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

Having filled in part of the seven-ish acre expansion pad between Super Nintendo World and Dark Universe, we’re left with just a medium-sized space to try to build something sensational. Keeping in mind that the bar to entry for Epic Universe is really just that – something “epic” and beyond our everyday world – I think we can dedicate the five-ish acres left (something akin to, say Avengers Campus’ acreage) to an increasingly-likely new portal.

ASIDE: The Road to Oz

Since L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900, countless adaptations (and the dozens of follow-up novels written in the more-than-a-century since) have expanded on the legends and lore of the fantastic world located “somewhere over the rainbow.” Surely, none have been as long-lasting as the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz – widely considered to be the greatest film ever made.

That Oz – its places, characters, and songs – is genuinely iconic and intergenerational in a way that practically begs to be made real in the opulent and theatrical and exaggerated medium of the theme park. But so far, that’s eluded us. In fact, Baum’s Oz has a long and complicated history with Disney in particular (beginning with the story that Walt himself wanted to acquire it for his second animated movie after Snow White, and was dismayed to find that it had already been licensed to MGM). Sure, through a separate deal, the Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride positioned The Wizard of Oz as the ride’s climax. But behind the scenes, Disney has also tried at least once or twice to develop plans for an Oz themed theme park land to no avail.

Oz is a tough nut to crack. Even though Baum’s original novel is in the public domain, the iconic 1939 film that gave it definitive form is not. The movie was produced by MGM, but is currently owned by Warner Bros. through a series of corporate sell-offs and inheritances. As a result, while anyone can produce works based on the Oz book series – including the original novel – MGM and Warner Bros. have gone and will go to battle to defend anything explicitly connected to the 1939 movie as an infringement on their copyright.

(One well-known example: Disney’s 1985 Return to Oz allegedly paid MGM $1 million for special permission to use the “ruby slippers” that were invented for the film to showcase then-new Technicolor – they’re silver in the book. On the other hand, Disney’s 2013 film Oz The Great and Powerful avoided payouts through such specifics as forbidding a wart on the Witch’s chin or a “swirl” at the Yellow Brick Road’s start – all elements Disney feared Warner Bros. would litigate. Disney even concocted a legally distinct green pigment for the witch’s skin tone to avoid Warner Bros.’ wrath – the witch’s skin color isn’t mentioned in the books.)

Given that they have a uniquely-powerful blessing from their corporate licensor overlords, Warner Bros. Move World in Australia opened the world’s first Oz-themed land in 2024, but with all due respect, it’s got more in common with your local Six Flags’ “DC Universe” than a world-class, immersive, and extraordinary “Living Land” that Oz is clearly owed.

The other problem with Oz in a theme park sense is the same problem shared by other literary “epics”: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is, by definition, a quest. To live that story is to live the journey – from Kansas to Munchkinland, then following the Yellow Brick Road into the Haunted Forest, through the Fields of Poppies, to the Witch’s Castle, then on to the Emerald City. Bringing just one subsection of that world to life is inherently incomplete, and doing the “world” justice would require… well… basically an entire Oz park.

As luck would have it, Universal has eked out a sort of “back door” into Oz through its very fortuitous optioning of Gregory Peck’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and its subsequent transformation into the Broadway musical Wicked (which, yes, is a product of Universal Stage Productions). If you’ve been under a rock, the play is a prequel to the Wizard of Oz we know, telling of the unlikely friendship between the green-skinned Elphaba (one day, the “Wicked Witch of the West”) and the image-obsessed Galinda (destined to become “Glinda the Good”) who meet as students at Shiz University, and whose journeys through life intersect around the Wizard of Oz and, later, the arrival of Dorothy.

Since it debuted in New York City in 2003, the musical has reportedly earned nearly $2 billion – the second highest-grossing stage production of all time after Disney’s The Lion King. But let’s be real: even a Broadway blockbuster is still a relatively niche product in the larger entertainment ecosystem.

So it’s really no surprise that Universal had been discussing elevating Wicked to a multimedia franchise via a film adaptation as far back as 2004. At that point, a Wicked film would almost certainly have starred the Broadway cast with legends Idina Menzel (later, Frozen’s Elsa) and Kristen Chenoweth reprising their roles of Elphaba and Galinda. But as happens in Hollywood, time dragged on as the project was announced and quietly delayed time and time again.

