Epic Universe unmasked?

In many sectors of the travel industry, the pandemic pause of 2020 gave companies time to focus on planning, development and innovation without operational distractions.

And in the world of die-hard theme park junkies, who also had time on their hands, it gave time to speculate.

And not just idle speculation. Construction is underway in Orlando for what will become Universal’s eighth park (its seventh is scheduled to open in Beijing on Sept. 20), and hardcore fans are checking out filings for permits, scouting construction sites, studying what is going on in parks abroad and trying to connect dots.

Although the Orlando site lies vacant except for a backstage parking lot, access roads, construction materials and portions of ride track, it eventually will become the largest Universal park in the U.S.

Universal itself has provided some clues and some specifics. In August 2019, the company announced it was creating a new park concept, Epic Universe, to complement its existing Florida parks: Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and the waterpark Volcano Bay. The new park will sit on a 750-acre property south of its existing parks.

The announcement was exciting partly because no new theme park has opened in Florida since Legoland in 2011. The halfway-completed Peppa Pig Theme Park, located next to Legoland in Winter Haven, Fla., is tentatively slated to open in 2022, but the Big Two, Disney and Universal, have only added incrementally to existing parks.

Not surprisingly, speculation has been rampant about what lands and rides Epic Universe will have. At a June investor conference, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell confirmed that Super Nintendo World would be part of the park (the concept debuted at Universal Studios Japan in February, and another is under construction at Universal Studios Hollywood).

Shell also announced that Universal intellectual properties DreamWorks and Illumination would be integrated into Epic. DreamWorks franchises include “How to Train Your Dragon,” and Illumination was responsible for “Despicable Me,” “Sing!” and “The Secret Life of Pets.” All are featured in other Universal parks. 

Alicia Stella of Orlando ParkStop, a website devoted to Orlando theme park news and information, regularly produces articles and videos that try to make sense of hearsay, construction permits and site plans. She spends hours online, researching patents and permits filed by the parks. “We can take the concept art and deconstruct it and line it up with the buildings in the permit,” Stella said.

She then formulates theories. In one, she can see the inclusion of the Universal Monsters franchise, which include Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, in a “Frankenstein Village.” She conjectures that there will be another Harry Potter land, this one influenced by the “Fantastic Beasts” series. (The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando has been hugely successful for the company.)

As regards Super Nintendo World, she noticed that the ride track at the Orlando site resembles Yoshi’s Adventure ride at the Universal park in Japan.

Stella also said we may see a British Ministry of Magic and a French Ministry as part of a Harry Potter land. She said she believes the British Ministry would be the largest attraction of the entire park. Stella speculates that guests would enter through a series of fireplaces and head to an atrium, where they would be greeted by wizard statues and a fountain that was featured in the films.

Stella said one permit showed a virtual reality broomstick attraction being set up at the new land, although she said a later rumor suggested that the attraction will instead be moved to Diagon Alley at Universal Studios.

Should that happen, she said, “we still get something new while waiting for Epic Universe without them having to design something fresh. They’ve always wanted to do an expansion to Diagon Alley.”

While some may think another Harry Potter attraction may be overkill considering there are already in two Universal parks, others say the intellectual property of the franchise is a strong asset that can be extended further.

“We always knew that this park was going to be a collaboration of a lot of different intellectual property because that’s what they have in their vault, and those are all very successful, popular, bread-winning intellectual properties,” said Dennis Speigel, president and founder of International Theme Park Services.

Something that Universal Epic builds on, Stella said, is creating a park where attractions and lands are less entwined in order to create a distinctive vibe for each.

“When they started designing [Beijing], it looked more like a Universal Studios clone,” Stella said. “But as it went through development, it became more like a Diagon Alley or Islands of Adventure, where everything gets its own land and is very immersive. Epic takes it to the next level where lands don’t even connect together. It’s kind of like they’re their own separate worlds.”

According to renderings, the park will have a central hub with a large fountain and adjacent restaurants and shops.

