Universal Epic Universe (officially) opens next week, marking a huge milestone in the ongoing battle between Universal and Walt Disney World. Boasting four major themed lands and a Central Park-style setting connecting them all, Epic Universe is certainly worthy of your attention. There are world-class attractions, some absolutely wonderful dining, and a setting that invites you to actually relax while on vacation – an increasingly novel concept in theme parks.
However, Universal is clearly still trying to figure out how to best sell tickets to the theme park, and that includes timing on when they will make Annual Passes available. In this article, we’ll speculate a bit on when that could happen.
When Will Universal Sell Annual Passes for Epic Universe?
First and foremost, we will start by saying that Universal Orlando has announced that Annual Passes for Epic Universe will be available at some point. The question is that of timing and pass structure.
More details regarding Annual Passes that include Universal Epic Universe will be announced at a later date.
In terms of when Annual Passes will go on sale, we expect that Universal Orlando will continue to try and squeeze guests a bit. What do we mean? Right now, you can’t purchase a multi-day ticket for Epic Universe. Typically, guests can purchase a ticket package that includes two or more days at a theme park.
For example. If I wanted to visit Universal Studios Florida and/or Islands of Adventure, spending four days at the parks, I can head over to the Universal Orlando website, plug in four days, and it spits out a variety of ticket types that I can purchase for access to the existing theme parks.
When purchasing a multi-day ticket, discounts are typically offered. Going back to our example above, the price of a ticket drops to roughly $84 per day when purchased for a 4-day period. Compare that to a price of roughly $150 per day when purchased a single day at a time.
Going back to Epic Universe, Universal is either offering a ticket bundle that forces access to Universal’s two other theme parks, or a single-day ticket to Epic Universe. There are no multi-day tickets available for purchase on the Universal Orlando website for only Epic Universe. Simply put, Universal isn’t ready to sell tickets at a “discount” for their brand-new theme park just yet. An Annual Pass is effectively just another way to sell discounted theme park tickets.
So, the question then becomes: when will Universal feel comfortable selling discounted theme park tickets to Epic Universe? To answer that question, we’d have to know how ticket sales are going. Interestingly enough, thrill-data.com has figured out a way to track ticketing data for Epic Universe to give us some insight into sales. There are a number of caveats to this data, but we can at least start to see some trends.
One trend that becomes apparent right away is probably an expected one: Universal is planning on strictly managing capacity, and ramping up operations throughout the Summer. That means that capacity will likely be lower in the first month or so of operation before opening up a bit starting in July.
If we take the thrill-data figures at face value, Epic Universe will have a standard operating capacity of roughly 22,000 guests this Summer once the ramp-up period is over. During the first month, daily operating caps of 11,000 to 14,500 appear to be in place.
Beyond top-level capacity, we also have some insight into how many tickets have been sold. As you’d imagine, the opening week of Epic Universe is selling well. The opening couple of days are sold out, with a few thousand tickets available for the next few days after that. In short, opening week sales are probably considered to be strong internally. That said, we have been watching the 1-day ticket sales, and availability has been fluctuating wildly. A week or so ago, 1-day tickets were basically sold out until July. As of this morning, you can buy a 1-day ticket during opening week.
We imagine that Universal is trying to balance those multi-park ticket packages with 1-day Epic Universe tickets. Universal would certainly prefer to sell those higher-priced, multi-park tickets over the single-day Epic Universe tickets, so they have likely been allocating more capacity to the higher-priced tickets.
That said, if you start to see sales for the multi-park tickets start to slow down, and you still have top-level park capacity available to sell, we would then expect Universal to open up more capacity to single-day tickets. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. It’s all a game, and it has been fascinating to watch play out over the past week, and really, the past few months since tickets first went on sale.
Going back to the question of how well tickets have sold, I will speak from the perspective of someone who has zero inside knowledge and someone who is simply an industry observer. It appears that there is strong interest in the opening week, and then ticket sales start to stagnate a bit. In fact, some opening-week dates have sold less than 50% of the full park capacity – that doesn’t look good.
Ticket sales for June look to be ok, not weak, but not strong either. Once July hits and higher capacity limits are in place, it’s rare to see more than 35% of ticket capacity sold for the day. Again, I have no idea how ticket sales work for theme parks in terms of lead time, but the numbers don’t look strong this Summer.
That said, there are a few major levers that Universal can pull, and the sales of multi-day tickets to Epic Universe will likely be a significant indicator. If Universal isn’t happy with attendance, and they need to get more guests into the park, we expect to see the sales of multi-day tickets as the next lever to pull. This would allow guests to buy tickets at a discount, encouraging sales.
The next major lever that Universal Orlando could pull is adding Epic Universe to its Annual Pass product. Chatter among the fan community is that we won’t see an Annual Pass for Epic Universe until 2026, but I wouldn’t be so sure.
If ticket sales are as mediocre as they appear, I would expect to see Universal Orlando offer an Epic Universe Annual Pass before the Summer is over. Short of an Annual Pass, I think it’s very possible that we see the multi-day “discounted” ticket deployed this Summer at a minimum.
I think that the last big hurdle that Universal has to get past before it can really start to fill the theme park with guests is ride reliability. Right now, ride reliability has been a major sticking point with guests visiting the theme park during the early opening preview period and something that will cause Epic Universe to have very bad word-of-mouth reviews this Summer if it isn’t addressed.
If Universal is able to get the rides operating reliably, and they see some unfilled park capacity, Annual Pass sales would be the best way to get locals into the theme park this Summer – especially following a preview period where locals have likely gotten their fill of the park and are not rushing back to pay full price to return anytime soon.
I’ll close out by making a plea to Universal Orlando to sell Epic Universe Annual Passes. We love Epic Universe and I would love to be able to spend more time in the park. That said, I’ve purchased my opening weekend tickets, and those will likely be the last tickets I purchase before an Annual Pass product – and I don’t think I’m alone. There are a number of new entertainment offerings at Walt Disney World that will grab the attention of locals this Summer. Walt Disney World not only sells an Annual Pass product but is now offering 50% off the initial down payment for Floridians. Universal, please compete for that attention by offering an Epic Universe Annual Pass and I think you’ll see a lot of locals making the trip across town to experience a wonderful new theme park this Summer.
– signed, a local who just wants Pizza Moon for lunch today
For our comprehensive review of Universal Epic Universe, check out our article below!
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