On-site Universal Orlando resort and select other guests have access to Early Park Admission at Epic Universe. This strategy guide covers everything you need to know about EPA: eligibility, ride rosters, how the perk works, and tips for best using the extra morning time in Super Nintendo World to beat the Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country crowds.
In terms of basics, Early Park Admission is essentially Universal Orlando’s twist on Early Entry or Extra Magic Hours at Walt Disney World. There are some key differences between the on-site guest benefits, and pros & cons of each. Whereas morning Early Entry is offered at all 4 theme parks every single day, thereby diluting crowds, Early Park Admission is only offered at one park per day. Going forward, that’ll be Epic Universe every single day through at least December 31, 2025.
Another difference is that Early Entry at Walt Disney World is daily 30-minute (or so) access to Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. By contrast, Early Park Admission is officially advertised as being “up to 1 hour prior to park opening.” Unofficially, we’ve already experienced it starting earlier than an hour in advance, and expect this to continue to be the trend going forward at Epic Universe.
Most eligible guests during Early Park Admission are coming from Universal Orlando Resort’s on-site hotels, for whom the perk is included with their stay as a guest perk. Here’s the full list:
For insight into all of these hotels, their pros & cons, and how they compare and contrast with one another, see our Universal Orlando Hotel Rankings & Reviews.
At the other gates, the pool of eligible Early Park Admission guests was even larger due to Annual Passholders and a wide variety of other ticket holders also being granted the perk. Thus far at Epic Universe, it appears that EPA will largely be limited to on-site hotel guests. Thankfully, as it’s going to be much higher-demand than the perk was at the other gates (and there are a lot more hotel rooms than there used to be!).
While preparing this guide for Early Park Admission at Epic Universe, it came to my attention that I’ve never covered strategy for the same at Universal Studios Florida or Islands of Adventure. Which is odd, because I specifically did a bunch of field testing of various plans. Guess I just rode a roller coasters repeatedly for fun. Oh well.
With Epic Universe now in the mix, it appears that Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure won’t have Early Park Admission for the foreseeable future. This strikes me as slightly odd, but at the same time, I’m guessing that Universal Orlando anticipates a precipitous drop in demand for its legacy gates–and they likely want to save operating expenses after the launch of Epic Universe.
So I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if neither Universal Studios Florida nor Islands of Adventure host Early Park Admission again until the holiday season or 2026 when (if?) demand picks up. I could be totally off-base, but I would expect to see a lot of little cuts like this at the legacy parks over the next couple of years.
In the event that things change and you’re looking for strategy, my advice is simple enough: do Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure one or more times, then head over to Jurassic World VelociCoaster and do that one or more times, and then head to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and the rest of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
Honestly, my optimal strategy is just doing the two roller coasters on loop. The total time commitment for either one isn’t that significant from the time you enter the queue until the time you exit, so it’s easier to do these coasters repeatedly than it is to bounce around or do attractions with more elaborate and time-consuming pre-shows.
The last time I did Early Park Entry at Islands of Adventure, I simply did VelociCoaster over and over again. I love this approach because it’s quick, convenient, and satisfying–and it means only hassling with a locker once. Your mileage may vary on this, though, as not everyone can do a relatively intense roller coaster a half-dozen times to start the morning.
Anyway, moving along to Early Park Admission at Universal Epic Universe…
I’ve only ever done Early Park Admission from Universal Helios Grand Hotel, which is the in-park resort overlooking Epic Universe with its own private entrance into the park. The process for this hotel is going to differ from the main entrance, but from what I observed and heard from friends staying at Terra Luna, it’s fairly similar.
The one big difference is that Helios Grand Hotel only has one bag scanner and two turnstiles, which makes for a long and slow-moving line to enter Epic Universe before and during Early Park Admission. My group typically arrived an hour before EPA started, and we were still ~50 people back from the front, at minimum.
On my checkout morning, I observed this process play out from my park view room, and the first guests actually appeared outside in the walkway around 90 minutes before Early Park Admission started. They then were held there for around an hour before being released into Epic Universe.
Approximately 90% of guests headed towards Super Nintendo World once released from the Helios holding point. It’s a fairly long walk to that portal and the pathways are wide, so being first in line for Early Park Admission is almost meaningless. Parties that showed up ~30 minutes after those first guests could have theoretically beaten them to Donkey Kong Country.
That’s not the only pre-queueing. Even though the portal to Super Nintendo World should be open at that time, the rides likely are not yet operational. So guests are allowed to line up for the attractions, but usually are not riding right away. With that said, the rides did end up operating roughly 10-15 minutes before the start of Early Park Admission, assuming they aren’t subject to the dreaded “delayed” opening.
All of these times are imprecise and subject to change. These earlier start times are essentially “release valves” on crowds to prevent congestion and backups. That’s why the Helios Grand Hotel security and turnstiles open early–otherwise, resort guests wouldn’t all be inside the park by the time EPA starts–and that’s why the attractions pre-queue. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s backtrack a bit and cover what’s open during EPA.
Available Attractions During Early Park Admission at Universal Epic Universe:
- Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge
- Yoshi’s Adventure
- Donkey Kong Mine-Cart Madness
- Stardust Racers
As you can probably gather, this means the only portal open during EPA is Super Nintendo World. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk, and Dark Universe all open at regular rope drop. (Although Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry uses a Virtual Line, so that land is basically off the table for rope drop, too.)
The best strategy for Early Park Admission at Epic Universe is simple: Do Donkey Kong Mine-Cart Madness first.
