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Universal’s Epic Universe
Orlando, FL
NBC Universal / Comcast
New Park Opened 2025
---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----
(12/22/2025) Wizarding World Expansion Pad Awaits
(12/20/2025) 5 More Lawsuits Pop-Up Claiming Stardust Racer Injuries
(12/17/2025) Trademark for Possible Nighttime Spectacular Filed
(12/13/2025) Update - Family Settles With Universal over Stardust Racers Incident
(12/13/2025) Stardust Racers Accident Officially Deemed Accidental
(11/29/2025) What Ever Happened To Epic Universe's Flying Dragons?
Ride Rehabs - These dates are not guaranteed to be 100% accurate as refurbishments are subject to change.
Fyre Drill - Feb. 1 through Feb. 7
Screamscape Reviews UNIVERSAL EPIC UNIVERSE!
(4/10/2025) The Rise of Epic Universe - Part 1
(4/13/2025) The Rise of Epic Universe - Part 2 - Welcome to Celestial Park
(4/17/2025) The Rise of Epic Universe - Part 3 - All These Worlds Lie Before You
 Park News - (12/20/2025) Just when you thought all the lawsuit drama over Stardust Racers was over with the settlement of the Zavala family, now five more lawsuits have been filed via another lawyer claiming guests received injuries on the coaster between April and September 2025. Of course the fact that Universal quietly settled with the Zavala family, despite the coaster being cleared of having anything wrong with it, has likely brought out these new lawsuits also looking for a quiet payday of their own. You know what they say about sharks smelling blood in the water… yikes…
 (12/17/2025) Universal has filed for a new trademark name this week for something called “Universal Celestial Goodnight”. While we don’t know exactly what this is… the name itself just screams that it is most likely something for Universal’s new Epic Universe park, and it sure sounds like it could be for some kind of big nighttime spectacular to close out the park at closing time.
While Epic Universe was really designed to shine after dark with tons of fountains and special lighting installations, so far the park has yet to put on any major kind of night show in the central Celestial Park area. A limited show was held for the grand opening events and I believe they did put on a small show for select holiday nights, but beyond that… the official word from the park was that any kind of major production was still in development.
So it looks like the long wait may be coming to an end… so stay tuned!
(12/13/2025 - UPDATE) A quick update regarding the Stardust Racers incident. ClickOrlando.com has reported that the family of Kevin Zavala has come to an “amicable resolution” with Universal Orlando regarding the incident. According to the family’s legal council, the terms of the agreement are confidential.
(12/13/2025) According to a new post by AP News, the official investigation into the death of a guest on the Stardust Racers has been closed by the state, with the death officially listed as being entirely “accidental”. According to the Orange County Sheriff’s department the Epic Universe team followed all procedures and were not careless or neglectful in any way.
One thing that we really haven’t seen discussed until now are statements about what exactly took place during the ride itself, as Kevin Zavala departed the station seeming to be in good condition and returned completely unresponsive and was described as being slumped forward, with blood seen to be dripping from his face by witnesses.
One such witness was Anna Marshal, a medical doctor, who was actually standing in line to ride when Zavala returned to the station. As Marshal was on the scene, she also rushed in to give aid and gave a witness report of what she saw, describing Zavala as having his arm hanging over the ride, his thigh bone was broken in half and resting on the back of the ride chair. Zavala’s girlfriend who sat beside him on the ride also informed Marshal that Zavala had several metal rods in his back from a previous spinal surgery. The thigh bone in question had also been previously fractured in another injury in 2020 that required surgery to repair, and he also had hip dislocation surgery in 2010.
Meanwhile the medical examiner’s report lists a number of other injuries, including a deep gash on the ride’s forehead, a fracture of the bony ridge above his eye, bleeding above the skull, bruises on his abdomen and arms, with fractures on his nose and right thigh bone.
So how did such damage occur to a rider that was perfectly secure and locked in to the roller coasters’s safety restraint? He was so locked in that they claim that the ride ops had a little difficulty in releasing the restraint from him for about 10 minutes according to a paramedic who was on the scene, who described Zavala being in the restraint, but “stuck on the ride vehicle face down, falling out of his seat, with legs inverted”.
