So... I went!
This entire day was surreal. I had been waiting for parts of this park to open for close to a decade at this point, and I have so, so many thoughts. Too many frankly haha! It's gonna be a bit tough to write all of this stuff out; but it makes sense in a way. It's not everyday, or hell, every year or decade that you get to experience 7 brand new rides and 5 themed lands at the scale that this park offers. Such an incredible unique experience for myself.
If there's anything I wanna begin with though, it's this. This park has a very distinct vibe to it, and it's honestly a vibe that I don't get at the current campus.
The current campus has an air of irony, satire, irreverence, modernity. It's especially apparent in Studios park, but Islands has this energy too. It's the prominent use of IPs like Shrek, Simpsons, Transformers, or Minions. It's the overwhelming 90s or 2000s-ness of Rip Ride Rock-It, Marvel Super Hero Island, Revenge of The Mummy, and the whole conceit of the "Studio" concept. It's the edgy older brother energy the parks have, the crass and crude jokes, "We're not Disney, we can be mean to kids here!" in Horror Make-Up. Both Jurassic Park rides are built like one big riff on theme park rides as a concept. It's the way that Citywalk takes all of this immature edge that the parks have styled themselves around, and channels it so completely that it frames the entire complex in that light.
Epic Universe has none of that energy. If there's anything that this park is, it's
sincere. In many ways, it's even reverent. Super Nintendo World has a childlike energy to it, but it's incredibly distinct from the existing campus's immature energy. Again, it's brimming with
sincere child-like glee. The Potter lands have always been somewhat divorced from that edgier energy, and it's no different here with Wizarding Paris. Berk is often cracking jokes and filled with silly visuals, but it nearly never winks or nudges at the audience like Minionland or even Dreamworksland do. The Monsters area has certain elements that are a bit closer to that original campus energy, but it still plays it all incredibly straight in my view.
Celestial Park is the real heart of this difference. It feels completely disconnected from anything that currently exists at the current campus. It's beautiful, pristine, reverent. Occasionally, this misfires and ends up with the place feeling overly stuffy or awkwardly sincere. It's a minor and subtle difference, but the vibes of the humor used in Port of Entry compared to Celestial Park is night and day to me.
If there's anything in the current parks that feels like Epic does, in a strange way, it's
Toon Lagoon. Despite being filled to the brim with humor and witty comedy, it never lets the audience in on any bit. It's a sincere, respectful, and loving tribute to an entire medium of art and comedy.
This feels like Universal making a bold step to move away from that older brother energy it's always had, and that it essentially built for itself in order to distinguish itself from Disney's squeaky-clean and sentimental brand perception. If the current parks are "Not your mother's theme park!", Epic is pretty thoroughly "Your mother's theme park." Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Regardless, the purpose and identity of this park feels completely distinct to me. It feels like Universal wants to be a bit more, to try a little harder, to put itself and it's own new ideas out there, and to actually sincerely
mean the experiences that it offers. It feels like they're trying to mature themselves, and I find that deeply interesting.
Part of this was spurred on when my brain started comparing the offerings of this park to Race Through New York starring Jimmy Fallon.
