Whoa... this is gonna be Epic! (Epic Universe thoughts)

     Hey friends! It's been a while since I've been able to talk about theme parks, so it's always a good time when new information comes out! Epic Universe has been in the works for a while, but I'm happy to say that they finally put out a video talking about all of the different areas of the park, even though they were pretty cagey about any new rides going into them, but I just have to say that I'm pretty excited to say the least. Today, we're gonna talk about the new park that Universal has in store for next year, let's go ahead and get started!

You've gotta love a park with a high concept!

    One of the most interesting things about this park is that they're wanting to build a story around the park itself, instead of having the park be just a park, the story is that you're entering a portal into other worlds, through the "Chronos," which takes you to the first area of the theme park, called Celestial Park. The thought is that there's an area created for people to go to all of the different lands, and this is where people can rest and relax in between the different adventures that you can have in the different areas. In this area, there are three attractions, "Constellation Carousel," "Astronomica," and "Starfall Racers." "Astronomica" doesn't seem to be a ride, more just an experience where they describe being able to "play with dancing fountains," which sounds a lot like the fountains around Epcot outside the Imagination Pavilion. "Constellation Carousel" looks like a normal carousel, though they describe it as being "like nothing you've ever seen." It looks cool, but ultimately it looks like a carousel. "Starfall Racers" is a dual-launch coaster described as "riding on a shooting star," and reminds me a bit of the concept of the Dueling Dragons coaster that used to be at Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The centerpiece of this area is the Universal Helios Grand Hotel, which is what I was talking about when I said that guests can rest in this area of the park in between all of the adventures. The hotel is in the park, which doesn't matter all that much to the overall park as a whole, but the theming and potential for storytelling in that concept is really cool. 

And Now for the Lands!

    From here, this video goes into the different themed worlds that you can travel to from Celestial Park, first of which being How to Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk. Nothing is really shown of the actual land for this area, but there are lots of clips of the movie, and there is a lot of talk about flying with dragons, which seems pretty safe to assume will have some kind of ride that simulates that. My guess is that it will be like "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey," especially given the ride vehicle's "flying" capacity. Next they went into the Dark Universe area of the park, a section devoted to the classic Universal monster movies, and hilariously named after the cinematic universe that they tried to set up a few years ago before The Mummy didn't do well and killed the whole series. Honestly, nothing is said about this land either, but the few screenshots that we get of potential landscape gets me pretty excited just for the ambience of the Dark Universe section. 

    They go into a discussion of the next of the park's third themed world, Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic. Apparently there will be parts of this world that are themed like both the 1920's Paris Ministry of Magic from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them: Crimes of Grindelwald, and the British Ministry of Magic from the proper Harry Potter series. It seems kind of weird to have a whole section of the park just devoted to this, but it's hardly a surprise, given how wildly successful the first two Harry Potter themed lands have gone for the Universal Parks. I hope they'll be interesting and get Harry Potter fans really excited to visit, though they are also very cagey about the idea for the rides and attractions in this area. The last area that they talk about here is Super Nintendo World, which is finally coming to Universal Orlando, which is definitely the part that I'm the most excited about. It seems like it's going to be basically the same land as the ones opened in California and Japan, citing Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Donkey Kong, though we'll have to see if we get the "Yoshi's Adventure" ride, which so far is only in Universal Studios Japan. I'm incredibly excited to be able to experience these attractions without having to fly across the country, or to fly to another one, and hopefully I'll be able to go there sometime soon!

    Epic Universe is shaping up to be really exciting, and I've been looking forward to it for a good little while, so I absolutely had to talk about it today when some information was finally put out! I hope you're all as excited as I am, and even if I'm not actually able to ride any of these rides that they put into the other lands, I'm going to really enjoy walking around all of the differently themed areas when the park opens sometime next year. Obviously, I'm much more of a Disney guy, but I've been waiting for a really long time to have a Nintendo theme park, and I'm so happy that they've begun to be a thing. One of my greatest hopes for all of these parks is for them to continue expanding while they keep going, maybe including more and more Nintendo properties as they go along (maybe with Legend of Zelda or Pokemon). No matter what they do with it, it's clear that this new park is going to be pretty wild, and I hope that they can follow through on the concepts that they have here!

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I hope you're excited for some aspect that I've written about here today, and thank you so much for all of the support that I've gotten for all the things that I've done recently. Feel free to let me know if you have any ideas for this park, I would love to hear some ideas about the potential rides that will be in the different areas. Thanks again for reading, and I hope you'll all have a good week! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed theme park fan, and I'll talk to you again soon!