Epic Universe, the long-awaited new theme park at Universal Orlando Resort, finally has its official opening later this week. The new park, which features groundbreaking new lands based on Nintendo, How to Train Your Dragon, the Universal Monsters, and Harry Potter, represents the apotheosis of theme parks’ modern fascination with IP and immersive recreations of famous worlds from pop culture. Universal sent that trend into hyperdrive with the 2010 opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Islands of Adventure; it’s since become the dominant approach to theme park design, influencing almost all of Universal’s new additions since, and with Disney diving headfirst into it with entire lands based on Star Wars, Cars, and Avatar, among others. Critics might debate how healthy this movement has been for theme park design as an art form, but it’s impossible to deny that the public eats this stuff up. And Epic Universe takes it to new heights.
The park might not open until May 22, but Universal has been holding previews of Epic Universe for employees, passholders, media, and seemingly anybody who’s even slightly interested for several weeks now. Odds are I’m there as you read this, in the midst of a full, in-depth tour of everything it has to offer. I’ve already gotten a crash course in the land’s 11 rides, though, taking all but one of them for a spin on a busy Saturday afternoon in April. (And the one I missed was by my choice; more on that in a second.) Collectively they embody theme parks at their best and worst extremes, offering breathtaking, transportive experiences on one end, and uninspired time killers on the other. There’s more to Epic Universe than its rides, but the rides sum up how the park as a whole felt after my one rushed day there: it’s at once a gorgeous, overwhelming achievement, but also a little hollow and unfulfilling. And hey, even though 11 rides is more than some decades-old parks currently have, it still doesn’t feel like enough; hopefully Universal will get started on Epic Universe’s first expansions sooner than expected, given how delayed the park itself wound up being. What is here now, though, ranges from the pedestrian to the genuinely astonishing, and the power of the latter more than outweighs the former.
Let’s get to it, though. Here’s what you can expect from Epic Unvierse’s rides, ranked from least to most impressive… with one exception.
Unranked: Curse of the Werewolf
Sorry, I can’t spin. I just can’t do it. I loved the Scrambler and the Tilt-a-Whirl as a kid, but at some point in my late teens my brain stopped being able to handle spinning—and especially with spinning coasters, where your car spins faster and faster as the train blasts through a traditional roller coaster layout. Curse of the Werewolf is just such a coaster, and even though the Universal Monsters-themed Dark Universe land was my most anticipated part of the whole park, I knew riding this one would be an absolute disaster for me. The only other time I’ve ridden a spinning coaster—it’s called Crush’s Coaster, it’s based on the turtles from Finding Nemo, it’s in Disney’s absolute worst theme park (Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris), and it ends with a solid 20 to 30 seconds of non-stop, 360 degree twirling—I had to sit down for a full hour before eventually cutting bait and going back to my hotel. Maybe one day I’ll keep my calendar open, swallow an entire box full of Dramamine, and take a day just to ride and recover from Curse of the Werewolf, but that’s not possible during jam-packed media previews when we have to hit everything in the park in a day or two. Sadly this ride will have to go unranked for the foreseeable future.
I don’t know anything about the How to Train Your Dragon movies, but the Isle of Berk land in Epic Universe is pretty great. It’s a beautifully themed land full of hand carved decorations and interactive geegaws, and home to a visually impressive live show and one of Epic Universe’s great roller coasters. It’s also the site of the park’s two least impressive rides, though. There are two strikes against Dragon Racer’s Rally, the lesser of the two. First off, it’s basically a standard carnival ride, something you could find at a Six Flags. Secondly, it’s incredibly short. This might sound like a “the food is bad, and the portions are tiny” situation, but it’s actually a case of a ride that could be at least serviceable kneecapped by its incredibly short length. It’s a fairly standard spinner ride, although one where every seat has rotatable wings that control how much it spins. We were told that a pro could get it to spin up to 50 times during the ride’s length, but despite a few people trying hard nobody in our group completed a single spin. It’s all over too quickly, running maybe a minute or so; I’m pretty sure it completed six loops before wrapping up? It’s probably great for kids too young or small to ride Epic Universe’s bigger attractions—every park needs kid-friendly rides—but it’s just a little too generic and simplistic to really stand out.
9. Fyre Drill
I’m not trying to pick on Isle of Berk, I promise. Every theme park in Florida needs a water ride, and Fyre Drill fits the bill. You will get wet on this one. Unfortunately it’s not much of a ride; your boat moves very slowly along a short river, with wooden targets to aim your water guns at (it doesn’t keep score), but more importantly other boats (and their passengers) to aim your water guns at. I won’t lie: it’s fun to arc your stream of water over the targets and hit the people on the boat two ahead of yours. Sure, it’s rude, but it’s fun, and everybody knows what they signed up for, so there’s no need to feel any guilt. Unfortunately it’s really short (again—a common problem with modern theme park rides) and there’s nothing to it other than getting wet. It can’t compare to the Popeye ride at Islands of Adventure, the gold standard for absolutely bonkers water rides, or the thrill of any decent log flume or river rapids ride.
