Epic Universe Experience – Preview Day vs. Sold Out Friday

I remember an episode of South Park where Eric Cartman had an entire theme park to himself. The exact details how he made this happen is a bit vague, but I do remember the end result. Cartman going from ride to ride, no wait, no people – just the joy of having an entire theme park to himself.

I won’t lie. This is a scenario I’ve daydreamed about quite frequently.

Being shoulder to shoulder with people is one of my least favorite things. Those who know me well give me a side eye when they hear that I enjoy theme parks. Yes, the self-proclaimed introverted hermit loves a quality theme park.

The thought of going to a concert makes me squeamish. I can tolerate pro wrestling shows and sports crowds. But for some reason, I can tolerate theme park crowds and sometimes forget that there are thousands of individuals in my preverbal way of having my own “Cartman Experience”.

All of this to say….there is a BIG difference in my enjoyment based on that one little thing: crowds.

Preparing for the Epic Universe Preview

We were very lucky to have a trip planned in April 2025 that just so happened align with the first Epic Universe Annual Passholder Preview day. We logged in to the online queue for what seemed to be five hours and were able to acquire tickets. At this point, there were only influencers and team member previews, so we really didn’t have an understanding of how busy the park would be during this preview.

We did our best to estimate which rides and attractions would have long wait times. We used our years of theme park navigation and expertise to map out a plan – which included arriving as early as humanly possible (and that’s not even that early considering the park opened at 10AM). Even with an 8-year-old and a 70-year-old in our travel plan, we figured out how to hustle to where we wanted to go and ensure that we were able to maximize our day.

For those who were following Universal’s newest theme park, rumors of capacity problems circulated early on. All new theme parks tend to have growing pains. One of these often is not enough attractions. I mean, Comcast spent seemingly billions of dollars to get this park opened – they can’t just keep dumping money into having an obscene amount of attractions at open. These come in time.

For that reason, they would have to limit the amount of individuals that have access to the park or get hammered with poor customer reviews.

Over the years, I’ve heard Len Testa from TouringPlans mention on the Disney Dish Podcast that users expect to get 8-10 attractions in per day for them to feel satisfied (numbers might vary over the years). Character meet and greets and shows tend to count, but I’m not sure they are all weighted equally.

For our preview day, we hoped to check off 8-10 items from our list.

Epic Universe Preview Execution

Without itemizing our entire trip and spoiling this section early, we did a great job of maximizing our preview day. I tend to start with my “Must Do” attraction that would have a wait. We headed to Monsters Unchained which looked to have a 60-minute wait at open. We weren’t the only ones since most of the vloggers that day were in the exact same queue at the same time. This was the attraction we all wanted to see.

From there, we hammered out Yoshi’s Adventure and waited for Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge. Donkey Kong: Mine Cart Madness helped us waste 15-minutes in line (the ride went down), but at least we didn’t wait the 60-minutes we originally anticipated. The day moved pretty quickly and we managed to get some food at Toadstool Cafe – followed by spending time in the Isle of Berk (watching the Untrainable Dragon and riding Hiccup’s Wing Gliders). Oh, did I mention we were able to meet Toothless and Hiccup?

We managed to get one of the virtual queues for Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry. With a quick pit stop to get a Butterbeer, we managed to go through the entire queue and witness this attraction without any breakdowns or delays. The wait was a bit long, but that gave us time to check everything out in the queue.

For those counting, we’ve successfully accomplished seven “attractions”. Yes, we count Toadstool Cafe since this was our first time eating at this establishment and on our list of to-do items. We did start to run out of time and figured we might need to start making decisions. Le Cirque Arcanus fell off based on logistics (the last show was already presented). The Constellation Carousel seemed like something we could do next trip. No one was prepared to get wet, so we eliminated Fyre Drill. Dragon Racer’s Rally was not an option based on the wait times.

We finished off the day by managed to get onto Donkey Kong (which was down most of the day), Curse of the Werewolf, and finally Stardust Racers. We also played several games in Super Nintendo Land, but we won’t count this as attractions (this time).

All-in-all, we had a very successful day. Nothing was an official walk-on, but the lines were all manageable. Knowing that each ticket was around $150 per person, we really did feel like we got our value. Sure, we didn’t do everything…but we did do quite a lot and most of what was on our list.

We left highly recommending this park (as evidence on several of the podcasts we recorded with Jim Hill).

So what happens when you let more people in the park?