Finally we have comments from his girl-friend who was sitting next to him about what took place, claiming that Zavala flew forward and hit his head on the metal bar in front of them during the first big drop on the coaster. During the course of the ride, she says Zavala struck his head several more times, and that she was unable to hold him back.
I hate to speculate when the thigh-bone “broke in half”, but as the Stardust Racers restraint does firmly hold riders in place across their lap, a broken bone in that area could cause an inability for the rider and restraint to hold themselves in place, resulting in the ragdoll style body motion that caused further injury.
According to Universal’s safety guide to ride Stardust Racers, guests “must be able to independently: (1) maintain an upright position, (2) support your torso, neck and head while absorbing sudden and dramatic movements, and (3) brace your body with at least one natural upper extremity.” Based on the description of the incident, it sounds as if Zavala was unable to support his upper torso and maintain an upright position during the ride, though the breaking of the thigh bone may have had a lot to do with that in-the-moment, compared to his normal abilities.
(11/29/2025) Many have wondered what happened to the “flying dragons” designed for Epic Universe that were seen making test flights over the park’s Isle of Berk before it opened. Since the park opened there have been no dragons in the sky, but Universal does address this a bit in the Epic Universe series on the Peacock streaming service.
The answer right now is that the flying dragons, which are really customized industrial sized drones, were deemed to have a bit too short of a battery life and were a little “too loud” when flying over the park. They looked cool, but it sounds like the dragons are back in the shop for a little re-design work to address these issues, as well as to make some of the extra movements look a little more fluid and life-like, such as the flapping of the wings.
Flying over the park, untethered, is a bit of an iffy situation as well, as if anything were to go wrong, they wouldn’t want one to come crashing down inside the park or strike an attraction or building, so the plan is to launch and fly them over an empty field behind the Isle of Berk, but fly them high enough that guests would be able to see them from all over the park essentially appearing to be flying near and over the Isle of Berk at some point in the future. So keep an eye on the sky in 2026 hopefully…
(10/8/2025) With only about 3 weeks left to celebrate the Halloween season, Universal has decided to unveil some secrets about what plans they have in store for Epic Universe during the Christmas Holiday Season. The holiday plans for the other two parks are well established, with The Grinch taking over Islands of Adventure and a series of attractions from the Macy’s Parade Floats and Mannheim Steamroller concerts.
For Epic Universe, Universal has confirmed that there will be some kind of Hoilday celebration this winter in Celestial Park as well as in the French themed streets of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Ministry of Magic portal. Nothing has been mentioned about Dark Universe (make sense) and strangely not for the Isle of Berk or Nintendo either, though it is worth mentioning that some Christmas decor is usually added to Super Nintendo World in Japan and Hollywood.
(10/4/2025) I posted this on Social Media yesterday, but the good news is that Universal announced to their team members that Stardust Racers would reopen to the public TODAY. In the aftermath of the incident that saw a guest return to the station unresponsive and taken to a hospital where they passed away, Universal own investigations team, investigators from the state, Mack Rides and a 3rd party team have all verified that everything on Stardust Racers was operating safely as designed and intended both before the ride began, during, and after the train returned to the station, so no fault was found with the ride.
However as of today, Universal Orlando has made a small update to their Guide for Safety and Accessibility for the park’s attractions, and has removed Stardust Racers from their list of attractions able to accomidate guests able to transfer from their wheelchairs into the ride vehicle. It has now been added to the list of attractions requiring that “guests using mobility devices must be able to walk independently”, alongside Dragon Racer’s Rally and Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment.
(9/22/2025) An internal letter sent out from Universal Orlando management to the team members claims that Universal’s own internal investigation shows that the Stardust Racers ride system was not the cause for the death of a rider last week, and that all the safety systems were functioning as designed. It also did not appear that the operations team on the attraction was at fault in any way. So with this in mind, Universal did confirm that the official state accident investigation is still ongoing, though in a press release they confirm that so far their initial findings match what Universal has already stated, that the Stardust Racers ride was working correctly.
(9/21/2025) A quick update on the status of Stardust Racers... yesterday we had heard that the ride was expected to reopen, but this did not happen. I’m being told that the investigation from the local authorities is still ongoing and is now expected to continue for some time, which could result in an extended closure for the park’s iconic Stardust Racers roller coaster attraction. Stay tuned for further updates as we find out more.
