Following five months of selling only multi-day tickets and vacation packages to the general public, single day tickets are finally available for the new Epic Universe theme park at Universal Orlando. Here are the details about the new types of 1-day and 2-day tickets anyone can now purchase, followed by our commentary.
Prior to today, Epic Universe tickets were only available to purchase as part of multi-day bundles and vacation packages with hotel reservations for the general public that emphasized days at Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure. In this case, emphasized means that these multi-day tickets all offered only a single day at Epic Universe, regardless of duration. You could buy a 14-day and still only get one visit to Epic Universe. (The most extreme example, for guests from the United Kingdom.)
The only single day tickets previously available were sold to Annual Passholders, which also went on sale shortly after the multi-day tickets and vacation packages for the general public. These proved quite popular, and days around Memorial Day weekend and into early June quickly sold out. Although, for what it’s worth, we have seen dates become available again after opening weekend from time to time. So it is worth keeping an eye on the ticketing page if you’re still hunting for availability in the first week or so.
That brings us to today (March 13, 2025), when Universal Orlando released a new wave of ticket options. Most notably, this latest release includes 1-day tickets that allow guests to visit Universal Epic Universe on a single day. There’s also a new 2-day option that allows guests to visit Universal Epic Universe on one day, and then another at either Islands of Adventure or Universal Studios.
Single day tickets are currently available for dates starting June 1, 2025. Universal Epic Universe opens on May 22, meaning that the first 10 days are unavailable to purchase via the 1-day tickets. Here’s a look at the pricing & availability calendar:
However, there are still Epic Universe vacation packages available for all of these dates, suggesting that Universal Orlando has simply blocked out the first 10 days to have inventory to sell to hotel guests. If those rooms don’t sell out, we’d expect the inventory to shift over to single-day tickets at some point. So keep an eye out if you really want tickets for late May!
Every single date on the calendar from June through December 2025 is available. Ticket prices in the first full month that Epic Universe is open are either $174 or $179 every single day, with weekends and later in the month being more expensive. Prices increase to $184/$189 for the Independence Day long weekend, which is also the high water mark for Summer 2025.
After that, prices begin decreasing throughout August, dropping as low as $164 on weekdays in the second half of the month. They spike again for Labor Day weekend, costing $179 to $189, before plummeting on the Tuesday after to the 2025 low of $139. There are weekdays throughout the month that cost $139 to $149. Unsurprising, since September tends to be the slowest month in Central Florida.
October signals another shift, with prices increasing to $164 to start the month, and hitting $189 again over the fall break period. This is pretty much the story of the final three months of the year, typically the busiest and most expensive at both Universal Orlando and Walt Disney World.
Pretty much every school break during the holiday season hits at least $184, and even weekdays are elevated. Then there are the peak season dates between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Ticket prices peak at $199 on December 24, and stay at that level through the end of 2025.
Our Commentary
Universal Orlando announced the opening date of Epic Universe, started selling multi-day tickets, vacation packages, Helios Grand Hotel reservations, and single day tickets for Annual Passholders all within quick succession in late October of last year. All of this–from announcement to release–occurred in the span of a single week.
Five months later, Universal Orlando is finally now selling 1-day Epic Universe tickets to the general public, only a couple weeks after starting multi-day ticket sales to Florida residents. If you asked me back in late October when more multi-day and single-day tickets would be released, I would’ve guessed long before now.
The fact that Epic Universe vacation packages, hotel reservations, multi-day ticket bundles, and Annual Passholder tickets have all had plenty of availability throughout the summer–including in late May after opening weekend–all called into question Universal’s decision to withhold single day tickets for so long.
As we’ve suggested previously, it appeared that Universal was playing a high-stakes game of chicken. That Comcast has dumped tons of money into the building of Epic Universe, including billions more than budgeted. That the parent company wants or needs Epic Universe to be a huge hit right out of the gate, especially as its legacy businesses struggle. That the goal is to capture as much revenue as possible, as quickly as possible to start recouping that massive investment–especially after a slow year for its parks.
In theory, this wasn’t a bad approach to increase Universal Orlando’s average length of stay, make guests more likely to book on-site hotels, prevent attendance cannibalization from Universal’s existing gates, and getting people to spend their park days at Universal Orlando rather than Walt Disney World, and also doing hotel stays at UOR as opposed to WDW.
We’ve also suggested for a while that all of this is in theory, and could backfire. Families plan their summer vacations during the holiday season and towards the start of the new year, and single-day tickets were not available during that window. While some theme park super fans might jump at the opportunity to experience Epic Universe as early as possible and jump over whatever hurdles Universal throws their way, they’re not the norm. Others may worry about opening season crowds, initial hiccups, or balk at all hoops they have to jump through.
Universal Orlando already has lost at least some of these potential guests for the opening summer of Epic Universe. Not everyone is refreshing the Universal Orlando website on a daily or weekly basis, waiting for the next round of tickets to go on sale. Some check once, see options not to their liking, and book elsewhere.
I have zero doubts whatsoever that Epic Universe will be busy during its opening weekend. It’s a brand new theme park, of course it will! Tickets to Annual Passholders sold out fast and vacation packages do not use date-based tickets, meaning that everyone staying in a hotel over opening weekend has multiple days of admission…but probably wants to visit Epic Universe on May 22. I wouldn’t be surprised if the park hits a phased closure those first few days. I’d also expect virtual queues to be the norm for certain lands, and that will have a cascading effect on crowds elsewhere.
All of this is to say that Epic Universe will definitely not be “dead” or a “ghost town” during those first couple weeks, or even throughout the opening summer. That definitely won’t be the case. But it’s still possible for the park to be busy and feel overcrowded to guests while falling short of Universal’s internal projections. It’s also plausible for attendance to be lower from June through September than the final three months of the year. This is what I suspect will happen. More on crowd predictions very soon, especially now that we have a full calendar of date-based prices.
Ultimately, it’s understandable that Comcast wants to capture as much revenue as possible during the opening season of Epic Universe, filling up its overbuilt hotel inventory and not cannibalizing attendance at its existing gates. It’s hard to fault this approach considering how much money has been spent on Epic Universe. There’s a lot riding on it. The third theme park must turn Universal Orlando into a bona fide destination resort that can hold its own with Walt Disney World.
But it’s also silly to pretend that there isn’t downside risk to Universal’s strategy, and I’m honestly surprised they didn’t start selling single-day tickets three months ago. At the very least, Universal should’ve launch them before Walt Disney World started running its 2025 resident specials. They could’ve blocked out dates and limited inventory to have enough for pricier vacation packages–just like they’re doing today, anyway!
Epic Universe will be a smash success for Universal Orlando in the long-term, but I’m skeptical that its opening season approach is going to yield the expected dividends. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if, after the initial fanfare the first couple weeks, there’s a summer lull as a result of this backfiring. We’ve been saying all along that they should’ve tried to lock-in visits as quickly as possible or else risk missing out on them–and with the recent rise in economic uncertainty and drops in consumer confidence, this perspective has seemingly been further vindicated. We shall see, though–perhaps this is all wrong, Epic Universe will be packed all summer, and exceed Comcast’s projections to investors.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you purchased single-day tickets for Epic Universe now that they’re available? Or are you waiting a bit longer, planning to visit after the initial fanfare and opening summer? Is it possible pushing vacation packages and multi-day bundles will backfire? Will ordinary tourists who aren’t hardcore theme parks people sit out opening summer to avoid all of this? Thoughts on UOR’s approach to ticketing for Epic Universe? 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.