Universal Epic Universe (South Expansion Complex) - Opens May 22 2025

[MouseEarsMom33]

If one cares that deeply about EU, they’ll need to get two separate tickets and lose some of the discount seen with 14-day tickets.

Or wait til 2026.

I do think it is crazy that the 14 day tickets don't have at least 3 Epic Universe days build in. Id think someone staying that long at Universal next year should do exactly what you said, and split up days into at least 2 sets of tickets.

Depending upon when single day Epic Universe tickets become available, I may do that. Buy 2 sets of 3 day tickets so I get 2 Epic Universe days. And may not use the 6th day. But we never went to Universal, love Disney, and are looking at this as what if this is a once and done Universal trip. I am only interested in Universal to take my son to Super Nintendo World (and then see Harry Potter stuff), but do think we need at least 2 days to do everything Epic Universe that we will want to do.

 

[Weather_Lady]

I personally appreciate that UO doesn’t treat passholders like a huge pain in the rear

Me too!

Seasonal passholder here (in a family of 4 passholders, incuding our 18-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter), and we are super-excited that we'll have the chance to purchase 1-day tickets so soon, and before the general public. Our 6-night August 2025 Epic Universe trip has been booked since February 2024!

We plan to buy Epic Universe single-day tickets for 2 days when they go on sale next week, and use our APs at the legacy parks the other days. We're spending 4 nights at Royal Pacific (Family Suite at $740/night after the extra charge for a third adult, booked with the SMSM discount 6 months ago, which was cheaper than the same discount rate now, since they jacked up the base price in the interim), and then 2 nights at Stella Nova (but will switch to Helios Grand if the rack rates fall in the Sapphire Falls/Royal Pacific range, as predicted).

Fending off any questions: Yes, we know August is hot, but we've done it many times and are happy to do it again. Yes, I know that the target audience for a family suite is not a family with a 6'2" college boy and his snarky younger sister, but my kids still get just as excited about a dinosaur room as they did when they were toddlers, and I want to humor that for as long as they'll let me. And while I know this vacation will end up being expensive between the high cost of the onsite rooms and the added cost of extra single-day EU tickets, the total price will still be less than if we went, say, to WDW, since the only other major cost will be food: the APs that get us into the other parks are already paid-for, unlimited Express Pass will be included for the first 5 days of the trip when we're at RPR, and our flights were bought entirely with credit card rewards points. If we ended up in a pinch and needed to cut costs, I can always downgrade the RPR reservation to a 2-Queen: I booked one of those months ago too as a backup, when the SMSM rate was at its lowest. Overplan much? Yes, I do.

 

[ToTBellHop]

Me too!

Seasonal passholder here (in a family of 4 passholders, incuding our 18-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter), and we are super-excited that we'll have the chance to purchase 1-day tickets so soon, and before the general public. Our 6-night August 2025 Epic Universe trip has been booked since February 2024!

We plan to buy Epic Universe single-day tickets for 2 days when they go on sale next week, and use our APs at the legacy parks the other days. We're spending 4 nights at Royal Pacific (Family Suite at $740/night after the extra charge for a third adult, booked with the SMSM discount 6 months ago, which was cheaper than the same discount rate now, since they jacked up the base price in the interim), and then 2 nights at Stella Nova (but will switch to Helios Grand if the rack rates fall in the Sapphire Falls/Royal Pacific range, as predicted).

Fending off any questions: Yes, we know August is hot, but we've done it many times and are happy to do it again. Yes, I know that the target audience for a family suite is not a family with a 6'2" college boy and his snarky younger sister, but my kids still get just as excited about a dinosaur room as they did when they were toddlers, and I want to humor that for as long as they'll let me. And while I know this vacation will end up being expensive between the high cost of the onsite rooms and the added cost of extra single-day EU tickets, the total price will still be less than if we went, say, to WDW, since the only other major cost will be food: the APs that get us into the other parks are already paid-for, unlimited Express Pass will be included for the first 5 days of the trip when we're at RPR, and our flights were bought entirely with credit card rewards points. If we ended up in a pinch and needed to cut costs, I can always downgrade the RPR reservation to a 2-Queen: I booked one of those months ago too as a backup, when the SMSM rate was at its lowest. Overplan much? Yes, I do.

Already book HRH for Christmas Week 2025 (SMSM rate somehow applied!), so right there with you.

Scared to see what the 5 day park-to-parks cost next week…

 

[Minnesota disney fan]

Me too!

Seasonal passholder here (in a family of 4 passholders, incuding our 18-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter), and we are super-excited that we'll have the chance to purchase 1-day tickets so soon, and before the general public. Our 6-night August 2025 Epic Universe trip has been booked since February 2024!

We plan to buy Epic Universe single-day tickets for 2 days when they go on sale next week, and use our APs at the legacy parks the other days. We're spending 4 nights at Royal Pacific (Family Suite at $740/night after the extra charge for a third adult, booked with the SMSM discount 6 months ago, which was cheaper than the same discount rate now, since they jacked up the base price in the interim), and then 2 nights at Stella Nova (but will switch to Helios Grand if the rack rates fall in the Sapphire Falls/Royal Pacific range, as predicted).