(9/20/2025) Sad news from Universal Epic Universe this week as it hit all the bit news headlines that a guest riding the park’s Stardust Racers roller coaster arrived back in the station in an unresponsive state on Wednesday evening. Park staff jumped to action and the guest was immediately transported to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Unfortunately, the later updates reported that 32-year old Kevin Zavala, passed away a short time later at the hospital. According to the medical examiner, the death has been determined to be accidental, but it is worth mentioning that the cause of death for Kevin, who was typically in a wheelchair due to a preexisting spinal injury, was also listed as dying from “multiple blunt impact injuries”.
It does not mention if the coaster ride itself was the cause of this, or if this was more related to the preexisting condition. Stardust Racers was closed for an investigation, but I believe it has since reopened, or will be reopening today. Our thoughts go out to everyone involved in this tragedy.
(9/4/2025) A quick article from Deadline about how things are going at Universal Orlando since the opening of Epic Universe is pretty revealing. Universal’s Mark Woodbury was questioned about Wicked or other additions being in the works and while he was not ready to announce anything, he did state that when he personally saw the sets for Wicked, he knew “it was a theme park waiting to happen.”
As for the progress of Epic Universe itself, they say that “the performance on food and beverage and merchandise exceed our expectations considerably, and the front gate of Epic is a premium over the other two parks. And then when you look at the incremental attendance growth at the resort, and combined with those per caps, it’s a pretty, pretty great start.” Elsewhere the article states that Epic Universe has been beating the company’s internal forecasts of where things should be three-months after opening, so it sounds like overall it has been a great success.
(8/3/2025) A ton of new green steel beams and other construction materials have now been staged along the edge of the Epic Universe expansion pad at the backside of the Stardust Racers roller coaster. The general thought is that Universal was preparing to set up a giant green barrier wall along the property line, very similar to the one that sit behind the Hagrid’s coaster in Islands of Adventure that was set up shortly after the park opened, blocking off the view and sound of Dueling Dragons from the outside world.
In this case however, in addition to visually blocking off the property, it is also thought that the wall may be going in as a way to divert any of the foul smells from the Water Reclamation plant located right across the street from there.
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(7/19/2025) Screamscape readers may recall in my own review of the Preview Tour I received of Epic Universe, I noted just how good the food was. While this could have just been a one off… or special food for the VIP Preview Tours at the time, everything I had heard following that about food around the park at the other venues was also extremely positive. Like to the point that most of the comments kept focusing on the strange fact that the new ‘theme park food’ at Epic Universe was on the level of what you would get at a nice sit-down restaurant meal outside of a theme park in both terms of quality and consistency.
Now that the park has finally opened to the public it seems that even other non-theme park media has taken notice of the dining options at Epic Universe, as Bon Appetit has now published a deep dive on it, claiming that “Epic Universe takes theme park food to a whole new level.” Clearly Universal Orlando is doing something very right!
(4/6/2025) So where have I been the past couple of days? If you missed my social media posts, Screamscape was invited to a special media advanced preview of Universal Epic Universe. There was too much seen and done to report it all at just yet, because I’ve got a lot of writing to do, but the groups I was in were also the first guests approved to take pictures, videos and report live content from the park and Grand Helios Hotel during our tours.
While we were not allowed to video while riding on the attractions, we did get to see and do almost everything, including being the first riders to experience Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry attraction! Trust me when I say that it is completely mind-blowing and should definitely exceed everyone’s expectations. In fact, that’s a fairly accurate description of virtually every attraction, show, restaurant and world you will visit in this park.
Dark Universe? You are going to love it, so much detail, so much lore built into every nook and dark crevasse… so dark and beautiful, live a living world of monsters. The thing that pains me the most is that we were not able to see Dark Universe come “alive!” after dark. As for Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment, I feel comfortable saying that I think that was the best themed ride I’ve ever experienced… at least it was until we entered the Battle at the Ministry… so now I’ve got a huge “tie” in my head, because I can’t make up my mind about which I liked better.
So in the meantime, to whet your appetite, please make the jump over to the official ScreamscapeNews Instagram channel (and follow/subscribe) to devour the many photos and video reels that I’ve been able to post so far, but there is so much more I haven't posted yet to come. I also made a more focused photo drop of the Isle of Berk on FB as well, which I’ll embed below.
