Universal Orlando is about to officially open a brand new theme park on May 22: Universal Epic Universe. I was invited by Universal to Orlando to preview the park and experience some of the rides and attractions.
It's the first major new theme park in the U.S. in a quarter of a century.
Epic Universe cost a reported $7 billion to build, and it features some of the most advanced technology ever used in a theme park. It also has some of the coolest, most immersive theming the industry has ever seen.
In 2010, the first Harry Potter land (J.K. Rowling transphobia noted), "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade," opened in Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure park, and it revolutionized theme parks. It not only had a truly great and innovative ride, but it was a more comprehensively and specifically immersive area than theme parks had ever seen. It's a fairly extensive territory filled with rides, shops, and restaurants that made you feel like you were actually walking around the fictional village of Hogsmeade.
This was an affront to Disney, which invented the whole idea of "amusement park" theming in Disneyland (Anaheim) in 1955. Disney's various lands like Frontierland and Fantasyland looked fantastic, with genius design, but they revolved around general concepts. "Harry Potter – Hogsmeade" and its fully immersed in a cohesive, fictional world specific to one Intellectual Property was new to theme parks.
And it was hugely successful. Attendance at Universal's Islands of Adventure rose by as much as 36% in 2010.
Disney learned its lesson and struck back with its own totally immersive, gorgeous lands, each devoted to one fully realized imaginary world, and each containing at least one fantastic, innovative ride. "Cars Land" in California Adventure (Anaheim) in 2012, "Pandora – The World of Avatar" in Animal Kingdom (Orlando) in 2017, and "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge" (Orlando and Anaheim) in 2019.
Meanwhile, Universal Orlando expanded its Harry Potter world by opening another "Wizard World of Harry Potter" area in its other Orlando park, Universal Studios Florida, creating several absolutely stunning, winding blocks of the fictional area of Diagon Alley in London.
This month, Epic Universe propels this trend further, with Epic Universe almost exclusively focused on these fully immersive fictional lands. The park consists of four "portals" leading off its central hub, Celestial Park, each leading to an elaborately, specifically-themed separate area. These areas are:
- Super Nintendo World
- Dark Universe (classic Universal monsters)
- The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic; and
- How to Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk
Another new design element of Epic Universe is the way it handles sight lines and transitions.
Disney parks have always excelled in the way they use ingenious design to keep various themed environments separate. One of 1955 Disneyland's great theme park innovations was a berm, or raised ground, around the entire park so that guests in the park would not see any sign of the outside world.
And within each park, Disney has brilliantly ensured that themed elements from one land would not visually intrude on other lands. Adventureland is carefully designed so that when within it, one can't see elements from other lands that would ruin the illusion of being in that tropical land of adventure. This is the advantage of having a theme park design philosophy that derived from movie studio designers.
This also required that Disney take great care in how it designed transitions from one land to another. As you walk from Magic Kingdom's Adventureland to Frontierland, the architecture, lamp posts, pavement, even garbage cans will subtly, gradually ease that transition, with intermediate elements cleverly designed to belong to both lands.
These are details that Disney has always handled better than Universal, which, aside from its Harry Potter areas, has taken a more casual approach to sight lines.
But Epic Universe does a total end-run around this design challenge/opportunity. You enter each land through a tunnel, called a "portal," so that your visual transitions are 100% managed. And each land essentially has its own theme park berm so that sight lines are almost 100% managed. I think this will be even more effective in a few years, once the trees and landscaping have more fully grown in.
Len Testa, the theme park journalist/entrepreneur/celebrity with a particular expertise in logistics, has been to Epic Universe a few times and expressed on his Disney Dish podcast concerns about the operational reliability of some of the park's more cutting-edge rides, the low rider capacity of some rides, and how few attractions can be operational in the rain. These factors may cause disappointingly long ride lines once the park opens. But he was absolutely thrilled about the park overall: its beauty, inventiveness, and fun.
It's so exciting to have a brand new entire theme park that is so innovative in its technology and design. I'll be posting more about Epic Universe as I spend more time there in the coming days.
