Comcast's (CMCSA +0.19%) new Epic Universe theme park was banking on weeks of gushing reviews from on-site hotel guests and annual passholders paying for previews, ahead of the gated attraction's official opening on May 22. It may have started that way when daily crowds rarely topped 6,000, the rides operated only somewhat unreliably, and weather complied.
It has a different kind of deluge on its hands now. The Universal Orlando resort paused member postings on its annual passholders page on April 27, the day before it announced that it would be opening preview ticket sales to the general public. It probably knew what was coming. Crowd levels have spiked and attraction downtime has become a serious liability, all while literal and figurative storm clouds darken.
Comcast needed to stress test the park that would put investors and rival Walt Disney on notice. It's failing the test. You can probably guess who's stressing now. I sprang for three days of previews in late April, including the first of the weather delays for paying guests. There are a lot of things Epic Universe needs to fix ahead of its official opening that is now less than two weeks away.
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Key Data Points
1. The ministry of tragic virtual lines
It's not fair to boil down a next-gen theme park to the 11 rides it features. There's also a pair of jaw-dropping live shows, a meet-and-greet with an interactive animatronic dragon, and four immersive portals that feed into the gorgeous Constellation Park core. Comcast claims Epic Universe offers 50 attractions, but perhaps its most anticipated experience remains its buggiest offering.
Harry Potter and the Ministry of Magic raises the bar with slick ride vehicles that move in all directions through a world that seamlessly blends enormous projections with lifelike audio-animatronics. There are plenty of tricks, but the most challenging feat is getting on the ride itself. It's been rarely available, and when it has been running it's with a limited hourly throughput with just a handful of the available vehicles cycling through the experience. Universal has turned to a flawed virtual line system as the only way to grab one of the handful of ride opportunities.
Disney World's virtual queue platform isn't currently active on any attraction, but in the past access has been limited to one daily ride per guest. Ministry of Magic has no limits on re-rides, thinning the already slim percentage of guests that score access. Disney's virtual queue has two daily drops when guests can claim thousands of available openings. Universal has gone with three drops with much smaller allotments, along with intermittent spurts of availability that trickle out during the day. Too many people are spending their time buried in the app, unable to enjoy everything that Comcast has built around them, and they're still not likely to snag a spot. This is the loudest of many common complaints when it comes to Epic Universe.
The entire attraction will close on Saturday for a week. If it doesn't emerge next weekend at least much closer to full capacity and with a solution to its virtual line buzzkill, the grand opening headlines won't be pretty.
Image source: Universal's Epic Universe.
2. Food for thought
Epic Universe has been largely getting high marks for its food, but some stomachs are still rumbling. Wait times for orders are growing as park crowds get larger, but that will inevitably get better over time. The problem right now is that the menus are aiming high for a themed experience, and that's going to be a problem if you have a picky eater in tow.
After spending three days in previews and a pair of nights at the attached Grand Helios Hotel, I had sampled several venues at the property. Everything looked great, but the push to make everything Instagrammable has its setbacks. The eclectic ingredient combinations on a plate increases the veto power for finicky palates. Making matters worse, as of late April at least, you still can't customize mobile orders to make a meal more basic. Even when you find a human to place an order with, the options are surprisingly limited.
I won't complain about a $29 burger at the hotel's lobby restaurant. I get the spoils of victory that Comcast earns with a captive audience. However, selling a single large breadstick in the shape of a wooden stake with a small container of garlic butter for $12 is probably the scariest thing about Dark Universe.
3. App-ologetic
Epic Universe would love to be the silver bullet -- or the garlic stake -- that slays Disney. Comcast can use the W. Its theme parks experienced a 5% decline in revenue and a 32% plunge in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) in the first quarter of this year. Disney announced on Wednesday that its domestic parks and experiences segment came through with a 9% increase in revenue and a 13% jump in operating income for the same three-month period.
Improving its smartphone app can only help at this point. I've already covered the Virtual Line re-ride loophole and lack of mobile ordering customization. Another application pet peeve is that menus aren't available until you're already in the park, making it harder to plan your meals. You also have to jump through a few filtering loops to only see ride wait times for Epic Universe, even though the application already knows that you're there.
Oh, and if you're going solo you might need two phones if scoring a Ministry of Magic Virtual Line is a priority. Since the widely circulated tip is to stay on the party selection screen if you're unable to grab a spot when the ride reservations system window opens, you're not going to be able to back out to place mobile orders or check wait times.
4. One step at a time
I should probably point out that there are a lot of stairs to navigate throughout the park. Super Nintendo World is an M.C. Escher drawing. The other portals don't have stairwells to tackle until you want to get on most of the available rides. If you have mobility issues there are several elevators to get around. You may have as many as four elevator rides to complete a ride experience. I can't imagine how long those lines will be once the park goes from entertaining thousands of guests to tens of thousands of guests. Either way, your day will have a lot of ups and downs at Epic Universe.
5. Summer cookout
I've lived in Florida for most of my life, but even I felt the park was uncomfortably hot in my time there. The hub and spoke layout means you will spend a lot of time in Constellation Park going from one portal to the other, and the lack of natural or artificial shade is worse than you will find in the area's other theme parks. This was in April. I can't imagine how bad things will get when summer is actually here.
The good news for Comcast shareholders -- like me, actually -- is that Epic Universe is going make a lot of money keeping folks hydrated or selling them umbrellas, sunscreen, and aloe vera gel. The bad news is that a lot of people may wind up leaving early until it cracks the code to keep Constellation Park from being a clay oven.
6. Weather or not
My most productive day was April 25, which I added at the last minute after seeing weak ticket sales because the park was closing three hours early for a media event. We managed to ride all but two rides, and that included the one and only time we got to experience Ministry of Magic in my time there.
Our final day was April 28, a historic day since it was the first weather delay that the park experienced since it started charging for previews 11 days earlier. It didn't rain much, but lightning in the area kept most of the rides closed for more than two hours in the early evening. Just 4 of the 11 rides remain open during a weather delay, and you need to have been lucky enough to score a virtual line for one of them for that time.
This is Florida. Afternoon thunderstorms are the default setting over the peak summer travel season. Why would a park that aspires to one day wrestle the global turnstile click crown from Disney World's Magic Kingdom not weatherproof more of its attractions?
7. Riding the storm out
There is a lot to enjoy at Epic Universe outside of the 11 rides. However, that number will have to increase if it wants to grow its capacity without sacrificing guest satisfaction. Even if they are all somehow running consistently by May 22, a few of them can only entertain hundreds of guests an hour. The four-seater Donkey Kong-themed Mine-Cart Madness coaster had a four-hour wait posted one morning earlier this week, and that was when it was only accessible to guests staying at Universal-owned hotels as an early entry perk.
The park will need to ramp up the rollout of all-weather, high-capacity rides and find other high-volume uses for Constellation Park. A top priority has to be the Harry Potter portal where there is no ride currently available unless you have a virtual line for Ministry of Magic. It can't skimp on quality here. There's a wide gap currently between its signature rides and everything else.
Epic Universe will be great one day. Theme park enthusiasts and Comcast investors deserve as much. Right now there seem to be too many checklist items to check off in the next dozen days for a park that is already opening two years late. I hope I'm Epically wrong.
