Universal Epic Universe (South Expansion Complex) - Now Open!

[Disneyhead'71]

Does anyone know if there was any update to the green bars/paneling that was shown on the expansion plot? Last rumor I heard was that it was going to be a big wall to block the water treatment plant, but I haven't seen anything in a few weeks.

There is a crane in that area now. From Sand Lake Rd., you can't see anything other than there is a new crane very close to that location.

 

[earlthesquirrellover23]

That's good to hear! Hopefully the pre-show doesn't become like Hagrid's where it is hardly actually used.

The preshow is actually working again as of a couple hours ago!

 

[JT3000]

Aside from setting up the point of the ride which is a lot more important here where they're introducing a new character and explaining why all these monsters are in the same place, it's also used for staggering the locker access and dealing with crowding in that area.

They could manage that crowd issue with an employee controlling the flow of people but I'd imagine they'll be a lot more motivated to keep the specific pacing provided here intact be it with efforts for more reliable uptime or a good B-mode that could end up some day being the new A-mode (ala Everest Yeti encounter).

Don't give them any ideas. The preshow needs to work as intended. The entire attraction does. Even with the large amount of AAs, because of the way they're staggered between scenes, it's still painfully obvious when even just one of them isn't working.

 

[Tom Morrow]

The preshow is actually working again as of a couple hours ago!

See? Complaining about things on here does work sometimes! Thank you, Universal!

 

[build_it]

Does anyone know if there was any update to the green bars/paneling that was shown on the expansion plot? Last rumor I heard was that it was going to be a big wall to block the water treatment plant, but I haven't seen anything in a few weeks.

Alicia Stella reported the permits for a sound wall all along the side of the property against the sewage treatment plant. I believe it was indicated at 17’ tall. I would imagine it will help obscure the view, which should make a lot of people on here happy. I think she said it is around $5 million to install.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Does anyone know if there was any update to the green bars/paneling that was shown on the expansion plot? Last rumor I heard was that it was going to be a big wall to block the water treatment plant, but I haven't seen anything in a few weeks.

Alicia Stella reported the permits for a sound wall all along the side of the property against the sewage treatment plant. I believe it was indicated at 17’ tall. I would imagine it will help obscure the view, which should make a lot of people on here happy. I think she said it is around $5 million to install.

Indeed...

 

[Purduevian]

Alicia Stella reported the permits for a sound wall all along the side of the property against the sewage treatment plant. I believe it was indicated at 17’ tall. I would imagine it will help obscure the view, which should make a lot of people on here happy. I think she said it is around $5 million to install.

Indeed...

Gotta love when you ask a question about EPIC and Alicia Stella posts a video answering it less than 8 hours later!

Very odd to me that they are putting it on the far side of the backstage road (meaning the road will be visible from inside the park)

 

[Andrew25]

Gotta love when you ask a question about EPIC and Alicia Stella posts a video answering it less than 8 hours later!

Very odd to me that they are putting it on the far side of the backstage road (meaning the road will be visible from inside the park)

Once they are done with the wall, they'll likely plant trees in front of it (or behind) and create both a man made and physical visual wall.

With that said, it'll likely still be seen from Hiccup's/Stardust as the giant expansion pad is being left untouched.


All we can hope for at this moment is for the trees to grow over time and obscure the views.

 

[MrPromey]

Don't give them any ideas. The preshow needs to work as intended. The entire attraction does. Even with the large amount of AAs, because of the way they're staggered between scenes, it's still painfully obvious when even just one of them isn't working.

Oh, they don't need me to give them any ideas. Both Universal and Disney have contributed to writing that playbook over the years.

If anything, I think they need to get better at building in the redundancy. Knowing things are going to break and require routine maintenance, it never fails to surprise me how slapdash the workarounds seem to be for dealing with that when it actually occurs - like it somehow never dawned on someone that a highly complex key component would fail to operate some day during opening hours and park management would not want to deal with reduced capacity and guest complaints by shutting down the whole attraction until it was fixed.

Having said that, I imagine this apparent lack of foresight is more due to corporate politics than anyone at the design/development stage not already understanding that physical things require maintenance and sometimes experience mechanical or control failure and that more complex things require more maintenance and by design, have more potential points of failure to routinely deal with.

 

[Purduevian]

Once they are done with the wall, they'll likely plant trees in front of it (or behind) and create both a man made and physical visual wall.

With that said, it'll likely still be seen from Hiccup's/Stardust as the giant expansion pad is being left untouched.


All we can hope for at this moment is for the trees to grow over time and obscure the views.

So you are thinking it will be HTTYD>Expansion Plot>Trees>Backstage Road>Wall>Maybe more trees

Still feels like the should have put the wall on the other side of the road.

 

[Andrew25]

So you are thinking it will be HTTYD>Expansion Plot>Trees>Backstage Road>Wall>Maybe more trees

Still feels like the should have put the wall on the other side of the road.

They are thinking long term and expect to use the expansion pad that will eventually act as a visual barrier.

I do wish they had build a proper berm between HTTYD and stardust tho

 

[MisterPenguin]

Theme parks also need barriers to keep in/out vehicles, turnstyle jumpers, animals, noise, and those with ill intent.

 

[Disney Analyst]

Parks really need to bring back the berm...

 

[MrPromey]

Theme parks also need barriers to keep in/out vehicles, turnstyle jumpers, animals, noise, and those with ill intent.

as do certain honey bears.

 

[mellyf]

The preshow is actually working again as of a couple hours ago!

That's great news! I hope it's still working next week!

 

[BrianLo]

I’m going to marinate in my thoughts for a bit and am doing Epic again at end of trip.

At least right now Express is not necessary. Was savvy able to do what I wanted. Mine Cart aside, which is nonsense and I got in too late last night to want to stick around for it.

I can definitely see the product creeking under the ride capacity. It’s not actually busy in real feel, but the wait times fall to pieces on a few key attractions.

It’s launching in a better place than many others have in the past. Though none of them are new anymore and have had various cycles of investment so I probably wouldn’t really rank it above anything other than Disney Adventure World and the majority of the Studios parks.

Three really stand out attractions though: Ministry, Monsters and Untrainable Dragon. Circus arcanus is excellent as is Stardust. Paris is perfect, understood the assignment clearly and then most everything else didn’t in some major ways.

 

[BrianLo]

Parks really need to bring back the berm...

They seem to know how to do them. They planted a nice berm for the neighbours, but not themselves…

 

[AliciaStella]

Very odd to me that they are putting it on the far side of the backstage road (meaning the road will be visible from inside the park)

That's how it is at Hagrid too, but you don't notice due to the trees in foreground. The access road is emergency route and they can't have a wall blocking paths for firetrucks to get through. Even if the wall were on the inside of the backstage road, you'd still need several giant openings for vehicles anyway. At least this way the wall can be solid all the way down.

 

[lazyboy97o]

That's how it is at Hagrid too, but you don't notice due to the trees in foreground. The access road is emergency route and they can't have a wall blocking paths for firetrucks to get through. Even if the wall were on the inside of the backstage road, you'd still need several giant openings for vehicles anyway. At least this way the wall can be solid all the way down.

Emergency access is not really an issue. You can have gates on emergency access routes like they have just to get to the perimeter roads and where the access roads enter the guest areas. You could also just place the wall along the various pads so you wouldn’t even need gates. Being along the outside just offers consistency and flexibility for the space inside the perimeter road.

 

[Tom Morrow]

I think this proposed wall may also be to block some of the smells from drifting to the park. Currently, parts of Epic sometimes smell the way DAK used to before modifications were made to that nearby water treatment plant.