And for everyone who has questions, please do send them in and I’ll do my best to answer all the questions that I can in a future Q&A update post!
2026 - New Celestial Park Restaurant - Confirmed - (6/15/2025) Universal has confirmed what we kind of already knew… but were asked not to point it out just yet. When taking a preview tour of Universal Epic Universe back in April I was told that I was free to take pictures of and post anything we wanted about the park, except for this one empty building that was being finished up in Celestial Park. If you enter the park and take the right-side path past a series of connected venues and gift-shops you’ll notice a large empty building sitting there on the right side of the path just before you arrive at the
Portal to the Isle of Berk. If you’ve visited, you may have noticed this as well, as the building is quite sizable and yet unmarked by any signage to indicate what it was going to be.
Of course, being Screamscape, I discreetly asked our tour guide for clarification on exactly what I was not supposed to be pointing out, so I don’t… you know… accidentally do it. They obliged and pointed towards the empty venue and quietly whispered, “It’s for another new restaurant, they just haven’t announced what it is going to be yet.”
Well that time is now over as this week Universal has finally put some discrete signage on the closed doors to the venue, “Travelers - Pardon Our Stardust As We Ignite A Galaxy of Flavors and Culinary Delights. Coming 2026”
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I do have to say that I had heard about several concepts planned for the park at least a year before it opened. During the tour, I did recognize the majority of the restaurants there as being all the things I had heard about, checking off those boxes one-by-one. Unfortunately, at the moment, I can’t quite remember exactly all the options I had heard about that were still missing to know for sure what this new restaurant will be.
I mean most of the major dining concepts have already been covered of course with seafood at the Atlantic, fine asian dining at the Blue Dragon, your carnivore cravings at Das Stakehaus, BBQ at the Oak & Star, Pizza at the Pizza Moon, and the oddities you would expect inside Isle of Berk and Super Nintendo World. So what’s missing? At first I was maybe thinking something like a more casual American food (burgers, hot dogs, etc) with a fun space / celestial theme, but then I remember hearing that much of that can already be found over at the Meteor Astropub on the other side of Celestial Park by Stardust Racers.
Stretching my brain, I do seem to recall in the back of my mind something about a possible Italian dining option (other than Pizza) that might be offered. I also believe I had heard something about a possible Mexican dining option as well. Time will tell if they opt to go with either of those concepts, or if they pushed the pause button until 2026 in order to come up with something entirely new.
2026-2028 - Phase 2 Attractions / Expansion - Rumor - (11/11/2023) Not long ago I mentioned that Universal had a couple of irons in the fire early to develop some Phase 2 additions to Epic Universe. At the time we had heard about the Luigi Mansion concept for Super Nintendo World and only that the park’s Wizarding World section was the site of the second project. Now we know a little more about the plan for the Wizarding World addition, and from what I’m told, this may actually be the return of a concept once pitched for the park and then cut.
I’m still a little fuzzy on all the details, but the addition they are looking to bring back to Epic Universe would be to create a “Great Hall” themed dining experience in the park. For those not in the know, The Great Hall was the dining room area within Hogwarts that was shown in many different scenes throughout the film-series that featured four very long tables (one for each Hogwarts “house” I assume) and had all those floating candles in the air.
Beyond this, I’m not sure of much else, but it does seem incredibly strange that while the entire outdoor section of the Wizarding World in Epic Universe will be themed to Paris, the attractions will all need some kind of story element to transport you back to the UK’s corner of the Wizarding World. Be it a trip to Hogwarts to dine in the Great Hall or to the Ministry Of Magic for the trial of Dolores Umbridge, it does make me wonder why they are bothering with the French theming at all.
(10/28/2023) While we still have about 18 months left until Epic Universe is ready to open, would you believe that Universal is already working on the first couple of expansion projects for this mega-park? If you’ve seen the site, you know certain areas are being left undeveloped for future expansion for either new future lands, or to add new attractions to the existing lands.
In this case I’m being told that the first two projects likely to be added to the park will be the later… additional attractions to add better capacity to existing lands where they think the crowds are going to be a little overwhelming. It shouldn’t take you too long to guess which lands will be plussed first.
