Finally went on my Epic Universe trip! All told, I think it's more of a mixed bag than I had hoped, but also more than the sum of its parts and elevated significantly by its best elements. Those best elements are the ones that feel like a sincere passion project, Evermore Park at Disneyland scale. For me, it's these three lands:
Celestial Park - I think I was initially hoping for something more like Port of Entry by way of Lost Continent, lots of Big Lore and Bustle, so I was initially a bit underwhelmed by what I saw. After adjusting to the reality of the situation, I really appreciated this space as a kind of mission statement and identity beacon for the park. Everywhere you go, you're practically forced to wander a beautiful garden, see dancing fountains that run constantly for no reason except to be nice to look at, enjoy glittering lights by night. The whole space feels designed to be occupied. I've sometimes encountered a weird hostility to modern theme park design where you're seemingly encouraged to leave as quickly as possible (more on this later), but Celestial Park wants you to hang around, and that's a great feeling. The biggest asterisk on the whole Celestial Park experience is the view on Stardust Racers. The majestic music and the wind blowing in your hair make you think you're about to get a gorgeous view of Celestial Park or even a bird's-eye of everything at Epic, and then your first hill is towards a bunch of wastewater treatment and open construction. It truly feels like a mean punchline. This was the worst on my non-racing run, and I don't think it's as big of a problem when there's another car to look at, but the backstage views are seriously gnarly and jolting when everything else in the land is so beautiful. If those views were better and the ride raced consistently it would be my favorite across all the parks, but as it stands I have trouble looking past that first impression.
Isle of Berk - Just a delight. So playful and fun. Constantly kinetic, full of little details that feel like they were as fun to create as they are to see. I don't really love the attractions here - Hiccup's is a ton of fun but has some of those same nasty views in even less forgivable places and Fyre Drill and Untrainable are both pretty easy to skip (helpful given how hard they are to actually get onto). Wandering the space and eating in Isle of Berk just feels amazing to me. If "immersion" is your bag, this is probably the best land full stop. I really loved spending time exploring and interacting with all the characters, and I got pretty swept up in the whole thing.
Dark Universe - This was my most anticipated land in the park and I think it really delivered. The wandering violinists and walk-around characters gave me that life and lore I wanted out of Celestial Park, and it was very fun to get swept up in all the history and conspiracy. The Bride and the Invisible Man are my favorite "meet and greets" in the entire park. This one suffers a tiny bit in the attractions department too. Werewolf isn't worth the wait and Monsters Unchained... well... I rode it eight times, which says something about how much I love it, but I also never saw the preshow or the first Dracula animatronic and I never got a run with more than half the animatronics running. This ride rules, but it should rule harder. I hope they work out whatever kinks are holding it back because I want to call it my favorite but I just can't right now.
As for the rougher areas, I think the thing they have in common is that they feel like they had an infinite budget, a hard deadline, and no real ideas.
Super Nintendo World - The same drawbacks as its Japanese counterpart. Here's that hostile design I was talking about! No shade, nowhere to sit, extremely overstimulating, and two out of three rides are just not very good (haven't done Donkey Kong yet, who's waiting three hours for that). Toadstool Cafe is still cute but I just need more out of this environment. If you skip the rides, it's an easy half hour in and out, and not a supremely satisfying visit.
Ministry of Magic - The less said about this one the better. The first impression walking in is awesome (though not as awesome as Diagon Alley) and the jazz trio is really fun, but that's where my kind words end. Battle at the Ministry blows. A ride that expensive and hyped should not be coming in short of Spider-Man at Islands of Adventure. Half the thing is spent watching Daniel Radcliffe lookalikes from far away on flat screens while they tell you to go somewhere else. Even the queue is good for one Instagram photo and nothing else (compare the documents here, written in literal lorem ipsum, to the extensive missable text in the Monsters queue and you'll see what I mean when I talk about apparent passion). Four hours walking through barely-magical office spaces to get to what feels like some of the worst screen implementation in a Universal park just stings. The show is alright, I like that one effect in the preshow and the big puppet is cool, but why does Eddie Redmayne sound like he recorded all of his lines in one sitting while recovering from a cold? The whole land just feels like they needed to do a Harry Potter thing and they already did all the fun stuff a decade ago.
I did like Epic Universe a lot, but not as much as I hoped I would. Even the things I loved came with a few heavy asterisks, some of which can be fixed by good maintenance and practice with new systems and some of which are just bad planning that's going to hold the park back for years to come. That being said, I still think the stuff that's great elevates it to the genuinely magical tier, and walking out of Celestial Park at the end of my trip made me sentimental in the same ways I get sentimental walking out of Animal Kingdom, DisneySea, and Islands of Adventure, my favorite parks in the whole world. Even with its technical snafus and rough show and ugly lines and constant breakdowns, Epic almost instantly became a place that mattered to me, a place that I can't wait to return to and one that I honestly believe will only get better.