Epic Universe has now been open for a few weeks. With that, attendance and crowd level patterns are starting to crystalize. This covers those, plus predictions for July 2025 and beyond at Universal Orlando’s new theme park, and why daily capacity versus wait times (and more) might come as a huge surprise.
We’ve been tracking wait time data since the start of paid previews of Epic Universe, as well as ticket sales statistics and how wait times have varied from day to day based on a variety of factors. This was one of the big motivations for writing Why You Should Skip Epic Universe before the park even opened.
Note that “Heavy Crowds” was not one of the reasons; but rather, “Unpredictable Attendance & Crowds” was. It would now seem that this perspective has been vindicated, as Epic Universe has had a veritable roller coaster of crowd levels and average wait times since its official opening about a month ago.
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, as covered in Epic Universe is Dead. During those days, as well as many preview dates, Epic Universe had a park-wide average wait time of 25 minutes or less for a 1/10 crowd level.
Then came Epic Universe is Not Dead Anymore, which detailed the 10/10 crowd levels and average wait times of over an hour that followed hot on the heels of those 1/10 crowd levels. That post also covered breakdowns, weather delays, dumped queues, and reports of long lines for refunds or guest recovery on at least two of those days.
You’d probably be hard-pressed to find any theme park with a greater spread during a single three-day stretch than May 26, when Epic Universe had an average wait time of 31 minutes, to May 28, when Epic Universe had an average wait time of 73 minutes. That latter number is busier than any single day at Walt Disney World since at least 2019. Crowd levels have continued to be high since then, but not across the board–there have been a scattering of days in the 30-40 minute range since late May.
The really interesting wrinkle here is that it’s our understanding that Epic Universe bookings have been underperforming internal expectations. Aside from 1-day tickets, Universal Orlando has had a challenge selling vacation packages and multi-day admission that includes Epic Universe.
In talking to a variety of people, including travel agents, this has been largely driven by a mixture of the restrictive rules for ticketing, concerns about ride reliability and operational issues, and fears of a “crowdpocalypse.” Consequently, many potential guests are taking a wait and see approach with Epic Universe, just as they did with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Walt Disney World and Disneyland, and Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea.
This might seem really difficult to believe in light of the above crowd levels and average wait times, but we’ll try to explain the discrepancy here. In a nutshell, Epic Universe doesn’t do a great job of absorbing crowds, and even at lower attendance levels, the park is strained due to its top-heavy ride roster. It’s similar to Disney’s Hollywood Studios in this regard–a lot of popular headliners, but not enough easy filler.
In any case, here are a few observations and predictions about Epic Universe crowds thus far and going forward:
- Fridays through Mondays have lower wait times at Epic Universe thus far.
- Epic Universe attendance will be below half-capacity on all dates throughout Summer 2025, and below one-third capacity on many dates barring massive policy changes.
- Despite low attendance, wait times will fluctuate significantly and suggest above-average crowd levels on most dates–unpredictably so.
- Epic Universe will have higher attendance from October through December 2025 than opening day through August 2025
I’m pretty confident in all of these observations/predictions, but there are some major asterisks to a couple, so let’s break down each point in turn.
Lowest Crowds on Weekends
This one is not a prediction–it’s what is already happening, as observable in wait times (via thrill-data). Since the official opening, the two days of the week with the lowest average wait times have been Saturdays and Sundays. Friday is third-lowest.
There’s very little consistency for Mondays through Thursdays, and not enough data points to draw any conclusions. (I would personally avoid Mondays, as ticket sales data suggests those have the strongest attendance indicators going forward in July and beyond.)
Interestingly, the rest of Universal Orlando is busiest on Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays, followed by Sundays. This is fueled largely by locals and Annual Passholders over the weekends, and then tourists being most inclined to visit on Mondays. Midweek is the absolute best time to visit the other parks, with average wait times bottoming out on Wednesdays.
This makes sense! Floridians work on weekdays, making weekends their best time to visit the other parks for Annual Passholders. But Epic Universe doesn’t have APs, and many locals got their “fix” during previews and over the opening week. The result has been a similar dynamic as we saw at Walt Disney World when AP sales were suspended for so long (it still exists to this day, but isn’t as exaggerated).
One thing to note is that as soon as Annual Pass sales or Florida resident ticket deals start for Epic Universe, this dynamic flips. Saturday and Sunday will become the busiest days of the weekend.
