Guests visiting Universal Epic Universe during its early opening period wishing to ride the impressive Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry attraction are required to join a Virtual Line, Universal’s version of a Virtual Queue. The Virtual Line requirement has quickly become the worst part about visiting Epic Universe, and Universal Orlando Resort needs to find a way to improve the experience or get rid of it entirely by the time the May 22nd grand opening rolls around. In this article, we’re going to discuss our experiences with the Virtual Line and why it is currently nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for Epic Universe.
Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry Virtual Line
Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry is a world-class attraction, and worthy of the hype and praise it is receiving during this early opening period for Epic Universe. The attraction blends physical and digital scenes in a way that seems like actual magic throughout an experience that contains the best Audio-Animatronics figures we have ever seen in any theme park, and a storyline that is rewarding for fans of the Harry Potter franchise. When you combine that with a queue experience that is the best in the world, you have a complete attraction experience that may be second to none! For our complete thoughts on the attraction, check out our article below.
However, the only way to experience the ride right now is via a Virtual Line, or Virtual Queue as it’s known at Walt Disney World. The idea behind a Virtual Line is that instead of waiting in a multi-hour line as would certainly be the case if a traditional standby queue was offered, guests can wait their turn by joining a virtual line instead. This would allow guests to spend their day doing other things such as eating, shopping, or even riding other attractions via a traditional standby line. In theory, virtual queues can be a useful tool for a theme park. However, the Virtual Line experience right now for Battle at the Ministry is an unmitigated disaster. In our opinion, it needs to be radically overhauled or removed entirely by the time opening day rolls around in less than three weeks.
Before we jump into our thoughts on the Virtual Line, let’s first describe how it operates.
How to Join the Harry Potter Battle at the Ministry Virtual Line
Guests wishing to join the Virtual Line must do so via the Universal Orlando mobile app. You can find out more information about the app and how to download it on the official Universal Orlando website. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you should be able to follow along with our instructions below. We’ve included screenshots from one of our successful attempts joining the Harry Potter Virtual Line to help visualize the process.
First things first, how do you find the Virtual Line page? Thankfully, finding the Virtual Line area isn’t difficult. In short, you’ll want to find the attraction page for the specific attraction that is utilizing the Virtual Line. In this case, that is the Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry ride.
Before we head over to the map to find the ride, know that you also find a button to take you to the Virtual Line process from the “Profile” tab along the bottom of your app navigation bar. If you’re inside Epic Universe, a “Virtual Line” quick-jump button should appear as one of the five or so options at the top of your screen below your name.
If you have push notifications enabled, you should get a message some 15 minutes before the next planned Virtual Line distribution window.
The way that we’ve been finding the Virtual Line is via the map. We’ve played around with the map view and the list view, but find that the map view (screenshot below left) is just easier. While I’d love to offer a tips and tricks article, I have zero confidence in the Virtual Line system to reliably give advice. I’m going to write some stuff below that will sound like advice, but don’t let it fool you, it’s simply a recounting of our experience with the app.
One thing that could make finding the Harry Potter attraction easier in the list view (screenshot below right) is favoriting the attraction. When you favorite the attraction, it shows up at the top of the list, but only if you sort the list by wait time…and only if the attraction isn’t experiencing a delay…and only if the attraction as opened for the day. There are simply too many caveats for a quick navigation of the list view, so we’ll stick with the map view.
Ok, now that you’ve found the attraction in either the map view or the list view, tap on the attraction to bring up the attraction’s page (screenshots below). Note that you’ll also be taken directly to the attraction’s page if you click on the “Virtual Line” button from your Profile tab, or if you click on the push notification. Either way, the goal is to get to the screen(s) pictured below.
Ultimately, what you’re looking for, is for the Virtual Line button on the attraction page to turn blue. We’ve only tried one method because we have found it to be successful in the past and we’ve really wanted to ride Battle at the Ministry. Before we talk about the refresh method that we use, it’s worth noting that a non-zero number of guests have reported that you can just stay on this page and that the Virtual Line button will eventually turn blue. We haven’t tried this ourselves, so we can’t say if it works or not.