 Expanding the Wizarding World area will be a priority of course, as the land will really open with just the main main attraction and will be in dire need of additional things for guests to do to keep them in there. This also goes hand-in-hand with the fact that in the original concepts for the land, there was always meant to be a second major attraction of some kind, and in those very early days (pre-COVID) the idea was to create an attraction where guests could ride a flying broomstick through the use of VR-Headgear. This same attraction concept was then going to be fast-tracked and switched over to be built at Universal Studios Florida for a time, taking over the spot of the now closed Fear Factor show venue, next to Diagon Alley as a follow up to 2023’s Villain-Con attraction. This never happened however, and it sounds like this was good news after all, because the early word was that during development management became less and less impressed by what they were seeing was possible. In other words… while the vision seemed like a good idea, the actual realization of what was possible was just falling far short of the vision, so the project was scrapped. I also think that the introduction of a near identical VR broomstick ride experience that was rushed into operation at the Harry Potter New York retail store that opened in 2021 also soured them on the concept. Universal didn’t want to be seen as copying what the retail store had done, and based on the fact that after only running the two VR attractions in New York (Wizards Take Flight and Chaos at Hogwarts) for a short 18-month time span, both VR attractions were then retired for good in New York. What exactly they might add to the Wizarding World in Epic Universe remains to be seen. I’ve heard a few rumblings about various concepts, but with the land itself being themed to the Wizarding World of Paris instead of the UK or USA, we might get something a little more unusual.
Based on the monster crowds Universal has seen swamping the Super Nintendo World lands in Japan and Hollywood, obviously they are now very well aware that they need to be working to add more to the version coming to Florida. While the deal with Nintendo will allow Universal to build attractions based on some of Nintendo’s other IPs like Zelda, Metroid or Pokemon, in this case the idea is to stick to the core Mario Bros. universe world, and I think you might be very happy with the direction Universal Creative is headed. With Mario being the main hero of the Mario-Kart ride, Donkey Kong has a coaster, and there is the cute Yoshi themed family ride, it is only fair that Luigi finally gets to have his own attraction, right? So how would you feel about a ride based on the Luigi’s Mansion game series that sends Mario’s brother on his own epic journey into a dark Haunted House with a flashlight?
 The early description sent to Screamscape sort of sounds like Universal’s Villain-Con and The Secret Life of Pets attraction in Hollywood had a very twisted offspring. Guests would ride in an omni-mover style vehicle system through dark Luigi’s Mansion, but be given a special hand-held flashlight that uses modified Villain-Con blaster tech to bring some ghosts to life when you point at them. I’m not quite sure if your car will feature its own Poltergust ghost-vacuum or if you are just lighting up the ghosts for Luigi to come along with suck them up. To be honest, it’s about time that another park in Orlando had their own haunted “mansion” experience to offer, and I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.
???? - Wizarding World Expansion / New Attraction - (12/22/2025) An new aerial clip shot over Epic Universe shows off the current look of the empty expansion pad behind The Wizarding World portal.
(11/9/2025) Behind the Thrills has posted some leaked permit plans that show Universal may be prepping to finish off the expansion of the Parisian version of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter inside Epic Universe. The currently empty plot had a couple of other previous attraction plans at one time or another that were scrapped for the final build out. This includes the pre-COVID plans to build a VR Broomstick ride based attraction, which was at one point temporarily fast-tracked to be moved to Universal Studios Florida and replace the former Fear Factor stadium. As the project developed, it seems Universal Creative felt that the VR based experience just wasn’t up to their quality standards, especially as it might be compared to another VR Broomstick riding attraction that was built at the Harry Potter: New York themed retail store, only to close down within the first year due to poor guest response.
Later on, I was told that the site was being looked at to possible build a highly themed dining experience… one that might even attempt to re-create the look of dining inside the great hall at Hogwarts. How that would fit into the Paris themed version of the Wizarding World established in Epic Universe is anyone’s guess in order to transport guests to Hogwarts for Dinner, but then again, they did create the whole Floo Network gag for the queue to allow guests to find themselves back in England for the Battle at the Ministry attraction. So with that in mind, you never know what they might have been thinking.
So with all that in mind, Behind the Thrills says they have a new permit showing a 150,000 sqft addition that will fill up that same empty plot. For a quick size comparison, your average Costco warehouse store is said to be 146,000 sqft, though they do have others that are even larger. But this gives you a good idea of the size building we are talking about that could easily hold another large attraction, or two medium sized ones.
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