Epic Universe on a Sold Out Day in July

Let me be the first one to say…you can’t complain about crowds or heat when you decide to proactively go to a park in the summer. No one forced us to pick this date or even enter the park. There will be crowds and it will be hot. It’s also likely going to rain at some point. I understand this.

But as you can tell by the tone, we didn’t have a “Cartman Experience” this time around.

We didn’t have much of a choice on what day we would go. We knew that Tuesday and Wednesday’s would likely be less busy than a Friday – but we were staying on property on Friday and Saturday. We figured Friday would be better than Saturday, so that’s how we landed in Epic. By staying on property, we would get the early access by an hour – which is critical for getting in rides before the general public show up. This might have been a mistake.

Do you think a Tuesday with smaller crowds would be better than an extra hour on a Friday? After we purchased our tickets, we found out that the Friday was no longer available for tickets (AKA: sold out). This was problematic, but we hoped for the best.

We heard (and it was true) that showing up early would allow us to get in and start doing rides even before the advertised 9AM early entry. We got into the park at 8:15AM and started riding right away. Turns out Donkey Kong was either delayed or wouldn’t open until 10:00AM, so we hurried on Mario Kart. We finished and the family wanted to do Yoshi. I thought this was a bit of a ridiculous request so early, but it’s a quick ride and there was no wait. Turns out this was a very smart decision.

The general public were not allowed in all of the lands and the queues began to grow. We really wanted to do Hiccup’s Wing Gliders and headed to the Isle of Berk. At this time, it was 60-minutes. It would surely go down during the day, so we opted to go see a show. All of the ride times were still pretty high with the exception the Carousel and Monsters Unchained. We hammered both of these out with minimal waits. But everything else, not looking good. At this time, we noticed that Yoshi was sitting at 100 minutes and Donkey Kong was still over 120 minutes.

Since everything was a bit crazy, we decided another show might be the best way to go. We had about 20-minutes to kill and grabbed a Butterbeer and a Butterbeer Crepe. We got in to Le Cirque Arcanus and walked around Paris a bit after the show. We had zero expectation of doing the Ministry attraction – considering it was a 3-hour-wait for weeks.

At this point in the day, we all started to become slightly frustrated. Every single ride (that we didn’t already do) seemed to be triple digit wait times. By the time a ride seemed to become manageable (let’s say under 60 minutes), we would head over and the wait would climb back to 100+. We waited for Hiccup’s for 30-minutes, only to have the ride go down and had to abandon. The kids waited for Stardust Racer and the advertised wait doubled when an entire track went down.

For whatever reason, there wasn’t a character in sight. Mario, Luigi, Peach, Ygor, or even the Invisible Man seemed to be off for the day. We saw a few vikings walking around, but most lands seemed character free. This just seemed like a weird decision when there was obviously a large amount of people in the park looking for things to do.

In the long run, we decided to eat and sit around. We had a meal at Das Steakhouse, Mead Hall, and Pizza Moon. I managed to do a solo ride on Monsters Unchained again (single rider less than five minutes) and finished the night waiting 120+ for Donkey Kong with my youngest (because that’s the only ride he wanted to do).

Officially, I managed to get in eight attractions and a few new dining establishments. You would call that a success (I guess), but my recommendation was far different this time around.

Epic Universe on a Hot Day

I’ve never built a theme park and don’t criticize lightly. I am more of a theme park apologist and usually praise everything created by Universal Creative and Imagineers – BUT this park had me questioning my life on this HOT July afternoon.

We’ve often visited Central Florida in the summer. We are often in the theme parks. Over time, we’ve developed strategies to stay out of the sun. We avoid outdoor queues midday. We jump in and out of shops to catch the AC. We schedule sit down meals when necessary to get out of the sun. It’s actually not that hard in most theme parks. But for some reason, Epic was not that easy. It was so bad by 5PM, I told the entire crew that we should just leave. Mind you, we paid $150 per ticket and this was the only day we could go to this park. I was hot and bothered.

How did we get to this point?

Shade

Everyone is giving Universal grace because you can’t force trees to grow faster. I have no idea what it takes to transplant a tree, so I won’t give my opinions there. But at the moment, there just weren’t enough shaded areas in the open. The Isle of Berk seemed to burn me alive as I walked from one side of the land to the other. Super Nintendo Land has zero trees – which I 100% agree with since this would break the theming – but it still doesn’t help.