Wicked: Part One finally debuted in 2024, with its follow-up and finale in 2025. The films star Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Galinda, respectively – and more importantly for our purposes, they finally give Wicked the definitive visual form that only a film can. In other words, by way of the films, we gain access to a visceral, physical world that a theme park needs: y’know, actual buildings and architectural styles and landmarks that a stage production can only allude to in stylistic nods.

Wicked earned nearly $800 million at the box office, which isn’t too shabby for a three hour film that wore its heart on its sleeve (and more to the point, had the audacity to openly admit in marketing that it was unabashedly a musical). The sequel is shaping up to do at least as well, meaning that the two films will likely earn about as much across two years as the stage play did in two decades. So it’s probably fair to say that Wicked is not just a viable franchise or a rare success in the post-1939 Oz media landscape; it’s also big, bold, emotional, adventurous, and yep, epic…

THE LAND OF OZ: Shiz University

Therefore, we add to Celestial Park our first new portal. Accessed via a circular plaza embedded with the Clock of the Time Dragon (the proscenium that frames the stage production), the grand entry to The Land of Oz carries the message:

With you and I defying gravity,
They’ll never bring us down

I can almost picture stepping into this portal – the John Powell’s excellent “Arrival at Shiz University” score filling the wooded plaza, a pulsing rainbow LED tunnel, and then a great vista that emerges across a small lagoon – our first view of Shiz University. Shiz is a space that’s basically formless in the play but is given beautiful physicality thanks to the practical sets work of the film’s production designer, Nathan Crowley. Shiz is like a fantasy-festooned Cambridge; a spectacular, domed campus that’s academic and otherworldly all at once, and certainly the kind of place the Celestials would deem worthy of exploration.

I liked the idea of Shiz University as a setting for a few reasons. First, it allows a land as vast and varied as Oz to be made incarnate in a single setting that’s distinctly of Universal’s Wicked. Second, this plot of land (and this relatively self-contained setting) feels “right-sized” for a franchise that’s certainly got staying power and timelessness, but (let’s face it) is still a relatively niche IP in the grand scheme of things. Third, I sort of envisioned that we could position a “LAND OF OZ: Emerald City” in a fourth gate (the one that theoretically could slide in southeast of Epic Universe) and connect them with that fantastic art-nouveau train we get a little screen time with in the film.

Aside from a viewing platform right on the water as guests step into the land, the path to Shiz would split in two around the lagoon, making use of half-covered “arcades” chiseled out of the salt-like walls that encase the school (for us, providing great, enveloping hills to hide neighboring showbuildings as well as a “weatherproof” walking area).

Again, this is a very compact land without much space, so I tried to make the most of it. We have, for example, the SHIZIAN LIBRARIUM BANQUET, located in the iconic university library that we see in the film’s “Dancing Through Life” segment. I know that placing a restaurant in the library is odd, but the school’s cafeteria (which we also see) isn’t much different stylistically and the library’s iconic rotating tumblers of books are too “theme-park-able” to be omitted.

So hosting a banquet in the library (perhaps a student showcase!) seems to be a great choice for a restaurant. Universal is pretty cautious with table-service restaurants; each park has exactly two. This would be a third for Epic Universe after Atlantic and Blue Dragon, but I think the two-story restaurant would warrant the elevated categorization.

Just outside of the library, I sketched in the LAGOON PADDLERS. This attraction really would see guests hop aboard pedal-powered boats for a jaunt through the lagoon, adding kinetic energy and color to the land. However, I thought it would be fun to have each of the paddleboats differ vastly in its decoration and seating – some small, family-sized sailboats; some rowboats; even shells decorated for the Shiz Rowing Club.

The Lagoon Paddlers would be wildly low capacity, but if it’s framed in the same way as, say, Disneyland’s Explorer Canoes, then people can see exactly what they’re in for and the number of guests waiting. (I think an underwater bus-bar system would practically be required to ensure that the boats maintain a minimum speed.) I know that logistically, this ride would be cut before it was even proposed, but in a Blue Sky Build-Out, I liked having an “A-Ticket” that just adds to the land’s atmosphere.

