Universal Studios Announces New Epic Universe Theme Park Coming To Florida
Rumors swirled of a new theme park being created by Universal Studios down in Orlando, Florida back in 2015, and today finally brought the official announcement of an all-new park called Epic Universe that will be built in Orange County. It will be the first theme park built from the ground up in Florida since Universal's Islands of Adventure arrived in 1999. Find out what we know about Universal's Epic Universe theme park below.
Tom Williams, CEO of Universal Parks and Resorts, made the announcement at a special news conference in Orange County today. It will be the largest theme park investment in Orlando in 20 years, creating over 14,000 jobs for the people of Florida.
Here's how Universal officially describes the new Epic Universe theme park:
Universal's Epic Universe will offer an entirely new level of experience that will forever change theme park entertainment. Guests will venture beyond their wildest imagination, traveling into beloved stories and through vibrant lands on adventures where the journey is as astounding as the ultimate destination.
As you can see, there are no specifics on what properties might be used to create rides and attractions in the park, but Epic Universe will be an entire resort with hotels, shops and more in addition to the theme park attractions themselves. And the title allows for a wide variety of Hollywood titles to be incorporated into the park.
There have been rumors that we might see more rides inspired by Harry Potter, as well as Universal's library of classic movie monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula, but as of now we have no confirmation of what we'll see in this park other than the concept art that was released above. However, this speculation from a Universal Studios fan does offer some food for thought:
The worlds of Universal's Epic Universe pic.twitter.com/yhpUMnMP29
— Alicia Stella Nova Resort (@AliciaStella) August 1, 2019
We know Nintendo Land is something Universal has in the works, so that makes perfect sense. In fact, the concept art does appear to have some elements of leaked designs for the Nintendo theme park attraction.
As for the rest of the map, a Fantastic Beasts land may not make sense when there's already a Harry Potter world, but Epic Universe would allow them to expand to areas that fall outside what they already have. We bet it won't be branded as a Fantastic Beasts world, but just something else Harry Potter-related. Meanwhile, a How to Train Your Dragon area sounds awesome, especially if it includes a ride where you get to fly on the back of a dragon.
The sad news is that even though Universal Monsters are accounted for on this map of predictions, that doesn't sound like it's tied to the Dark Universe. Where's that theme park, you cowards?
It should be noted that this isn't merely an expansion of the current Universal theme parks either, because attendees will have to take a shuttle down from the other Universal Studios parks if they want to get into Epic Universe:
That seems more than a little inconvenient, but maybe Epic Universe will offer up some thrilling attractions that will be too enticing for people to ignore. Since the new theme park doesn't have an opening date yet, we're not sure when we'll learn more, but stay tuned for any new information that becomes available.