Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe celebrated its first birthday this year with new merchandise (including gold power up bands at Super Nintendo World, you’re welcome) and a fun new character experience with popular plush figure Captain Cacao in the parks. It’s hard to believe the theme park has already been around for 365 days and counting, but it’s certainly never stagnant. In fact, the Epic Universe creative team has heard your feedback and responded accordingly.
If you can remember back to hundreds of days ago, one huge complaint fans had early on was that the parks were not open much during evening hours. People loudly grumbled about this online during Epic Universe’s opening month, and it wasn’t really even a hot take: A lot of people felt this way.
Well, those in charge of guest experience actually saw all of these comments, and responded by switching around hours to keep the park open later. Executive VP and General Manager of Epic Universe Jeff Polk told CinemaBlend and other outlets they heard fans loud and clear. He knows some of the best attractions like Stardust Racers are better at night, and he was speaking about listening to what the guests have had to say as they make future plans when he noted:
Similar to what I was saying earlier with listening to what the guests want, we started last summer with certain operating hours. We backed the operating hours off a little bit at one point and got a lot of feedback really quickly that everyone wanted to be here at night. So, we moved the operating hours back later and started opening later quite honestly.
Originally, Epic Universe opened early at about 8 a.m. and stayed open until early evening. Now, the park opens later, at around 10 a.m. and stays open until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. on select dates. Polk also said the park doesn’t maybe need to “be open 12-15 hours”, and that’s fine with me. Any additional late night hours make me extremely happy, though I’d personally love a future where some summer and holiday hours it opens a little later and stays open until 11 p.m.
Everyone on the team understands the experience in the parks at night is so special. They see guests hanging in Celestial Park to experience the “seven million lights” that shift the park into overdrive, and VP and Executive Director for Universal Creative Russ Dagon says they are just getting started when it comes to the nighttime spectacular.
This park at night, it’s a very different experience night versus day. We see people pausing when they enter to take a picture in front of Chronos and those same people at night have to get a second picture because of the fact it’s so different. The system that we put in, the audio system, we can control every light in the park and make it a different color. All timed to music, fountains, whatever we want to do. … We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface with what we can do with that.
His coworker Ariana Morabito, VP of Entertainment for Epic Universe, gave us a bit of a tease about what’s next as the parks continue shifting forward into 2027 and beyond. They’re always looking for what’s next in the “3-4 year” plan, and it sounds like Celestial Park may get an upgrade.
I know a lot of people love what we are doing with our nighttime fountains and our nighttime program. So, maybe we build on that a little bit.
It makes me wonder if she’s playing into those rumors Celestial Park and its restaurants may open up to the general public down the line. Either way, hopefully by the time we get into Year 3, we’ll know more about that mysterious attraction headed behind Ministry of Magic and more. Stay tuned, because the next 12 months are going to be a rollercoaster ride (or at least some other attraction announcement).
