The holidays are great, but they are always better at theme parks. Whatever your park of choice happens to be, when it’s done up in Christmas lights and festive decorations, it’s just magical. Even when the weather isn't great, a theme park at the holidays is still pretty special. Of course, recently, a particular set of lights at Epic Universe didn’t have us dreaming of a white Christmas. The thoughts it was creating were a bit less family-friendly.
This is the first holiday season since Epic Universe opened, so a lot of Universal Orlando fans were excited to see how the park would be decorated. For the most part, things did not disappoint, although there was a particular array of lights outside Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, the best Epic Universe attraction (don’t @ me) that struck many as somewhat, well, phallic. Universal Orlando Itself recently dropped some new holiday shots on its Instagram page, which confirm the display has been, um, snipped.
Can I prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Universal changed this display because of the jokes and not for some unrelated reason? I cannot. Is there a doubt in my mind that Universal Orlando saw the jokes and decided to alter the display so people would stop claiming it looked like a penis? There is not.
To be fair, there are only certain angles when the lights actually look like that. When you were closer to the entrance of Battle at the Ministry, which some claim is not the best attraction at Epic Universe, you could see the foliage that surrounded the lights and helped make it look more like a traditional Christmas display. It was only from a distance, when only the lights were visible, that it looked… the way it looked.
These are things that, no matter how much you plan in advance, you sometimes won’t see until the display you have designed is actually up and available for the world to see. While this is the first time we may have seen this particular faux pas, it’s far from the first time we’ve seen a theme park accidentally do something that looked silly. Heck, most of the time when a theme park does something ridiculous, it's quite on purpose.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Christmas is especially beautiful in the other Universal Orlando Resort parks, and Wizarding Paris at Epic Universe is certainly no different. Even with this slightly questionable set of lights, it all looks pretty amazing.
Once most theme parks find holiday decorations that work, they tend to reuse them for years to come. It won’t shock me if we see a different display in this spot next year, something that’s significantly different than this, if only so people can stop laughing about it. That said, you can now take your grandma to Epic Universe for Christmas without anything getting awkward.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