Epic Universe Attendance Will Be Below Half-Capacity…
One of the more interesting developments is that real-time ticket sales data has leaked for Epic Universe. It’s my understanding that this is obtained by scraping the Universal Orlando backend website, as the data has been consistently reported by multiple sources. Take a look at this thrill-data page, which aggregates the various ticket types to show total and available capacity.
To start with, Universal Orlando was limiting attendance at roughly one-third of total park capacity–roughly 12,000 to 15,000 guests through the end of June, depending upon the day. That then expanded to roughly 22,000 guests per day on July 1, 2025. That’s where the upper limit stood through the remainder of 2025, per their data. (All of this is past tense–it’s where numbers stood from when ticket sales started through May 30.)
Separately, we’ve been told that Epic Universe has a total theoretical capacity of around 35,000 to 40,000 guests. It would seem that number is actually on the low side, as Universal Orlando has since increased its ticket cap to 45,000 across the board for the remainder of 2025, doubling or tripling the limit depending on the date.
However, as we explain in another post detailing the increase, the numbers are a bit misleading, as the increase is to undesirable multi-day ticket types that few guests are purchasing in the first place. But they are available, and Universal wouldn’t be selling them if they didn’t believe the park’s capacity was 45,000 guests.
Based on these numbers, our prediction that Epic Universe will be at one-third to one-half of its total theoretical capacity is wrong on its face, right? Well, no. That assumes Epic Universe sells out of tickets every day. They are currently only selling out of single-day tickets, and that’s a small percentage of overall inventory.
At this point, it’s unlikely that there will be many impulse buys of the multi-day tickets, so the limiting factor is not the higher cap–it’s demand. And even after the increase, demand is still falling well short of the caps. What would meaningfully move the needle is increasing the ticket inventory to match the total park capacity, and eliminating the buckets of tickets. If the capacity exists, selling it in advance as any admission type instead of playing games. Disabling the friction, as opposed to adjusting different dials. But all of this is a bit in the weeds, and ground we’ve already covered.
The bottom line is that even though Universal is offering to sell ~45,000 tickets per day to Epic Universe, but most days they’re actually selling about 13,000 to 19,000. The capacity cap increase has played some role in reaching these numbers, and pop-up availability for single-day tickets suggests Universal is shifting around inventory to some extent. Regardless, there has yet to be a single day when Epic Universe ticket sales have surpassed half capacity.
In fairness, Walt Disney World very rarely “sells out” of tickets on any given day, but we don’t have visibility into Disney’s ticketing sales like we do for Epic Universe. In terms of raw numbers, I would think that Epic Universe will not experience crowd numbers anywhere near what Magic Kingdom pulls for a long time.
In 2023, it is estimated that Magic Kingdom averaged some 49,000 guests per day. If there were over 50,000 people in Epic Universe, it would be an absolute operational nightmare. The park can barely handle 20k, nevermind more than double that.
To put that in perspective, Islands of Adventure averaged roughly 27,400 and Universal Studios Florida averaged 26,700. Animal Kingdom, the “worst” of the Disney/Universal parks, averaged 24,100 guests per day in 2023. 2024 numbers are not yet available.
It will be interesting to see where Epic Universe settles in once “normal” normal hits sometime early next year, but without a significant change in ticketing strategy (and probably the introduction of Annual Passes), it will fall behind the existing theme parks. That’s a good thing for guests. I wouldn’t want to visit Epic Universe as it currently exists with 25k people in the park.
Finally, the really interesting wrinkle here is that there’s a big drop-off in ticket sales starting in July 2025.
To some degree, this is expected–more distant dates should have lower sales, and the summer media blitz and early word-of-mouth are still expected to drive future sales. But lower sales in July than May/June has been the case for months, long before the park even opened. Ticket sales started last October, so guests have been planning trips for a while now. At this point, it’s unlikely that a huge number of tourists are going to book summer trips right now for one month into the future. (October and beyond is a totally different story.)
As of right now, only four dates in July 2025 have sold more than 10,000 tickets (July 1-2, plus the first two Mondays of the month). Only one date after that has sold out over 10,000 tickets (September 8, 2025). Barring a major policy change, the second week of July could reflect a marked change for crowds at Epic Universe.
…Barring Major Policy Changes
The first part of that last sentence is operative: barring a major policy change. A minor change at this point would be moving more tickets to the single day bucket. Even so, I don’t think that would be sufficient to meaningfully change crowds, as 1-day tickets are not sold out for most of July and beyond.
Major changes would be selling Annual Passes or a Florida resident ticket deal that includes Epic Universe. My guess is that Universal Orlando wants to hold off on selling APs as long as possible, with sometime in 2026 being the target. That the strong preference would be to capture as many high-revenue ticket sales as possible, “force” locals to purchase single-day tickets, and give Epic Universe time to find its operational footing.
