was shut down for 4.5 hours and there was few places to go, people huddled under the portals (and if it’s 1/10 capacity then woah!) we were lucky to grab something in Berk and then ran over to the burning blade tavern and got in line for Donkey Kong when we thought the weather was clearing (they let you even though the ride was down). We stayed until closing is did it all except the carousel and the night show. Ideally 2 days would allow us to enjoy the lands more but it was still EPIC. I can’t imagine the shows or even the queues to get food/drinks with 5x (Nevermind 10x) more people. If you visit in the summer save the indoor rides for later and even though the waits will be higher at least you will be able to knock out outdoor experiences before the rain/lightening.

    1. Thanks for the review. We are going in September and have joined a couple of FB pages which greatly exaggerate the park and the food. The one complaint I’ve heard often on Pizza Moon is the fact that they don’t have to-go containers (like Universal’s other parks) but also you are getting a full pizza, so you limit the tasting or bring something to carry the leftovers in… which we won’t. We have 2 days there while staying at Disney for 14, so we’ll take time to enjoy the portals and lands, especially given most of my 12-person party cannot ride anything but Yoshi and Fyre Drill.

  5. Oh, I was hoping it’d be packed with everyone going there instead of Disney since we’re at Disney for the holiday weekend, lol 😉

  6. For us, it’s the price. Over $700 for our family of 5 just to get in the door. No thanks. Disney offers us $60 entry plus an extra free day at a water park for staying one night. We went to Disney this weekend instead, much better value.

  7. Thanks for the update! We have a trip planned in two weeks and I’m really hoping the crowd size stays this low!! I know I can’t count on it, but fingers crossed!

    1. I wouldn’t expect Epic Universe crowds to stay *this* low, as this is simply unsustainable. But you should have a good experience, barring breakdowns and/or weather!

  8. Been stalking the wait times myself in anticipation of my trip this week. Now super stoked about my prospects at Epic on Wednesday. I’m also fascinated by how busy, relatively, the original parks look. Perhaps Epic vacation packagers compounding crowds of locals headed to USF and IoA for the holiday weekend? Regardless, it’s going to be an awesome trip.

    1. Yeah, it’s definitely been surreal to see the 3 longest wait times at Universal Orlando not at Epic Universe, but IoA and USF (Hagrid’s, VelociCoaster, Escape from Gringotts). There have even been a times when a few other rides have had longer waits than BatM!

  9. Sitting here reading this (to my husband as I do all your articles in the morning lol) on Memorial Day with our WDW trip but 2 1/2 weeks away. We had no plans to go to Epic. Now we are thinking of going and skipping one day in WDW. Thanks for the food for thought 🙂

    1. Definitely keep an eye on wait times between now and then. We’re expecting an uptick after today and then another on July 1, but it should be pretty manageable!

  10. watched a vlogger on opening day, indeed everything was a 10-20 minute wait most of the day on their vlog, except Harry Potter – 3+ hour wait even with the restrictions. That ride is going to have to go VQ in order to make it worth people’s while. I honestly feel like that whole area is so so much wasted space for 1 ride. Probably could have put in a Legend of Zelda area to continue the Nintendo world section instead.

    1. For what it’s worth, Battle at the Ministry had a 300-minute wait at park opening…but it never actually opened. They just posted that time and opened the queue, for reasons beyond me. Did those vloggers actually wait 180 minutes? Everything I’ve heard suggests the actual times were much, much lower.

      Even posted wait times plummeted in the second half of the day. Battle at the Ministry had a posted 35 minute wait time in the early evening, and a few of my friends did it and had actual waits of under 20 minutes. Same deal on day 2. One said their best time was around an ~8 minute wait towards the end of the evening–that’s incredible.

      Once it’s operating reliably and with normal throughput, BatM should have reasonably high capacity. It’ll still have long lines due to it being Harry Potter (and amazing), but not out of line with the other HP rides.

      There’s room for a second ride in the land. Supposedly, that was one of the big cuts during Epic Universe development. I hope that happens, but don’t feel like the land has wasted space as-is. It’s really incredible.

      I do hope Legend of Zelda is the next big expansion. There’s a huge pad between Donkey Kong and Dark Universe where it could go!

    2. Inside rumors are that Zelda is coming to UO, but it won’t be at Epic… 😉

    3. There are rumors of it for both!

      My gut is that they’ll want to spread out Nintendo to the existing gates (following the WWoHP playbook) to entice Nintendo fans to visit all 3 parks. But I also think Epic Universe is going to need expansion ASAP. So maybe it gets a second HP ride, USF gets Pokemon, and IoA gets Zelda.

    4. Tom- You nailed it with the Nintendo IP expansions in the other two parks! They are expanding SNW at Epic. One side of the portal is already in place. You can see it sometimes in aerial coverages on the news and vlogs. A fake wall is covering the entrance.

  11. Crowds could have gone either way but astutely Universal chose the smartest path.
    I’m surprised anyone is shocked by this. EPIC isn’t some nightime parade staged to last a few years.
    This is a Park built to one day celebrate 100 years of great success and praise.
    Purely by accident Carolyn and I were at Hollywood Studios the day Galaxy’s Edge opened.
    We’re not HUGE Star Wars fans but were amongst the first ones to land on Batuu. It wasn’t crowded and we were able to enjoy it. I don’t think we’d have had as positive a reaction had we’d been packed in shoulder to shoulder with rebel wannabes poking us in the ribs with their lightsabers.
    Cruise ship passengers think they can get their vacation costs back by carrying grossly stacked plates of food back to their cabins on the first night. It doesn’t work.
    Likewise, Universal can’t make its investment back in the first weekend or even the first month so the smart play is to follow the tortoise’s lead.