8. Yoshi’s Adventure
The other ride at the original Super Nintendo World from Universal Studios Japan finally comes to America, and this is one I’ve been legitimately excited about for years. A slow dark ride through the Mushroom Kingdom, on the back of one of Mario’s colorful dinosaur friends? Yeah, that is firmly within my wheelhouse. And honestly, I legitimately liked it. Sure, it’s slow, and simple, and intended for the youngest guests, but it’s also adorable. It’s not quite It’s a Small (Yoshi’s) World, as I had hoped—it’s too short, the music isn’t memorable enough, there simply isn’t enough scenes or animatronics, and having half the ride sit out in the open beneath the Florida sun is a major design flaw—but it’s cute enough for what it is. Plus it’s one of the park’s few overtly child-focused rides, which means it plays a crucial role. It’s nice, but very minor. Oh, there’s also an interactive element to it, but it’s beyond insignificant: when you see an egg on the ride, you can score points by pressing an egg button of the same color on your vehicle. There are three egg colors, and exactly three eggs on the ride—a hard game to screw up.
7. Constellation Carousel
Hey, it’s a carousel. It’s hard to do wrong by this dependable classic, but it’s also rare for one to do anything all that exceptional or memorable. Epic Universe’s carousel is a little too big and fancy to have the hand-made, old-school charm of the originals, but the celestial theming results in an inspired aesthetic with some beautiful animal figurines. It’s a unique, well-themed, smartly done version of a kind of ride every theme park resort needs.
Like the version that opened at Universal Hollywood in 2023, Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge does some cool stuff with augmented reality to try and recreate the competitive spirit of the videogame series. And the ride’s visual design is superb, combining practical sets, screens, and the AR to capture how the game looks. It also has the same problems, though: it’s a slow-moving ride about a fast-paced kart race, whose interactive elements depend on an awkward headset that’s attached to the vehicle and doesn’t make a lot of sense during your first ride. Parts of it look amazing, especially the Rainbow Road portion, but it’s not quite the blowaway experience a Mario Kart ride should be, or what you’d hope from Super Nintendo World’s flagship ride.
5. Mine-Cart Madness
Is Bowser’s Challenge the flagship of this version of Super Nintendo World, though? Yeah, it’s the headliner for the Mario part of the land, but it doesn’t match up to Mine-Cart Madness, the roller coaster nestled within Super Nintendo World’s Donkey Kong section. It’s a fun, charming family coaster that, to quote an earlier piece I wrote about Epic Universe’s Super Nintendo World, “is the closest Universal gets to Disney’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad—it’s a family-friendly coaster that’s still thrilling, surrounded by an impressively detailed environment. Instead of an old west ghost town, though, the train rockets you through a decaying gorilla temple in the jungle, complete with guest appearances from animatronic versions of Donkey Kong and his friends.” The much-vaunted track-jumping gimmick isn’t quite as cool as you might expect; it looks great as you’re walking up to the ride, as if the carts really are jumping over the gaps left by broken track, but you might not even realize it’s happening when you’re riding it unless you keep your eyes on the rails. Still, it’s an exciting ride in a well-designed, cool-looking space, and it does a better job of feeling like the game it’s based on—or, more accurately, the specific levels of the game it’s based on—than either of the other two Nintendo rides.
4. Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry
And here’s where I diverge wildly from the rest of the theme park media. The new Harry Potter ride has a world-class queue—it literally might be the greatest line ever built for a theme park—and a novel ride vehicle unlike anything you’ve ever ridden before. It’s all in service of an utterly forgettable and uninspired story, a by-the-numbers sidebar to the movies starring distractingly synthetic CGI recreations of its stars. Despite the new ride system it’s the very definition of diminishing returns after Islands of Adventure’s Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and Universal Studios’ Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts. (This Potter dude loves slapping his name on things.) The story: at the start of the queue you take the magic wizard subway system from Epic Universe’s version of Potter Paris to London in order to watch the trial of Academy Award nominee Imelda Staunton, who plays some kind of mean witch—and a real Karen, to boot. Apparently wizard trials don’t have normal courtrooms, so instead of just sitting in a room you board a mobile observation booth that resembles the freight elevator vehicle from Disney’s Tower of Terror. This is no normal elevator, though; the whole room zips briskly through the ride, moving up, down, forward, back, and to the right or left in sync with the attraction’s (many) screens and occasional animatronics. That free-wheeling sense of motion is one of the two impressive things about this ride; the other is the almost seamless integration between the screens and the practical sets and animatronics. The first time you see a cloaked animatronic you’ll think it’s part of the screen; it’s a little staggering when that figure turns to interact with the next screen and you realize it’s an actual physical prop. That one astounding moment, and the constantly unpredictable nature of the vehicle, aren’t quite enough to make up for the dull, uninspired story; it’s yet another wizard battle, with CGI versions of Harry, Ron and Hermione (without the actors’ actual voices) slinging bolts and beams back and forth with Staunton’s character Dolores Umbridge and the Death Eaters trying to bust her out. Good prevails, of course, and Staunton is sentenced in an animatronic-heavy final scene. If you’re a Harry Potter fan (and it’s safe to assume there are still several millions of them, I guess) perhaps the recognition factor of the characters, combined with the ride’s technical wizardry, is enough to thrill you. If your only Potter knowledge comes through Universal’s theme parks, and you couldn’t possibly care less about the books or movies, it might just feel like so much pointless sound and fury—and more of the same after Universal’s first two Potter rides. Also, if, like me, you’ve never seen whatever Potter movies Staunton is in, but you have seen Vera Drake—where she plays an underground abortionist in 1950s England who, in a particularly heartbreaking scene, stands in a courtroom with an audience of onlookers as she receives a harsh sentence from an uncaring judge (played by Jim Broadbent, who probably plays a centaur or something in one of these Potter movies)—the trial and sentencing stuff takes on an unintended but highly compelling new context. If you’re into theme parks and want to see the most mind-blowing waiting area ever designed, as well as the new state of the art for dark ride technology, you’ll want to ride this thing, even if you’re thoroughly Potter-averse. Just keep expectations in check if you care about story, and be prepared to wait; the line hit 300 minutes on a recent preview day. (Sorry, but no ride could possibly warrant a wait that long.)
3. Stardust Racers
Every coaster expert I know agrees that this is the best coaster at Epic Universe. I don’t question their wisdom. It’s just a little too intense for me, though; my first ride on it was my only one, because I had to go sit down and hold my head for a solid 20 minutes afterward. And unfortunately that one ride had a technical mishap that negated the head-to-head nature of this dual-tracked coaster. Like the old Dragon Challenge coaster that used to be at Islands of Adventure, Stardust Racers launches two trains simultaneously on separate tracks that wind around each other in the second half, apparently creating the illusion of near misses and giving it all a competitive edge. (Hopefully I get the full experience on my next visit, in which case I’ll update this piece—and pregame with some Dramamine.) As cool as that racing aspect sounds, it’s not absolutely necessary to enjoy this beast of a coaster; it’s fast, with an effectively mind-spinning inversion and a liberal amount of airtime (I think I was out of my seat for over half the ride). If you don’t get discombobulated as easy as I do, this might be your favorite thrill in the whole park; if coasters only kind of mess you up, instead of completely ruining your day, it’s still worth the risk.
2. Hiccup’s Wing Gliders
Isle of Berk, the land based on the How to Train Your Dragon movies, is Epic Universe’s biggest surprise. I know nothing about the movies or this world, but this land is as impressive as Ministry of Magic’s version of Paris. It’s hard to single out a highlight, as the whole space comes together to create a single, unified experience. There’s no question what its best ride is, though: Hiccup’s Wing Gliders is a story coaster on par with Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure, and a family-friendly thrill ride with story scenes featuring lifelike animatronics of Toothless and other characters from the movies. It’s also just a little more intense than you might expect from a family coaster, with noticeable positive and negative G-forces, and higher speeds and a taller peak height than typically found in coasters that are still kid-friendly. And it has the same charming, whimsical, hand-crafted aesthetic found throughout Isle of Berk. It can’t match Stardust Racers for coaster thrills, or Monsters Unchained for animatronic-heavy storytelling, but it’s a great combination of the two, and my second favorite ride at Epic Universe.
1. Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment
The best ride at Epic Universe combines completely unpredictable motion with some of the most amazing animatronics and physical sets ever seen in a theme park. Monsters Unchained uses a version of the Kuka arm ride system familiar from the original Harry Potter ride, but with 15 years of advancements leading to a more thrilling experience. This arm whips you around every which way as it flies through Frankenstein’s castle; it even goes fully horizontal at points, with you laying on your back as large, lifelike animatronics of the Wolfman, the Mummy and other Universal Monsters loom menacingly or fight with each other. The story has a clear concept—Victor Frankenstein’s granddaughter is capturing all the Universal monsters, ostensibly to protect humanity but mostly just to research them and maybe recreate their powers somehow—but falls apart by the end (which reminds me of one of the recent Universal Monsters Halloween Horror Nights houses, where a crucial character dies at the end and, uh, almost nobody in our group knew that until a publicist explained it after the fact). The storytelling could be a little more clear but everything else is what happens when a world-class team of designers are firing on all cylinders with a budget necessary to realize their vision. It’s not just my favorite ride at Epic Universe, but the one that best realizes the promise of a theme park; it’s a technologically staggering, physically powerful, thoroughly immersive jaunt through a deeply realized world that feels real. The tech might not be as revolutionary as Battle at the Ministry, but Monsters Unchained is a significantly better ride.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.
