Okay, so Universal Orlando’s new theme park, Epic Universe, has already become pretty popular — even before its official opening date.
Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry
That’s because so many Universal fans have been taking advantage of the early previews to check everything out before the park’s official opening on May 22nd. We’ve been there a few times ourselves, but on May 17th, we saw something that literally made our jaws drop. Okay, so we KNEW the Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry ride would be popular in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter — Ministry of Magic, but today, we saw a posted wait time of FIVE HOURS.
That’s right, we visited Epic Universe today and decided to catch a ride on Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry. We were lucky — our full wait was only about two and a half hours. However, on the app, the posted wait time at one point was four hours…and then it jumped up to FIVE HOURS. FIVE HOURS, y’all. That’s basically half a park day.
©Universal
Here’s what that looked like in the park around 11:30 AM. WHEW.
300 minutes = 5 hours
Granted, there was about an hour of downtime when the ride was closed, and that probably didn’t help the wait time much. We also have to point out that Epic Universe is still in its early preview phase, and the ride recently switched from requiring a virtual queue reservation to a standby line. Basically, this is still a rehearsal while Universal figures out the best way to handle this ride’s lines and wait times. Fortunately, once you get inside the main queue area, there’s plenty to see and loads of details to take in.
The Office of Professor Delores Umbridge
We’ll have to see how Universal decides to handle this ride once Epic Universe officially opens to the public on May 22nd, but we’ll be keeping an eye out for changes during early previews, too, so stay tuned to DFB for more.
Would you wait five hours for a popular ride in Epic Universe? Let us know in the comments!
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Wouldn’t wait that long for a ride no matter how good it was , trouble is we could only get a 1 day ticket for epic when we go in August , so certainly not going to waste 4-5 hours waiting for one ride
Looks like the standby lines when Flight of Passage opened
I hate paying for Lightening Lanes and will die on the FP+ hill BUT I do wish that Universal would add an individual EP for this ride and Hagrids.
I’m happy they got rid of the VQ. They are so stressful and unfair. I’d rather know that the VQ sold out than to have to try for one the rest of the day. We went to the preview and it was a mess with the rides. The park is absolutely beautiful though and we will definitely be going back.