It’s not that there isn’t any shade in these lands. What I noticed is that there are just long stretches to walk without any shade or reprieve. Walking from the Untrainable Dragon to Monsters Unchained during a hot day was not an enjoyable experience.

Air Conditioned Walkthroughs

I don’t think people recognize this, but in most theme parks there is always a shop nearby that you can quickly pop-in or even walk through to get that quick reprieve. They do have these shops in the different lands (Super Nintendo being a great example), but they seem a bit more spread out. The shops in Celestial Park are in the front of the park and you are quite isolated from them once you get deeper in the park. Unless you jump into one of the dining establishments, you need to make your way through a portal to do the casual “shop walkthrough”.

Berk, Darkmoor, and Ministry have shops, but they are quite small. If you are pushing a stroller, it’s probably not worth the hassle as you will certainly knock something over or hit someone.

Shows

I’m sure I wouldn’t have been as irritated with the day if it wasn’t July and 90+ degrees. It also would help if I didn’t exist in the time of FastPass Plus. My family and I have developed quite a diva tendency when it comes to waiting for attractions. Yes, 45-minutes seems like the max for most things. But with that said, we went into the day knowing that we were going to have to wait for everything. But, we do feel like Epic is still missing something.

Hollywood Studios is always stupid busy with lines. Even Magic Kingdom on a busy day is annoying with the wait times. The difference between these parks and Epic is the ability to do other things – like shows. I know on any given day at the Magic Kingdom I can hammer out a few hours by going to Carousel of Progress, The Laugh Floor, Enchanted Tiki Room, Mickey’s Philharmagic, and the Country Bears Jamboree. Not to mention the Hall of Presidents if the family allows. These shows might not be our priority or must do items, but they are a safety net to know that even if everything is super busy we still won’t be wandering around, miserable that everything is too long to wait for. Hollywood Studios has a hand full of similar experiences.

Epic has two shows and that’s just not enough.

This would also help tremendously with the crowd that doesn’t want to ride coasters.

Oh, it would also help when the thunder and lightning strike (no need for a sidebar, but this pretty much closes most of the park – which happened while we were there).

I know you can’t just pull a show out of a hat and make it worth seeing. It might also not be the best use of real estate for this park, but a few additional shows would do some wonders for this park. They aren’t sexy, but I don’t think I would have had a midday breakdown if I was inside watching some screen or animatronic.

Preview vs. Sold Out – Was There Still Value?

So we witnessed the park with a limited capacity and also on a sold out Friday. We still had two very successful days by most peoples standards. Yet, I would highly recommend going on the Preview day vs. telling my closest friends and family to hold off if the park was sold out.

Since this was my second time at the park, I didn’t need to do some of the attractions. I wanted to, but didn’t need to. The reason our first trip was more enjoyable was some of the E-ticket attractions. If we didn’t manage to get in to the park early, we would have missed out on at least one or two attractions and paying $150 per ticket for six attractions (two being shows) would just not cut it. Not when you can spend the same money to go to Islands of Adventure or one of the Walt Disney World theme parks.

As an annual passholder, this might make it slightly harder for me to swallow to know that I could have walked into any Disney or Universal park on that day for free and likely would have had a better experience. Sure, I wouldn’t have been able to visit Super Nintendo Land (which is the most immersive land I’ve been to) or ride Monsters Unchained (top five attraction in all theme parks) – but I also would have had some extra money in my pockets.

But to be fair, this could be said about any park at capacity. Unless you want to buy Express Pass or a Lightning Lane, we are the dummies that decided to buy a ticket on a busy day.

Recommendation

I really do enjoy Epic Universe. I would still recommend someone to go to the park. I would just recommend that they do their homework and stay on property. Go on a Tuesday and be sure to get there as early in the day as possible. Understand that you will have to make decisions on what you can and cannot do if the park becomes busy. Make a priority list and get your must do out of the way first thing.

If it’s hot, be smart. Don’t wander around Berk or Celestial Park midday. Go sit in Mead Hall or Das Steakhouse if you feel a meltdown coming.

If rain is in the forecast (high probability) for most of the day, better rethink your decision. So many attractions go down and the other attractions wait times only go up.

If you are a completist, schedule two days. If you know you are coming back to the park, you can elevate some of the pressure you feel to get everything done. This gives you more than enough time to wait for the rides you want and not have to over optimize everything.

If all else fails, hope you land upon a large inheritance and buy the theme park for the day. You too can then have a “Cartman Experience” with no lines, no people, and no worries.