Fending off any questions: Yes, we know August is hot, but we've done it many times and are happy to do it again. Yes, I know that the target audience for a family suite is not a family with a 6'2" college boy and his snarky younger sister, but my kids still get just as excited about a dinosaur room as they did when they were toddlers, and I want to humor that for as long as they'll let me. And while I know this vacation will end up being expensive between the high cost of the onsite rooms and the added cost of extra single-day EU tickets, the total price will still be less than if we went, say, to WDW, since the only other major cost will be food: the APs that get us into the other parks are already paid-for, unlimited Express Pass will be included for the first 5 days of the trip when we're at RPR, and our flights were bought entirely with credit card rewards points. If we ended up in a pinch and needed to cut costs, I can always downgrade the RPR reservation to a 2-Queen: I booked one of those months ago too as a backup, when the SMSM rate was at its lowest. Overplan much? Yes, I do.

Yes, but figuring in the cost of feeding a growing teenager or young man will change that budget a lot, LOL! We couldn't keep our teenager grandson's full most of the time, and that's with feeding them twice what the others ate!

 

[Coaster Lover]

7? Nah. It was announced in 2019.

Woops! You are very correct, I calculated based on when this thread started (12 Apr 2018) instead of when Epic Universe was actually announced (01 Aug 2019). The correct calculation should be that it will have been 5 years, 9 months, and 21 days between announcement date and grand opening for Epic Universe and comparing announcement to grand opening dates, Tron took 98.5% as long to open as Epic Universe did...

 

[lazyboy97o]

Woops! You are very correct, I calculated based on when this thread started (12 Apr 2018) instead of when Epic Universe was actually announced (01 Aug 2019). The correct calculation should be that it will have been 5 years, 9 months, and 21 days between announcement date and grand opening for Epic Universe and comparing announcement to grand opening dates, Tron took 98.5% as long to open as Epic Universe did...

Which still tells you absolutely nothing meaningful.

 

[celluloid]

Which still tells you absolutely nothing meaningful

It's speaking volumes to the paying masses.

 

[DarkMetroid567]

It's speaking volumes to the paying masses.

I promise you that the vast majority of the paying masses do not care

 

[celluloid]

I promise you that the vast majority of the paying masses do not care

About Tron vs what is at the park that has to limit to day tickets? For sure.

Pssst...they speak with their time and wallets.

 

[celluloid]

Not from a Universal side of things, but it paints Disney in a bad picture in terms of how long it them to do Tron. I'm giving Disney and Universal a free pass on stop construction due to covid but does not excuse everything because it still was going to take Tron a longer time to get done than it supposed to even without covid. I'm sorry, but Disney has a terrible construction record.

The fact is building up hotels, 5 theme park lands, and road construction for a theme park is suppose to take much longer than Tron. Tron doesn't even involve building a new land, but a single new ride that already was built at Shanghai Disneyland.

You are agreeing with me.

Universal built an entire theme park expansion, which includes a lot of various teams and infrastructure in the time it took MK to get Tron.

Guests may not notice the microcosm, but they notice who is giving and keeping up.

 

[MisterPenguin]

There's no Financial incentive to complete a ride in an open park that's already making money. There is all the incentive in the world that when opening a new gate to get everything done as quickly as possible so it starts bringing in revenue.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Not from a Universal side of things, but it paints Disney in a bad picture in terms of how long it them to do Tron. I'm giving Disney and Universal a free pass on stop construction due to covid but does not excuse everything because it still was going to take Tron a longer time to get done than it supposed to even without covid. I'm sorry, but Disney has a terrible construction record.

The fact is building up hotels, 5 theme park lands, and road construction for a theme park is suppose to take much longer than Tron. Tron doesn't even involve building a new land, but a single new ride that already was built at Shanghai Disneyland.

This is just nonsense on top of nonsense. Announcements tell you nothing about the state of a project. TRON’s pre-COVID timeline was actually quite reasonable even while Epic Universe’s was a bit aggressive. Clones dont save an huge amount of design work. More importantly, announcements aren’t made at a standardized point in the design process.

 

[Gusey]

This is just nonsense on top of nonsense. Announcements tell you nothing about the state of a project. TRON’s pre-COVID timeline was actually quite reasonable even while Epic Universe’s was a bit aggressive. Clones dont save an huge amount of design work. More importantly, announcements aren’t made at a standardized point in the design process.

Whilst announcements don't tell you about the state of a project, construction on Tron began in February 2018, so it still took about 5 years 1 month of physical construction, an attraction that was built from the ground up with the only impact on the park being the railroad closing. It took Universal 8 months longer to build a whole theme park, 3 hotels and a new roadway.

 

[Sir_Cliff]

I think the EU ride lineup looks pretty weak, though, so I'm admittedly not as excited about it as others. Monsters and HP are the only two that look like they have the potential to be a truly great theme park ride to me.

I am very curious about how this opens. It appears they are being quite aggressive with their ticketing options and Helios offerings, though leaving themselves some wriggle room if they get closer to opening and it's looking like they have been too aggressive.

