Party’s over, folks. The last 3 days have been the busiest ever at Epic Universe, with 10/10 crowd levels and average wait times of over an hour. This provides an update on attendance, following up on “Epic Universe is Dead” from opening weekend.
Let’s start there, as the last 3-4 days have been quite the contrast to the first 3-5 days of the newest park at Universal Orlando. Epic Universe officially opened on May 22 after months of previews, and its grand opening day was the slowest ever in the park’s brief existence. The trend continued throughout Memorial Day weekend.
Over the holiday, Epic Universe had lower average wait times than Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida, as well as all four parks at Walt Disney World. Crowd levels were 1/10 at worst, with most attractions being walk-ons or having minimal waits regardless of their posted times.
Our post about Epic Universe being empty was made to offer a “huge kudos to Universal Orlando for choosing to have low crowds for the opening weekend of Epic Universe.” We lauded that decision, and rebutted the criticism among Walt Disney World fans that it “proved” Epic Universe was unpopular or a flop.
As we said at the time, the easier move 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.
Well, perhaps we spoke too soon with our praise based on the last few days! Let’s start with a look at attraction-by-attraction averages for Epic Universe on its busiest day thus far, courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:
The highest average wait time was Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry (227 minutes), followed by Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge (151 minutes), and Donkey Kong Mine Cart Madness (95 minutes).
Another 5 attractions had average wait times over an hour; even Yoshi’s Adventure was 58 minutes. All of these were walk-ons only a few days earlier. All told, the average park-wide wait time was 73 minutes.
Although May 28 was the busiest day in Epic Universe history (so far), it’s not an anomaly. Here are park-wide averages since the grand opening:
- May 22, 2025: 20 minutes
- May 23, 2025: 25 minutes
- May 24, 2025: 25 minutes
- May 25, 2025: 38 minutes
- May 26, 2025: 31 minutes
- May 27, 2025: 52 minutes
- May 28, 2025: 73 minutes
- May 29, 2025: 65 minutes
- May 30, 2025: 61 minutes (so far)
The last three days have been 10/10 crowd levels. Keep in mind that this is based on Epic Universe’s brief history, largely consisting of paid previews when capacity was capped. The park has yet to operate without an artificial limit on ticket sales, but that cannot last forever.
Speaking of which, just as with the paid previews, Universal Orlando has still been significantly limiting attendance. Based on leaked ticket data (which was pulled directly from Universal’s ticket sales engine), it’s our understanding that current limits are roughly one-third of total park capacity.
What’s interesting here is that, at least based on the leaks, nothing has materially changed in terms of capacity caps. The numbers are slightly different from opening weekend, but not materially so. Depending upon the day, capacity is roughly 12,000 to 15,000 guests. As we pointed out previously, ticket sales were throttled during paid previews to similar levels and there were some days that had significantly higher wait times.
Accordingly, we attributed the difference in open weekend to ride reliability. Epic Universe enjoyed its best uptime stretch ever over Memorial Day weekend. It didn’t look like a brand-new park, but one that had found its operational groove and been running smoothly for years.
It now appears that this was not the difference-maker. At least, not the primary driver. We’ve now heard from multiple Team Members who have indicated that actual ticket sales were throttled far below that 12,000 to 15,000 number, with fewer than 6,000 tickets being sold for opening day and around 8,000 for subsequent days.
To be perfectly honest with you, I have no way of assessing the veracity of this rumor. It’s somewhat surprising to me that this would be communicated to Team Members, but I admittedly don’t know how this works at Universal Orlando. It’s entirely possible managers have this data, mentioned it to frontline TMs, and that’s how it’s gotten out. It could be a bad game of telephone, but it’s coming from multiple sources.
This nevertheless passes the smell test for me because I’ve also talked to people who have confirmed that the ticket data is legitimate, and there’s really no other way to reconcile the roller coaster wait times. It does seem like ticket sales were throttled Memorial Day weekend, and the numbers during previews and in the last few days are more accurate (until July 1, 2025 when the cap increases.) Regardless, take all of this with a grain of salt.
During previews, there were 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 was 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 the first time when there was an operational meltdown at higher capacity. It’s going to be a nightmare. Keep in mind that this still hasn’t happened. There have been meltdowns, but not at higher capacity.