However, the wildcard here is that Universal Orlando is just one business unit in the Comcast empire. The corporate overlords may be demanding higher numbers and faster ROI on their $7 billion investment without fully understanding or appreciating those ramifications.
If attendance is “too low” for too long, Universal’s hand might be forced–or they might get spooked and decide to pull the Annual Pass lever. I could see a scenario where a few weeks of low attendance once school goes back into session in August causes that lever to be pulled…right before Fall Break through New Year’s Eve, typically the busiest stretch of the year for theme parks.
While I’d selfishly like to buy an AP that includes Epic Universe, I think this park is probably at least a year away from being able to support Annual Passes without damaging the normal guest experience. Universal should try to pull every lever possible before resorting to the nuclear option of selling APs. If they can somehow hold off until August 2026, that would be optimal for tourists.
Attendance Doesn’t Equal Wait Times
As noted above, there hasn’t been a single day when Epic Universe ticket sales have exceeded half of the 45,000 guest theoretical capacity. Some days have been closer to one-third. As a result, you might intuitively think that this means crowd levels of 3/10 to 5/10, right? Wrong.
Since the start of June, there have been 8 days with average wait times of 60 minutes or more. Almost every single day has been above 50 minutes. The busiest day had an average wait time of 70 minutes, and there have been a handful of 67-68 minute dates. That’s just June. As noted above, May 28 is the park’s busiest day ever, hitting an average wait time of 73 minutes.
These are almost all 8/10 to 10/10 crowd levels, which is a somewhat meaningless metric because it’s relative to Epic Universe’s past wait times (so basically, during previews when attendance was throttled significantly). It’s entirely possible that 73 minute record will be shattered during the holiday season, and recent crowd levels will be adjusted downward due to more dates with higher averages.
On the topic of crowd levels being relative, it’s also worth noting that Walt Disney World’s two busiest days since 2019 have been 71 and 70 minute waits–both came during the weeks of New Year’s (early 2020 and late 2023). On the same dates this summer, Walt Disney World’s average wait time has been less than half of Epic Universe and that’s despite (presumably) higher daily attendance. The same goes for Universal Orlando’s other parks, which are seeing averages of around 25 minutes.
This should underscore a few things. First, averages are across all attractions, and the other parks have a healthier mix of headliners with high waits and lower-demand rides that seldom have long lines (at the risk of stating the obvious, the latter reduce averages). Second, crowd levels are not absolute–Epic Universe has its own scale, and it’ll end up skewing higher than Magic Kingdom or Universal Studios Florida (just as DHS skews higher than MK).
Finally, because of the headliner-heavy nature of Epic Universe’s ride roster, it is going to have some ridiculously high average wait times once the park is actually running close to full capacity. Days with triple-digit averages are likely on the horizon at some point. In other words, right now might seem bad…but it can and will get worse!
Lower Summer Attendance, Higher Fall & Beyond
I’ll be honest, I was feeling really confident about this prediction back around Memorial Day weekend. Much less so now. Nevertheless, it’s what we saw play out at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, as well as Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea. In all three cases, crowds materialized starting around October after slower summers.
Walt Disney World and Disneyland went from being dead to slammed, and that didn’t change until the parks closed in March 2020 due to COVID. In the case of Walt Disney World, seasonality comes into play. The land debuted during the off-season there, and Disney (incorrectly) bet that the lure of the land would be enough to overcome normal attendance patterns. It was not.
Hard as it might be to believe given the wait times the park is already posting, but it’s probably going to be a somewhat similar dynamic with Epic Universe. Summer is no longer peak season for Florida theme parks, and hasn’t been for a while. It’s not off-season, either (that’s August through mid-to-late September), though. While there’s the initial new park fanfare, there are also plenty of people postponing visits for that very same reason.
Epic Universe should enjoy a similar tailwind from October through December 2025. That’s a popular time for tourists traveling to Central Florida, and Epic Universe will undoubtedly “capture” visitors making their annual pilgrimages to Walt Disney World. On top of that, there are Universal Orlando’s own dedicated fans who visit for the heart of Halloween Horror Nights season. Erroneously expecting lower crowds, plus better weather (hopefully) and more seasonal offerings, those guests will likely wait until their normal fall and holiday season trips.
