Expanding Epic Universe, Part I: An Armchair-Imagineered Build-Out of Universal Orlando’s Cosmic Theme Park

3. Living lands, central space

Islands of Adventure is remembered for essentially “inventing” the “IP-based land” in 1999, then for taking it step further by refining the concept into the so-called “Living Land” (immersive, cinematic, plucked-from-the-screen, recreating to-scale the habitable places where characters shop, eat, and live) with the first Wizarding World of Harry Potter in 2010. Now, fifteen years later, Epic Universe gives us our first concept park comprised entirely of Living Lands – compact, self-contained, and each offering must-try “in-universe” food, retail, and interactive experiences. Obviously that’ll be the park’s industry log line forever.

But that’s not all. Epic Universe’s most genuinely-fresh feature is Celestial Park – the first “Main Street” to substantially diverge from the unspoken rules of a “Main Street” since EPCOT’s entry in 1982. Celestial Park is both a logistical and narrative solution for the park.

Operationally, Celestial Park serves an essential role. This massive central land is nearly twice as large as the next in terms of square footage. That’s needed since the highly compact, highly self-contained “Living Lands” that follow each have a single entrance and exit and (as of 2025) often just one or two major attractions. So a sprawling, shared, central space is effectively required to keep the park’s capacity high and provide a home for the kinds of theme park must-haves (flat rides, pizza restaurants, nighttime show space, performance corridors, linger spaces, and essential guest services) that are verboten in highly-specialized lands that must adhere to “in-universe” rules.

Narratively, Celestial Park is the park’s frame story embodied. It is a “world between worlds;” a sort of antique, art nouveau, elemental World’s Fair that exists outside of time and space. The unseen residents of this world – the Celestials – have learned to channel the energies gathered by the Chronos to power portals that allow them (and us) to venture through the cosmos to the park’s other worlds. This grounded, natural, historic, warm, and stunningly IP-free space serves as a world of eternal return; the place we depart from and return to between our visits to the worlds of Nintendo, Dragons, Monsters, and the Wizarding World.

Just like the crucial bar to entry for the Studios is “movies” and for Islands is “stories,” Epic Universe has an IP pre-req: fantastic, extraordinary, experiential, immersive, exploratory, etc. You wouldn’t expect a portal to lead to Springfield, or Minion Land, or Amity. Nope. Those are too close to home; too grounded. Only larger-than-life places of great consequence and entered “in medias res” of something big need apply. In other words, Celestial Park permits the coexistence of those mix-and-match IPs and (crucial for our build-out) whatever comes to the park next so long as it’s “epic.”

Issues to Address

With all that said, it comes to you and I to embrace the park’s core ethos and begin to envision a “punch list” of issues we want to address while we begin a park-wide walkthrough of a dreamy, built-out, distant-future version of Epic Universe. As of opening, there are really two words that loom large on the Epic Universe review word cloud: CAPACITY and RELIABILITY.

Both are fair things to critique given that Universal (and a hungry fandom) basically asserted from the moment it was announced that this would be the greatest theme park on Earth and that Disney World would be lucky to survive in its wake. Obviously, the reality is that reliability and capacity have both weighed heavily on the park’s early perception, with most reviews amounting to, “Wow, this is a fantastic start, but…” So if we want to use this build-out to rectify those foundational issues, we have to speak them aloud.

1. Capacity

Let’s just put it out there: Epic Universe has eleven total rides. In an unfair comparison that totally ignores scale, Disneyland’s Fantasyland alone contains the same. By the numbers, Universal Epic Universe is a little smaller than Islands of Adventure and actually contains fewer rides than Islands did at its opening (12), much less now (18). But in Epic’s defense, it’s worth remembering three things:

1. This is actually a pretty respectable ride count for a brand new theme park and comparing it to parks that have gradually filled expansion pads across 10, 25, or 50 years years is a little disingenuous;
   
2. A not-insignificant portion (by any measure, five or six) of its rides really are “E-Tickets” in terms of their technology and / or their draw, and only three of its rides are “clones” from other Universal Parks (the three in Super Nintendo World);
   
3. In true “Living Land” style, Universal would (probably correctly) insist that dining, shopping, and streetmosphere are half the fun and (definitely correctly) point to the park’s two large-scale shows, elevated meet-and-greets, and in-world experiences (like Wizarding World Wands and Nintendo’s Power-Up Band mini-games) as attractions in their own right. Indeed, those all do factor into the park’s capacity and appeal.

So actually, capacity becomes a really fun and challenging component of this build out. Unlike when we play around with Magic Kingdom just for the heck of it, Epic Universe actually needs more to do… and thankfully, comes with space to make it happen. The park comes pre-loaded with more expansion pads than we tend to see. While Islands of Adventure initially had just two “small ride” pads and two “large ride” pads (all of which have been filled), Epic Universe offers every size of potential growth spurt up to and including a 17 – 20 acre expansion pad – large enough to fit a land world larger than Disney’s largest, Galaxy’s Edge. 