    1. silly rabbit, everyone knows you get your money’s worth on a cruise by eating your weight in smoked salmon every day!

  12. Great read. My daughter and I are headed there next week and this gives me some hope that it might not be SO insane. We are going to be in Orlando already for a Disney Cruise and like you said, I took a chance a few days ago and was surprised to find one-day, one-park tickets, Express passes and even a reasonable on-property hotel, so we thought we’d visit while the shine was still bright regardless of whether or not rides cooperated. Wish us luck!

  13. I’ve had plans to be in Orlando this week for sometime but sans Epic due to said friction. Now that single-day tickets have been made available, I’ll be there this Thursday! Hope it’s still somewhat slow.

  14. My source on the engineering team at EPIC reports that management decided to cut back on the number of engineers assigned to installation and operations, which is now just 7 for the entire park. Instead, they were replaced with much lower-paid “techs” who would be fine keeping an established ride running, but don’t have the experience or training to investigate and fix root-cause problems on brand new rides. This has caused some consternation, as the engineers noticed the large budgets for other aspects of the park, and they are already making well below market rates for the privilege of working in a theme park.

    That background aside, we loved being there on the last preview day and experiencing almost no waits for all but one of the rides. Despite its flaws, EPIC is a huge achievement from a design perspective. In the past, we were content with visiting Universal once a decade, and now it’ll be an EPIC visit on every Orlando trip.

  15. My guess as to how this played out is that at ticket launch, and this is pure speculation, is as follows: they were confident they wanted the first few weeks to be “sold out” – because that looks great for the park and creates FOMO for future dates. The ticket caps were therefore set extremely low to ensure they happened, with the intention that more tickets would be drip fed as time passed. Then, as you say, they had a change of heart and decided against further heavy drip feeding.

    It’s unknowable, but if this theory is correct, then it may be the case that future dates have higher ticket caps as Comcast would no longer be concerned with those dates appearing sold out.

    1. I would speculate something similar, at least with the initial FOMO point.

      Somewhere along the way, something happened within Universal/Comcast. It still completely defies logic that so much happened in the span of a week in October, and then nothing occurred after that for ~5 months. They had such strong momentum going, and then…nothing.

  16. So, am I reading this right? Universal due to concerns about overstressing its rides, capped first weekend tickets to a surprisingly low level, with a possible reason being to avoid massive backlash if their rides breakdown resulting in a massive black eye to the park’s reputation had the park opened to full capacity.
    Further, it is expected that those caps will increase as summer progresses, hopefully alongside a corresponding increase with ride reliability.
    That is not an unwise move. In 1984 New Orleans hosted the World’s Fair, with opening day coverage live on NBC. Some rides and attractions were unfinished, notably the massive Ferris Wheel, and there were clear signs of construction debris still visible. The Fair never recovered, despite being an enormous success with New Orleanians, who, as a population would qualify as expert witnesses on having a good time.
    First impressions matter and it seems that Universal is VERY much playing the long game here, which is the smart play.

    1. You are reading this right, and that’s good analysis.

      Lots of precedent for this type of move. In fact, Disney and its partners did precisely the same with the opening of Shanghai Disneyland. The cap wasn’t as low, but it was still low enough that the park felt fairly dead on opening day. It just wasn’t as widely reported since it happened halfway around the world. (To this day, those are still the lowest waits I’ve ever experienced for TRON Lightcycle Run.)

    2. Yes, they have learned form the disaster that was the first couple of years when the original Universal Studios opened in Orlando. Half the attractions were down for months/years. Smart move this time around.

  17. Fiction, Fiction, Epic Universe was definitely not a ghost town on opening day. Nor will it ever be. Guests across the Globe traveled to Orlando to witness an amazing opening Day.
    Congratulations Universal.

    1. Something tells me this isn’t the only thing you think is “fake news” media, so enjoy the fantacy that you are for some reason attached to. These are balanced and fair reports designed to keep people informed of the reality in which they will be entering in order to make informed decisions about their money and time.

    1. Disney/Disney World is, and always be, the happiest place on earth!!
      You should have gone when u were younger and less judgemental, and when you could appreciate beauty, fun, cleanliness, and class. Obviously you know nothing about any of this; sad for you!!!!

    2. Disney/Disney World is, and always will be, the happiest place on earth!!
      You should have gone when u were younger and less judgemental – and then you could appreciate beauty, fun, cleanliness, class, and a paradise outside of this crazy world!
      SAD FOR YOU – you’ve experienced nothing about Disney perfection

    3. I’m sorry, Julie. I realize the error of my interpretation. You actually made a brilliant and satirical reference to what has become acceptable in our increasingly distorted reality. The fact that I read it as literal demonstrates just how pervasive the issue is (and how gullable). Your wording and capitalization, punctuation was amazing. SNL worthy…I *think* that was Brett’s parody as well, although one can never be sure…

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