Instead, what we’ve done is we’ve bounced between the map view and the attraction page. Here are the steps that we’ve taken:
- Start on the map view page
- Click the attraction pin and then the attraction name
- If the Virtual Line is blue, immediately click it and move on to the next steps below the screenshot. If not, tap the back button in the upper left of the attraction page and repeat the process until the Virtual Line button turns blue
Again, we’re not sure if we’re doing it “right”, but we have had success with this as recently as our latest visit to Epic Universe this week.
Also, you’ll find yourself getting increasingly antsy as the seconds tick by. You may even hear other guests yelling with joy around you as they get a Virtual Line spot. In fact, we’ve heard guests yelling with joy before our Virtual Line button even turned blue. What were we doing wrong? “Luck of the draw” is what we were told by a Guest Services Team Member. That was, perhaps, worse to hear than the happy guests around us, but more on that in a bit.
In short, we want to feel like we’re doing something to control the process. Ultimately, there really isn’t much you can do, but if you want to feel productive, tap back and forth as fast as you can until the Virtual Line button turns blue. Once it’s blue, tap that faster than you’ve ever tapped a button on your phone before.
The next screen that you might see is the one below. We’ve stared at this screen more than any other single screen on a theme park app in years. If there was any method to the madness, this is where we’d be able to impart some wisdom. Unfortunately, there is no advice to be had here, only a description of what we’ve done that has led to an occasional uptick in luck.
If you find yourself looking at this screen, you might be too late to the party. That said, this is the screen that you want to stay on as long as your patience will allow. From this screen, we only press the back button if we’re ready to give up. If you want to keep trying, the only way to “refresh” this screen is by increasing or decreasing the number of guests in your party. Every time you increase or decrease your party number (by pressing the ‘+’ or ‘-‘), the app appears to refresh. A “loading” indicator replaces the failure message, and for a brief moment, you have hope. Either the same failure message appears and you choose to continue or give up, or you see something magical…
If you’re lucky, you might actually see some available times (screenshot below left). If you see times, act fast. Click on one (we always choose the earliest available), and quickly tap the “submit” button when it lights up blue. Chances are, you’ll see a pop-up message that says “Sorry, this time slot is no longer available” (screenshot below middle). To channel Harry Potter, you must not tell lies, Universal Orlando app. If you see this error message, it may be true, but it’s most likely lying to you. Click ok, and then click on the time again and press the “submit” button. You’ll have to do this a few times before either the time slot changes (screenshot below right) or disappears, or you get lucky and secure a Virtual Line return time.
If you are successful, the app will explode with (digital) confetti and you’ll be taken to a screen with a QR code. When it is your turn to return to the Ministry of Magic, Team Members will scan your QR code to redeem your Virtual Line and allow you to enter the queue.
So, that’s the process of securing a Virtual Line. It’s a frustrating, entirely imperfect process, but it is necessary right now. As to the why of the Virtual Line, right now, it’s simple – Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry is very unreliable. In a perfect world, the Virtual Line is in place to protect you from waiting 6 hours in a standby queue to ride a single attraction. In reality, the Virtual Line is currently in place to protect Universal, which has an unreliable headliner attraction on its hands. The idea is that if Universal can severely restrict and manage the number of guests who could have a shot at riding, it makes it easier to manage the guest experience when the attraction inevitably breaks down.
The why of the Virtual Queue is almost forgivable. If I’m being honest, it’s hard to give Universal too much grief over their use of a Virtual Line in an understandable situation when Walt Disney World used a Virtual Queue for Cosmic Rewind for more than 1,000 days for reasons that are entirely unexplainable. Universal has an unreliable headliner attraction, and they want to allow some guests to ride, but they’re unable to just open the floodgates.
Battle at the Ministry: A Broken Ride
Now, I said almost forgivable. Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry is now closed for a week during the preview early opening period. The thought is that Universal is taking the time right now to try and fix whatever is so terribly broken with the ride. While we don’t know what is wrong with the ride, we can start to make some guesses based on our experience with multiple breakdowns so far.
The prevailing theory is that there is an issue with the safety sensors on the attraction. In recent previews, Team Members have been giving verbal instructions to guests to make sure that they don’t cross their legs, that their feet stay flat on the ground, and that they keep their back pressed against their seat at all times during the ride. In a ride that bounces around quite a bit (think Star Tours), this is not always an easy task, and you sometimes find yourself focusing more on your own motions than the ride.
For what it’s worth, we were not given that instruction during a recent visit a few days ago, but I think that may have been an oversight by the Team Members loading our ride vehicle instead of a change in policy. We’ll have to wait and see what things look like on the other side of this week-long pause in operations.