The existence of so many expansion pads suggests either a COVID-initiated drawback on “Phase I” spending, a heightened awareness of “Phase II, III, and IV” as part of a 21st century park’s lifecycle, or (likely) both. So when it comes to the kind of aerial build-out we want to assemble, the map above gives us a straightforward idea of where the park’s hems can be let out as it grows. In the meantime, a very real and present danger exists in the other of the park’s foundational issues…

2. Reliability

Epic Universe’s much-talked-about reliability problems exist for two reasons. The first is that the park’s three “starring” rides (MarioKart, Monsters Unchained, and Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry) and its two crowd-eating shows (Le Cirque Arcanus and The Untrainable Dragon) are all to varying degrees highly reliant on complex systems and / or finicky technology. This is, of course, a very good thing in that these rides are “cutting edge” enough to warrant shock and awe, and help build the park’s reputation as one you “gotta see.”

But it also means that all five attractions have been introduced to the world in the context of temperamental operations. Even after the park’s official May 22, 2025 opening (i.e. outside of “Technical Rehearsal” days where you get what you get and can’t throw a fit), these rides and shows have experienced delayed starts that can stretch for hours or entire days. While this is just what happens when you open three very advanced E-Tickets and two ultra-complex shows on the same day, it’s also something that guests have every right to be frustrated about when they pay full price for a day in the park.

The other aspect of reliability that must be addressed is the park’s “weatherproofing.” Fans have begun to tease that it seems as if Epic Universe was designed to fit in Southern California given that the park appears utterly unprepared for Orlando’s scorching hot days and (some times of year) daily thunderstorms. To be fair, that’s also true of parks like Islands and Animal Kingdom that also emphasize outdoor attractions as opposed to the largely indoor ride lineups of EPCOT, Magic Kingdom, or Hollywood Studios…

But Epic’s problem is made very apparent thanks to its relatively low ride count. Aside from the three indoor E-Tickets and the two theater shows, all eight of the other rides in the park are (as of opening, according to team members) inoperable during thunderstorms or even heavy rain. It’s at least theoretically possible that when lightning is in the area, 8 of the park’s 11 rides would be closed by default, and the remaining three (those indoor headliners) could be in various states of operational delay for totally unrelated reasons. Which, frankly, sucks for the tens of thousands of guests who could be in the park that day with few places to hide or things to do.

Reimagining Epic Universe

Don’t misunderstand – Epic Universe is clearly off to a very good start. And more to the point, it has both the ambition to grow the room to do it. (Whether it’ll have the need to grow remains to be seen, and is clearly complicated by… y’know… the world of 2025.) Luckily, whether or not that need materializes doesn’t matter to us as armchair Imagineers, who instead get to harness that ambition and room to their fullest potential.

Which isn’t to say that this Build-Out will be complete fantasy! As you’ve heard me say in other build-outs, I really do strive to ensure that these things are at least “reasonable” – in other words, it matters to me that we’re using actually-available space within perimeter roads, working around existing infrastructure, and keeping in mind the stuff that isn’t “sexy,” like restrooms, team break spaces, parade buildings, and access roads that lead to loading docks at shops and restaurants. We also do want to try to address capacity (by adding more to do) and reliability (by adding both less-complex rides and weatherproofing)! I’m not a professional and get a ton wrong, but I want to at least try to think holistically and reasonably.

So we’re almost there, ready to envision what a fully Built-Out Epic Universe could look like! Last thing I want to address is the park’s logo and identity. If you’ve been along for one of my other build-outs (Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, Islands of Adventure, or California Adventure), you know that one fun little “cherry on top” for me is to illustrate a new, refreshed logo to differentiate my imagined version of the park from the real-world version we know. Since I am not in any way a designer or illustrator, I tend to find inspiration in draft, unused logos from the past.

Despite this build-out being drawn literally in the weeks after Epic Universe opened to the public, the park does have an unused logo! Epic Universe was announced with one I really loved – a stylized, illustrated astrolabe embellished with art deco carvings, an astrological inset, and a sort of cool, bronze color scheme to balance Islands of Adventure’s similarly-stylized warm, golden compass.

But in 2023 – two years before Epic Universe would even open – Universal swept through the style guide and unveiled an entirely new suite of logos for their parks. As a whole, I openly detest this “generation” of logos – they’re like, weird 4K digital vectors that belong on the cover of a Wii game from 2003. No offense to the designer (I hope you’re not reading this!) but I just hate them. Why replace the beautiful, illustrative astrological chart inset with a like, weird, AI-style “space” graphic? Why buff off all the detail and line work in favor of “metallic” texture in 8K resolution? Why remove the uniquely illustrated wordmark in place of drop-shadowed PowerPoint WordArt? (I mean, we know the answer is “So it’s legible on a phone screen,” but that’s so unsatisfying.) And actually, the Epic Universe logo is the least-bad of the “generation” here, so it could be worse!

But obviously, I began with the old, unused logo as a basis and came up with this.

Again, I am not a designer or illustrator, but this hits my eye just right. I think it retains enough of the detail, texture, and layering while satisfyingly “flattening” the look into something modern and pleasant. It returns to that nice, cooler, faded, bronze aesthetic that beautifully differentiates it from the rich, warm, logo I developed for my build-out of Islands of Adventure. And it uses an inverted color shadow, giving the sense of something otherworldly or beyond the earthen color palate, which I think is compelling.

Having reviewed what we want to preserve and strengthen versus the needs we should at least try to innovate around… it’s time. Are you ready to see and hear my thoughts as we walk through an expanded, “built-out” Epic Universe with its real estate full? Read on…