Next, I wanted to carve out a tree-shaded plaza to serve as the CLASSROOM COURTYARD – a space where Shiz professors could offer outdoor lessons or orientations for prospective students like us. In reality, this mini stage and courtyard could be a spot to hear from Shiz’s many student organizations and teachers; to meet professors and participate in mini-lessons; to try out for the school Choir by singing along to the Shiz alma mater. This, to me, felt like an equivalent of the small stage in Hogsmeade where we get micro-bursts of “in-universe” entertainment that strengthens the overall land and siphon out a few dozen guests at a time.

Most of the land’s energy, though, is focused in the “Quad” plaza at the heart of Shiz’s campus where we have the SHINYSHIZ BOUTIQUE. “Shinyshiz” is apparently university slang for a new student, so this “Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boutique” would give guests a full stylistic orientation on how to be “Popular,” transforming them into well-coifed Shiz students or – of course – admirers of Galinda, Elphaba, or Fiyero with special costumes.

Beyond that, the plaza would include retail and snack outlets unique to the world. Universal actually sort of “technical-rehearsal’ed” this with dedicated Wicked shopping experiences at both of its U.S. resorts, and the results are really very nice! The “academic” angle just works well as merch, but unlike, oh, say, Hogwarts, this feels like a kind of underground, less-on-the-nose way of broadcasting your love of a franchise – and without actively harming trans people or passively broadcasting that you don’t care about them!

Of course, the grand Quad courtyard of Shiz would also serve as the entrance to the land’s dark ride, WICKED: THE JOURNEY TO OZ. No matter how far it’s removed from its source material, the fact is that Wicked will always be rooted in the stage show – inherently a dramatic and musical medium. So when it came to determining what ride system we should use to tell the tale, I decided on an indoor boat ride that leans into the theatricality of it all.

I think the perfect model for this exists in Tokyo DisneySea’s Anna & Elsa’s Frozen Journey, which is a sort of unabashed “book report ride,” but just excels so beautifully at capturing the highs and lows of that story just like you’d see on a stage, and manages to linger enough to give musical moments a chance to shine… The Frozen ride also uses track switches frequently to keep the ride relatively compact, which is needed given the small space we’re using for The Land of Oz.

Universal also famously patented a brand new ride system where guests’ boats spend part of the time floating in a water channel, then would be unexpectedly scooped up by an overhead ride system approaching from behind, and dramatically “fly” (essentially, becoming Peter Pan’s Flight) before being returned to a flume to disembark so that waiting guests are none the wiser about the hidden feature.

Rumors always suspected that this adventurous ride system was developed for a Legend of Zelda ride (which may very well still be true and could still be the case one day; it’s not the ride system that I used for a Zelda ride), but for now, I thought it would make a great last trick of this animatronic-heavy ride, picking riders up to soar over the Emerald City for a “Defying Gravity” finale.

As you can see, our Land of Oz is not a massive, sprawling land. In many ways, the Land of Oz here has a lot in common with Hollywood’s version of Super Nintendo World – basically, an elaborate wrap for a single ride. But as fans begin to lobby for Wicked to find its way to Universal Parks in a permanent way, I think that Epic Universe and its portal frame story create the perfect place; that a land like this would be perfectly sized for the property; and that Shiz feels like a comfortable, warm spot to serve as our embodiment of and departure point for the larger world of Oz.

And just take a look at where we are. Already, our expanded Epic Universe is starting to resolve issues of capacity and weatherproofing while adding more to do.

In Celestial Garden, we’ve added three flat rides (Moon Swings, Plantes à Roquettes, and Voyage to the Enchanted Garden), two relaxation zones (Elm Grove and the Celestuary), the interactive Cosmic Compass attraction, weatherproofing, plus a dark ride (Chronomica). We’ve expanded Super Nintendo World with three new family attractions (Parrotchute Polka, Banana Slamma, and E. Gadd’s Boo Buggies) plus a new dark ride (Luigi’s Mansion). And then, The Land of Oz: Shiz University provides us with a new headlining dark ride (Wicked: The Journey to Oz) and an A-Ticket paddle boat ride.

Hopefully you can already see what I’m going for here – finding clever ways to add onto the awesome blueprints Epic Universe is already working with. And there’s a whole lot more where that came from… Make the jump to Expanding Epic Universe: Part II to continue our full-circle tour as we next head into Dark Universe, The Wizarding World, the Isle of Berk, and of course, that massive looming expansion pad just begging for something epic…