Half a million cheese cones. Five Million riders (or nearing it) on most of the marquee attractions. Families coming to the parks in IP clothing starting on Day 1. The Epic Universe team has seen a lot of milestones in its first year, and they believe it all happened because of the one rule they had in place when dreaming up the portals.
Seriously, there was one rule the Universal Orlando team stood by as the metric for determining whether an idea might move forward or not. Otherwise as Chef Jens Dahlmann mentioned to CinemaBlend and other outlets, ‘there were no restraints.” The dreamers could go as far as they dared to go.
In a Q&A, Executive VP and General Manager of Epic Universe Jeff Polk shared this one rule the entire creative team, from the chefs to the ride designers and VPs, all had when coming up with new ideas in the parks.
We were able to measure everything against one word, and that was epic. If it was epic we did it, it if wasn’t we didn’t.
It sounds simple, but honestly it was anything but. Epic Universe is made up of thousands and thousands of compounded ideas that all lead to one seamless experience. Just look at Super Nintendo World as an example. You take an escalator through a portal to get into that section of the park. The world is immersive from the moment you step into it, but if you have a Universal Mario band there are even more options to go interactive and to play games leading to other secrets in that section of the park. You can have a wild DK float that’s as big as your face. You can meet Princess Peach and dance with Toad. It all looks like this:
Or, look to Dark Universe, where Ygor roams around, the well lights up at night, and werewolf footprints are “stamped” into the concrete of the forest on Curse of the Werewolf. All these things took people to dream them up.
The creatives knew when they had hits, as Ariana Morabito, VP of Entertainment for Epic Universe and some of the others involved with the park’s creation all cited the Meet-and-Greet with Toothless as a moment they really specifically felt they hit the highest bar. In fact, they were all on hand to watch Toothless roll out.
There’s always those things. You know they’re going to be special but you don’t really understand how special they are until a child or even myself walks up to Toothless and puts their hand on [him]. Everybody else has since experienced that opportunity to meet Toothless. It is the coolest moment to be a viking and be able to have an encounter with a dragon and create a bond like that.
As someone who has met Toothless, the feeling of touching the dragon is pretty indescribable, and special, even for a grownup. The wonder when kids get to do it will leave an impression. It all came back to the one word though. Per Jeff Polk, “epic” was the only way to measure every single thing that came into being, and it led to over 161 patents being created just for the one theme park.
It’s true. You had to measure yourself against it. It was a big thing, we put that on the front sign and you kind of have this thing you’ve gotta live up to. And so it became everything that drove us throughout the whole process.
One a year later, Universal’s park is still going strong. Epic Universe has made adjustments to its schedule in the first year, staying open later to accommodate the wishes of guests, and other changes are being cemented as we speak. The parks recently started testing Universal Celestial Goodnight, a new fireworks show set to officially debut next month on July 7th. There’s rumors about new attractions heading to the Ministry of Magic and other areas of the parks. It’s only a year in, and all I see are growth opportunities ahead. I’m guessing that one rule is still in place for the creative team and will be for awhile.