We have experienced multiple breakdowns on the ride, and at different points. We’ve also experienced frozen screens, static Audio-Animatronics, and other frozen effects. One ride breakdown was actually the most painful that I’ve experienced in any theme park. There is a portion in the ride where there is a short, controlled drop sequence. Instead of a controlled drop, there was a sharp drop and a jarring stop with the vehicle pitched or slanted sideways. We stayed in that slanted position for a couple of minutes before our vehicle lowered itself into its lowest position and we proceeded through the attraction with no effects.
What I found interesting about each of those breakdowns is that Team Members at the unload platform seemingly had no idea about the experience that we had on the ride. As our vehicles came into the unload station, the Team Members were clapping (a tradition at the end of any Universal ride), and seemed completely off guard when our entire vehicle explained the breakdown experience. To their credit, they immediately offered a re-ride whenever we experienced a breakdown, but there didn’t seem to be any visibility into the poor experience that guests had.
I contrast that with perhaps the best Team Member interaction that we’ve had yet at Epic Universe over at the Monsters Unchained ride. While the ride didn’t break down, the audio and motions of the vehicle were out of sync by about 3-5 seconds. That’s pretty disorientating, by the way, especially when you know what to expect from a ride. Before I got a chance to give some feedback to the Team Members about the ride experience, they proactively offered a re-ride because they were aware that our ride experience was suboptimal. We stayed in our seats and the next ride through was great!
All that to say I’m not sure that there is a single thing that is wrong with the Harry Potter ride right now. In our glowing review of the attraction, we pointed to the technology in the article title. That wasn’t by mistake. The tech in the Battle at the Ministry is impressive, but it is seemingly very prone to failure. And that’s not even addressing the unmitigated disaster that is the Virtual Line system.
Virtual Line: A Broken, Unfair System
The Virtual Line system, as currently implemented, is worse than anything that we ever experienced at Walt Disney World. And yes, that includes the early weeks and months of the Rise of the Resistance Virtual Queue, which was so bad of an experience that we wrote an article titled “Don’t Visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios Right Now“. Full disclosure, I’m at the same point with Epic Universe right now as it relates to offering advice on visitation timing, but more on that in another article (probably).
The Universal Virtual Line is more akin to a Taylor Swift Ticketmaster experience than a theme park experience. As we outlined above, you have to get lucky just to get to a point in the app where you can experience a good type of error instead of a bad type of error. The vast, vast majority of guests who visit Epic Universe will simply never get a chance to ride the best ride in the park. The one thing that Epic Universe has going for it that Hollywood Studios didn’t have going for it back when Rise of the Resistance opened is that everything at Epic Universe is new. Even if you don’t ride Battle at the Ministry, you will get to experience a TON of new things at Epic Universe. But we’re getting off track.
Before we turn this into a different article, let’s bring it back to the Virtual Line experience. In speaking with Guest Service Team Members to understand what I might be doing wrong when attempting to get a Virtual Line, the first and most prevalent response that I received was “it’s luck of the draw”. That’s simply not good enough. As far as I can tell, the reason that it’s luck of the draw is because the Virtual Line system is very poorly built.
The first indication that the system is broken and unfair is not what you see, but what you hear. I’ll never forget the early mornings in late 2019 and early 2020 on Grand Avenue when hundreds, if not thousands of guests lined up for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge all reacted to securing or missing out on a Virtual Queue spot in unison. You might hear a cheer or two, but then the entire crowd swelled with cheers and disappointment all at once. While the Virtual Queue (or Boarding Group) system policies would change in the months and years to come, the system itself was reliable enough to open up to all guests at once. That’s not the case with the Universal Virtual Line.
Going back to hearing how broken the Universal Virtual Line system is, we have experienced hearing cheers in Epic Universe from guests before we even saw our Virtual Line button activate. I think it’s a demand thing. It seems like the backend system is not powerful enough to create a synchronized, fair Virtual Line drop for all guests. It’s one thing to have a low capacity for the unreliable Harry Potter ride. It’s another thing entirely to have an app functionality that is so broken that it essentially picks winners and losers before you even get a chance to try.