I’d take this a step further and predict that attendance will be higher from January 2026 through Easter 2026, too. Ticket policies change in 2026, with restrictions for regular tickets being removed. This will allow guests with multi-day tickets to spend a disproportionate amount of time at Epic Universe, and we’d expect exactly that to happen.
On top of that, there will be guests who waited out the initial rush visiting. Others will have waited for better weather (that’s us!) after learning about Epic Universe’s lack of shade and issues handling heat and Florida weather. Winter is becoming an increasingly popular of time for tourists, especially frequent visitors to Orlando, and we could see the first few months of the year being “surprisingly” busy at Epic Universe as a result.
The biggest wildcard is if word of mouth about Epic Universe is actually negative. There have been a lot of complaints about the days with significant downtime due to downpours and ride breakdowns, but I’m not sure how much this is “breaking containment” and reaching audiences beyond theme park fans. The general public might only be seeing the rave reviews of the excellent Epic Universe ride roster and making plans to visit “after the opening rush” in October or beyond. Guess we shall see!
When to Visit Epic Universe?
If you’re looking for recommendations to minimize the likelihood of encountering 70+ minute average wait times, we have a few.
For those with flexible travel dates, target the off-season after school goes back into session but before Halloween Horror Nights kicks into high gear. I’m personally looking at the last couple weeks of August, coinciding with One of 2025’s Best Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World. Same idea applies to Epic Universe.
Obviously, one way that’s not among the best times to visit Central Florida is in terms of weather. It’s one of the hottest stretches of the year, and Epic Universe lacks shade–so that’s something to consider. More importantly, it’s the heart of storm season and Epic Universe has a lot of outdoor attractions that go down in rain. The majority of rides, in fact.
This alone introduces tremendous variability to crowd levels, as ~7 rides going down causes higher wait times at the remaining attractions–and longer lines for those rides once they’re back online. Between storms and breakdowns, there have been a few occasions when Epic Universe only had a single ride or two open. That’s a problem!
Accordingly, even if my travel dates weren’t flexible, I’d make sure my day to visit Epic Universe was. If I had multi-day tickets, I’d target Saturday or Sunday, and then choose one based on the weather forecast. Even though it’s had the highest average wait times, I’d pick a clear Monday over a Sunday with torrential downpours in the forecast.
This is more or less exactly what I plan on doing. I’ve yet to purchase tickets for my August visit, and won’t until my travel dates roll around and there’s a high-confidence weather forecast. Honestly, I also want to take a wait and see approach to assess how Epic Universe continues to ‘evolve’ over the next couple of months. It’s been a veritable roller coaster ride already, and I have only low-confidence in some of these predictions.
Suffice to say, if heavy rain is in the forecast every single day of my potential visit window or single-day tickets somehow sell out, I’m fine with simply not going. I would rather visit a different theme park than drop $169+ per day to do Epic Universe with 60+ minute average wait times amidst downtime. That’s not my idea of a good time. Perhaps your calculus is different for a once-in-a-lifetime or infrequent vacation, though. In which case, hopefully some of the rough guidelines here can help you target the potentially best days to visit.
Looking further into the future, if planning a late 2025 or 2026 trip, I’d target all of the same dates on our Best & Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2025 & 2026. That’s a mix of quantitative and qualitative, and I’d argue that the latter matters more at Epic Universe than Walt Disney World.
Timeframes to target include the week after Thanksgiving, mid-January, before winter break, early spring, and post-Easter 2026 are all appealing. Basically, the dates with the highest likelihood of lowest attendance and best weather. While I’m planning my own solo research trips to Epic Universe in August (and perhaps in late July if things are already looking better), our big family vacation will happen in the first quarter of 2026. Weather is the big deciding factor for us–but my big concern with dates deeper into next year is the increased likelihood of Annual Passes or Florida resident ticket deals, which would throw a definite monkey wrench into all of this!
Need trip planning tips and comprehensive advice for your visit to Central Florida? Make sure to read our Universal Orlando Planning Guide for everything about Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida. Also check out our Walt Disney World Vacation Planning Guide for everything about those parks, resorts, restaurants, and so much more. For regular updates, news & rumors, a heads up when discounts are released, and much more, sign up for our FREE email newsletter!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you visited Epic Universe since the start of Summer 2025? What did you think of wait times and crowds? Experience any operational meltdowns due to breakdowns or weather? Is it possible or probable that Epic Universe actually has even higher attendance from October through December 2025, or throughout 2026? Will you visit Epic Universe in Summer 2025, or will you wait for crowds to settle down (in theory)? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions? We love hearing from readers, so please share any other thoughts or questions you have in the comments below!