There’s some strategy that’s still “iffy” for Epic Universe, but not this. Starting in Donkey Kong Country is, without a doubt, the #1 best time-saving approach to Early Park Admission at Epic Universe. The optimal second step is more debatable, but Mine-Cart Madness should be your top morning priority.
Mine-Cart Madness has really low hourly capacity, and is going to end up being one of the longest lines in Epic Universe. The average year-to-date wait time for Mine-Cart Madness at Universal Studios Japan is 151 minutes. Not the peak wait–the average wait. We’ve heard of it exceeding 300 minutes on occasion.
Granted, USJ is the busiest theme park we’ve ever visited, but we’d expect something similar at Epic Universe. Maybe Mine-Cart Madness will “only” average 120 minute wait times in Florida. Regardless of the actual numbers, it will be one of the top wait times in all of Epic Universe, and a higher number than anything else on the above list.
That’s not the only reason to do Mine-Cart Madness in Donkey Kong Country first.
In addition to having low-capacity and (very likely) 2-hour waits later in the day, Mine-Cart Madness is also a relatively short attraction with no pre-show. It does have a long queue, so that alone might take you 5-10 minutes to walk, but the ride itself is fairly brief. Meaning that it takes less time, from start to finish, than Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge (the other top contender for Early Park Admission).
It’s always a good idea to knock out shorter duration attractions first, and then turn your attention to the longer ones. It’s possible that you’ll still have time to hit Mario Kart before Early Park Admission is over if you start at Mine-Cart Madness and are near the front of the line.
It’s also possible that Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge will already have a prohibitively long line due to the aforementioned pre-queueing and crowds. This makes it a more questionable #2 attraction during Early Park Admission at Epic Universe.
Ideally, you’d like to see the posted wait time be roughly how much time is left on the clock during EPA. Meaning that if it’s 8:20 a.m. by the time you’re off Mine-Cart Madness, you’d want the posted wait for Mario Kart to be 40 minutes or less. That’s probably not going to happen most days.
Even during limited capacity previews, Mario Kart was already hitting hour-long waits by the time we were done with Mine-Cart Madness. There are thus two approaches at this point–either do Yoshi’s Adventure, which should have a wait time of under 40 minutes (you’re in for a rough day if it doesn’t) or just bite the bullet and do Mario Kart regardless of the posted wait time.
The argument to be made for doing Mario Kart regardless is that the wait time is only going to get worse at and after official park opening, and this will be another one of the most popular rides in Epic Universe. So you might as well minimize walking and finish off Super Nintendo World first. Knocking out two of the park’s most popular rides as a 1-2 punch puts you in a great position for the rest of the day.
The argument in favor of Yoshi’s Adventure is that it enables you to rope drop one of the other portals before off-site guests are allowed into the park. Meaning you could head over to Dark Universe and be among the first on Monsters Unchained or to Isle of Berk, etc. This way, you’re beating the crowd to two different attractions/lands in the same day.
We did exactly this with Mine-Cart Madness, Yoshi’s Adventure, and Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment one morning. This could end up being a savvy approach, especially if Monsters Unchained is high priority for you (and it should be). That ride has been experiencing a lot of downtime, so knocking it out early might be a good way to hedge your bets and relieve some stress.
Which approach is better is truly a judgment call. I probably come down on the side of just doing Mario Kart. In addition to the above, Mario Kart seems to be a love-it or hate-it attraction. So it might be good to “get it out of the way” early to focus on things you love. Or if you love it, you might want to replay it again via Single Rider or even standby. (For the record, I’m firmly in the “love it” camp on Mario Kart.)
I’d then round out my morning with Yoshi’s Adventure, which should still have a below average wait time unless one of the top 2 attractions in Super Nintendo World has a dreaded “delayed” opening. Following that, you can either move on or play the Super Nintendo World Key Challenge mini-games. Those are also low capacity and could have ridiculous waits later in the day as a result.
An alternative approach to Early Park Admission is simply looping Stardust Racers and seeing how many times you can ride that awesome roller coaster before the crowds arrive. Stardust Racers has pretty healthy throughput, so you should be in good shape to do this again and again with minimal waits. Even so, I’d recommend starting on the green side, as that tends to have the longer line. But I do not recommend this strategy at all unless you have a few days at Epic Universe and want to try something different on a subsequent morning.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Early Park Admission may not be all that useful at Epic Universe. During our days at the park, the highest wait times of the day were all posted towards the end of EPA and right around regular rope drop. The problem is that the 11 on-site hotels have over 10,000 rooms and those aren’t even the only guests eligible for EPA. Then there’s the reality that utilization of EPA is high, as Epic Universe is brand-new and guests feel a greater sense of urgency to take full advantage and beat the crowds.
On top of that, only around one-quarter of the park is open, consolidating that demand into a low number of attractions. So it may not be worth arriving ~90 minutes in advance for Early Park Admission. Personally, I think it is for the sake of knocking out Mine-Cart Madness and/or Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge. And it’s just awesome to be inside Super Nintendo World as the morning light illuminates the vibrant landscape of the Mushroom Kingdom and Donkey Kong Country.
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Your Thoughts
What’s your plan for Early Park Admission at Epic Universe? Agree that Donkey Kong Country and Mine-Cart Madness are the #1 starting point? Or do you have an alternative plan of attack for beating the crowds? Which of these rides are your highest priority Epic Universe or Orlando attractions? Do you agree or disagree with any of our strategy? Any questions? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!