We have complained in the past that the Virtual Queue system at Walt Disney World was essentially a lottery system due to how quickly the spots filled up. At this point, creating a functionality similar to a lottery system would be an upgrade for the Universal Virtual Line experience. It’s simply unfair how it operates right now.
And to be clear, this will only get worse once the park is open to all guests and the demand on the system doubles. Just like ride engineering needs a quick win with fixing the ride, the tech teams need a quick win with fixing the app, or the opening weeks and months will be an unmitigated disaster. Here are some more issues that we noticed with the Virtual Line system.
Unlike the Walt Disney World Virtual Queue system, there is no way to link your tickets with your friends and family. Like, that functionality doesn’t exist at all within the Universal Orlando app. That means that each party has to self-identify how many Virtual Line spots they want. The choices range from 1 person up to 8 people with no way for the app to know if you’re selecting the correct number.
In practice, that means that a party of two could take up 8 spots. In reality, I don’t think that this is an issue. It is more likely that Virtual Line spots are for too few people than too many. The reason for that is simple – the process is so broken and the spots are gone so fast that guests are probably more concerned with getting a return time instead of selecting the correct number of people in the party. That has happened to us where I was so excited to see a return window that I immediately tapped on it and got a Virtual Line for a party of one. Thankfully, Team Members at Battle were accommodating and allowed us to enter as a party of two. Either way, because there is no ticket linking, there is no way for Universal to validate that you’re only requesting a Virtual Line for the amount of people in your party.
To that end, I would suggest getting as many people and devices in your group as possible to try for a Virtual Line spot. The system is broken and you need to give yourself the best possible chance of success.
So, how does Universal prevent someone at home from trying to get a Virtual Line? They use geofencing. Geofencing is a technique that says that you can only do something if you’re physically within certain boundaries. In the case of the Virtual Line, Universal only allows you to join the Virtual Line if your phone is physically located within Epic Universe. This is imperfect and we’ve run into issues where we were inside the park and the app thought that we weren’t. As to the actual bounds of the geofence, that’s a fixable problem. That said, because a geofence is in place, you have to make sure that you have precise location activated for the app, and you have to make sure that you are physically in the park when a drop happens. I’ve heard that even the Epic Universe parking lot is outside of the geofence, so make sure that you are inside the park.
I like how Disney used to use Virtual Queue. A pre-opening drop for anyone with valid admission (again, Universal doesn’t even check for valid admission, so this probably isn’t workable), and then later drops in the day that require you to have tapped into a theme park to be eligible. For as much grief as we gave the Virtual Queue system at times, Disney really had it dialed in for the past few years or so. In fact, Disney’s Virtual Queue system was so good that it allowed us to argue the merits of Virtual Queue vs traditional standby. We can’t even get to that point with the Universal Virtual Line because the system itself is so broken.
If you find yourself starting at a screen that has a return time button, consider yourself lucky. When you click on that button and hit “submit” you’ll probably be told that the time slot is no longer available. This is the “good error” message that I wrote about earlier. This isn’t a guarantee of success, far from it, but seeing an actual return time window is further than 80% of guests will get into the process. The “this time slot is no longer available” message is likely a lie. According to Alicia Stella at Orlando Park Stop, this message is basically a pretty server error message. That goes back to the topic of the backend system just not being ready for prime time. Click “ok” as fast as possible and try again. 100% of our successful Virtual Line experiences have included seeing and dismissing this pop-up multiple times. It’s a mess, but the Virtual Line system is a mess.
As we wrap up this article, we hope that the current experience with the Universal Virtual Line system is not what guests will experience come May 22nd. That said, it looks like it’s going to require some real magic from the ride engineering teams and tech teams to fix a broken and unfair system.
We’ll also take a second here to discuss “technical rehearsals”. It is a term that Universal die-hard fans are really, really leaning into right now as a way to defend the park. We’re not going to do that. Universal is charging very near full price admission for an experience that simply isn’t up to par right now. We’re not just talking about Battle at the Ministry, either. Two roller coasters have been down for days and Universal has not indicated when they might begin operations again. A number of attractions are regularly experiencing extended downtime. The theme park, located in Central Florida, can’t handle rain. The experience right now is not deserving of the price tag.
If you’re on the fence, our advice right now would be to skip the remainder of the “preview” period, and possibly even to skip the opening weeks. I’ll expand on that in another article, but right now, a day at Epic Universe simply isn’t what it should be.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