The park will bring not just new intellectual properties but new technologies. In June, Universal filed a patent dubbed the Ride Vehicle Restraint System with Forced Air System, said to reduce motion sickness via air aimed at a rider’s face. In 2016, Universal filed for a patent called Boom Coaster, in which a ride is not connected to the visible track but rather a hidden track that hides the perceived destination, similar to the dark ride that’s in both Harry Potter and Forbidden Journey at Islands of Adventure. The new patent is alleged to also be used for the still under-construction Donkey Kong mine cart-themed roller coaster at Universal Studios Japan. Stella thinks the same ride will also make an appearance at Orlando’s Epic Universe.

As patents were being filed and plans and permits were drawn and pulled, Universal teamed with Orange County to extend an existing 1.7-mile, eight-lane road with dedicated bus lanes to shuttle visitors between its parks. Universal is picking up just over half of the $305 million tab for the work.

Universal has stated that the new park would create some 14,000 permanent jobs. Housing for the workforce will, in part, be addressed through a partnership with Wendover Housing Partners, a real estate development and management company. Universal will provide 20 acres of land to build 1,000 apartments, priced to be affordable for hospitality and tourism employees.

Because the park will be located near the Orange County Convention Center, plans suggest there are hopes to attract conference attendees to a hotel depicted in a rendering. Universal applied for the trademark on the name Helios Grand Hotel in April, although it’s unclear whether that will be the name of that particular hotel.

There’s also speculation that Universal will build another CityWalk Orlando-type development of restaurants and shops in the area. 

Meanwhile, investors have been purchasing properties near the future park, including a condemned hotel that will be redeveloped.

The pandemic’s effect

The pandemic had forced construction to a halt in June 2020; it resumed in March. The park had initially been set to open in 2023, but the delay has turned the date to a more vague “couple of years,” Shell said.

The impact of the pandemic on the theme park community of greater Orlando was dramatic. Seventy million visitors had come to Orlando in 2019. That number was halved in 2020.

But Universal now has reason to be optimistic. After the parks opened, pent-up demand caused visits to surge. Universal lifted its capacity restrictions in June, and 2021’s second quarter was the first profitable one since the first quarter of 2020.

Remarkably, this occurred despite having almost no international visitation, which normally accounts for 20% to 30% of attendance, depending on the time of year. “We’re already hitting our capacity and doing better, in some cases, than in 2019, which is remarkable,” Shell said in the June conference. 

Today, it’s not just the number of visitors that has increased. In-park spending per visitor has increased by 11% to 30%, as well, Speigel said.

As restrictions have been lifted, “people knocked down the gates,” Speigel said. “Problem was we didn’t have the employees to serve them. As a result, regional parks had to cut back hours and, in some cases, days of operation. Destination parks have more full-time employees than regional.” 

Another effect the pandemic had is how far Epic veered from how it had been originally envisioned.

“The pandemic gave [parks] time to relook at development,” said Matt Roseboom, editor and publisher of Attractions Magazine. “Parks will never say, ‘We were planning on this, and we didn’t do it.’ They’ll say, ‘This is what we’ve been planning on all along, and here it is.’”

Neither Roseboom nor Stella see Disney coming back to counter Epic Universe in the near future by opening another park.

“Wizarding World set the bar to a new level, and Disney had to match that, and that’s what they have done with Galaxy’s Edge,” Roseboom said. “Universal says Epic Universe will be unlike any other theme park and more immersive than any other theme park.”

It’s no surprise that the pandemic threw the theme park industry into disarray. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions estimates that in 2020, the industry lost some $23 billion. Speigel estimates that the industry may not fully recover until 2023 or 2024.

“Covid had a bigger impact than the recessions, Sept. 11, the oil crisis and a few other things all pulled together,” Speigel said. “Our industry did an amazing job calling audibles to keep things moving, replanning and examining existing programs to make sure they were safe and secure.”