The totality of the D23 announcements managed to kill my interest in Disney parks to an extent that still surprises me, but I was always less bowled over by EU than most people on here seemed to be. It does have an impressive amount of attractions at opening, especially compared to what we've become used to from Disney. When people talk about this as some kind of next level theme park, though, I look at all these images featuring exposed roller coaster tracks and even the "putting the park back into theme park" section people seem to wax lyrical over and find this looks more like a park with a mix of some lands with great theming/attractions and others that seem more average. I don't see a new EPCOT Center or Animal Kingdom.

I also find the hyperbole around Universal makes it hard to judge what's actually going on in terms of public enthusiasm for their product. After months of hearing how people were deserting Disney in droves and moving over to Universal Orlando, the last quarterly reports suggested a downturn for both that was actually worse for Universal than Disney. So, I find it hard to know how much awareness there is about this park let alone excitement beyond the fan community.

 

[JT3000]

There's no Financial incentive to complete a ride in an open park that's already making money. There is all the incentive in the world that when opening a new gate to get everything done as quickly as possible so it starts bringing in revenue.

So why build anything new ever? Just continue operating the parks as they are, since they're already making money. Sorry, but I'm not buying this excuse at all.

This is just nonsense on top of nonsense. Announcements tell you nothing about the state of a project. TRON’s pre-COVID timeline was actually quite reasonable even while Epic Universe’s was a bit aggressive. Clones dont save an huge amount of design work. More importantly, announcements aren’t made at a standardized point in the design process.

We've had this discussion before -- multiple times probably -- and it just goes to show that you shouldn't announce something until you're prepared to deliver it in a timely manner, no matter what phase of design it's currently in.

 

[BrianLo]

We've had this discussion before -- multiple times probably -- and it just goes to show that you shouldn't announce something until you're prepared to deliver it in a timely manner, no matter what phase of design it's currently in.

Reminder in the midst of this pedantic nonsense that Super Nintendo World was announced for Orlando in 2016. Singapore's is also severely delayed. So maybe both operators are guilty?

Whilst announcements don't tell you about the state of a project, construction on Tron began in February 2018, so it still took about 5 years 1 month of physical construction, an attraction that was built from the ground up with the only impact on the park being the railroad closing. It took Universal 8 months longer to build a whole theme park, 3 hotels and a new roadway.

I'm not defending Tron, which was indeed slow rolled. But a theme park is built concurrently, not one piece at a time in sequence. A new gate has a whole series of project teams working at the same time. Build time on a whole new resort, even from Disney's lens, shouldn't be much off what it takes them to build a stand alone land. Give or take some infrastructure work.

This isn't really impressive, in so far as Tron construction was notoriously halted. Nor is Epic Universe project slow, because they announced and whipped up a pre-fab Poly Tower in 2 years. The actual project I think I'm most critical of in terms of timeframes is going to be WDSP. I don't get what is up with that one.

 

[celluloid]

There's no Financial incentive to complete a ride in an open park that's already making money. There is all the incentive in the world that when opening a new gate to get everything done as quickly as possible so it starts bringing in revenue.

Then why build it?
It's called an attraction. You build it so more come and spend. Whe you open it, you aim for the AOS and attendance increases.

To say no financial incentive is quite ridiculous.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Whilst announcements don't tell you about the state of a project, construction on Tron began in February 2018, so it still took about 5 years 1 month of physical construction, an attraction that was built from the ground up with the only impact on the park being the railroad closing. It took Universal 8 months longer to build a whole theme park, 3 hotels and a new roadway.

Disney makes greater use of fast-track project delivery processes that overlap construction with design. Mothballing the project was a very bad decision that just wasted time and resources, but the original timeline was not that bad. It was phenomenal but it wasn’t supposed to be as dragged out as something like Toy Story Land.

There are reports in this thread from May 2018 of site work equipment arriving. That’s part of the construction process, it starts well before you see things recognizable as a building.

We've had this discussion before -- multiple times probably -- and it just goes to show that you shouldn't announce something until you're prepared to deliver it in a timely manner, no matter what phase of design it's currently in.

You don’t have to like something to understand it. Just the notion of “timely” is lacking because a lot is tied to little more than desire. People were expecting this park to open sooner than was ever planned pretty much from the get go and sort of just look the other way at a 12 month pause causing an 18 month delay. Almost every thread about construction invariably hits a point where construction progress is clearly noticeable and people start getting their hopes up that a project is moving super fast and might open early.

 

[jannerUK]

What are people hypothesis for the other parks. Do you think with EU opening it will actually mean less footfall for the other two parks? "We'll go to Universal but just focus on the new park"

This may strengthen a counterpoint for the UK 1 day visitors. We may see lesser wait times in the other two parks as an offshoot of having just one day in EU

 

[celluloid]

What are people hypothesis for the other parks. Do you think with EU opening it will actually mean less footfall for the other two parks? "We'll go to Universal but just focus on the new park"

I think it is more nuance with spending on food and merch as well.
The multi day tickets sales will mean they use days fir other parks.
'If we get you these power bands we are not buying the toys at Disney."