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. This is precisely why “Unpredictable Attendance & Crowds” was one of the reasons for waiting. As we’re now seeing one week after the grand opening, that assessment was accurate!
Watching from afar, the last few days have had a couple of days that have looked like repeats of those really rough late previews. There have been breakdowns, weather delays, dumped queues, and reports of long lines for refunds or guest recovery on at least two of those three days.
This is fascinating to me, and makes me wonder if Universal’s approach to opening weekend (in fairness, an approach that we praised!) has already backfired. That locals saw photos of the park as a ghost town and everything but Battle at the Ministry as a veritable walk-on, bought tickets as a result, and now feel like this is a bait-and-switch.
It could also be high-knowledge theme park diehards who have had tickets for a while and believe their experience is the outlier and the opening weekend is or should be the norm. I could see a scenario where some fans specifically targeted the week after opening weekend, thinking that would be the trick to avoiding crowds, and now feel like they’re getting a raw deal.
Obviously, breakdowns and a majority of the park closing due to weather is one thing. If I got dumped from multiple queues or couldn’t do anything, I might seek guest recovery, too.
But some of what we’ve observed just looks like frustration about hour-plus waits, as there have been photos of long lines for refunds on days that were operationally-efficient for the most part. Frankly, long lines kind of come with the territory of a brand-new theme park, as does a little bit of unreliability and unpredictability.
(To be abundantly clear: I’m watching this from afar via wait times, social media, and reports from a couple of friends on the ground. So this could be an erroneous assessment; I’m also not excusing Universal for their ham-fisted operations, much of which has been quite guest-unfriendly since the start of paid previews. During that, I maintained that the ‘technical rehearsal’ excuse goes out the window as soon as you start charging full price. All of that sentiment still stands. It’s guests being upset about regular ‘ole high wait times for a brand-new park that I find troubling.)
Anyway, all of this sort of underscores our original advice about waiting to visit Epic Universe until 2026. I still plan on publishing ‘when to visit’ advice (intended on having that up today, but the last few days give me pause), but the roller coaster crowds of the last week should give anyone pause about relying too much on crowd calendars for this new park or going in with any sort of expectations whatsoever.
The bad news is that none of this is going away in the short or medium-term. Hard as it might be to believe given the above wait times, capacity is still being capped at a very low level. As we’ve written elsewhere, Epic Universe will have a capacity comparable to Disney’s Hollywood Studios when operating at full tilt (efficiency, reliability, ticket sales, etc.).
Despite that, we believe Epic Universe has not been designed in such a manner to absorb crowds. Its layout is not conducive to crowd flow, there are certain areas that will be slammed (Super Nintendo World) while others feel empty (Celestial Park), and there simply isn’t enough that’s sheltered. There are baked-in issues that will presumably necessitate expansion or changes sooner rather than later.
While there will be further improvements as the park finds its operational footing and improves efficiency, what we’ve seen some of the last few days isn’t that far off from a regular operational environment. It’s not like Universal can improve the weather, or make it so outdoor rides don’t close during storms. Complex attractions are still going to have downtime, even years from now.
It’s also worth reiterating that crowd levels are relative, not absolute. Meaning that the 10/10 crowd levels of the last few days probably won’t be 10/10s once Universal stops capping capacity for Epic Universe and organic demand rises. The current 65-73 minute waits might end up looking downright blissful once Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve roll around.
Today’s 10/10 crowd levels could be readjusted to 7/10 or below. There’s a very real possibility that Epic Universe takes the crown of most-crowded theme park in the world come 2026–a title based on average wait times and not raw attendance, which definitely will not even be top 10 globally.
Or perhaps wait times won’t rise that much, as demand self-regulates. Just as quickly as word of mouth spread about how awesome the opening weekend experience was at Epic Universe, so too can it spread about much worse it’s gotten. It’ll be really fascinating to watch how this continues to unfold, as something tells me the roller coaster ride of 1/10 to 10/10 crowds at Epic Universe is only just getting started.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of Epic Universe’s insanely low wait times for opening weekend followed by 10/10 crowd levels the last few days? Do you expect this roller coaster attendance to continue throughout the summer? Think Universal Orlando has bungled the launch of Epic Universe, or is this just the practical reality of debuting a brand-new, envelope-pushing theme park in 2025? 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!