Epic Universe Releases Impressive Look at New Lands, How to Train Your Dragon Character Experiences, More Merchandise Sneak Peeks

Universal Orlando's newest theme park, Epic Universe, opens in just 63 days! As the opening draws near, we will be covering the news released each week as we continue to find out more and more about this brand new park.

Epic Universe is the first major theme park opening in the Orlando area since Islands of Adventure opened in 1999 which was preceded by Animal Kingdom in 1998. Suffice to say, this is a big deal for theme park goers to see a park of such scale join the market of Orlando theme parks!

Epic Universe officially opens to the public on May 22, 2025 and I will be there on opening day to cover this big moment and share my review with our readers. Let's get into all the details of the Epic Universe news for this week of March 20, 2025.

Epic Universe Details We're Still Waiting For

These are some of the biggest details we are still waiting for as we get closer to the Epic Universe opening date.

Express Pass- There have been rumors swirling that Epic Universe won't offer Express Pass when it opens. This does not appear to be true as the official website states, “Express Passes for Universal Epic Universe will be launched at a later date before the park opens. More details will be announced closer to the launch of these products.” The language here has led many of us to wonder if Express Pass will work differently at Epic Universe but so far, we don't know anything yet.

Universal Hotel Express Pass- We do know that Epic Universe will have Early Park Admission for hotel guests but we do not know if the hotels that offer free Express Pass will be able to use it at Epic Universe. Again, how Express Pass will work is our biggest piece of missing information right now!

VIP Tours at Epic Universe- VIP Tour experiences will include Epic Universe but information on these will also, again, be “launched at a later date before the park opens.”

As of now, we do not know an official timeline for when we will get these details beyond that it will be before Epic Universe opens on May 22, 2025.

Epic Universe News This Week

As a reminder from last week's update, Universal 1-day and 2-day tickets are on sale now on the official Universal Orlando website. Tickets are only available starting June 1, 2025 through the end of 2025. This is likely in an effort to continue to control crowds for opening week which has us wondering if Universal is worried about crowds? Or perhaps this is just another effort to create a seamless opening week? We will be there opening day so we will find out!

Now that one day tickets are on sale, it's only a matter of time before we find out more information on Universal Express Pass and VIP Tours for Epic Universe as both these products have been said to be “launched at a later date before the park opens.”

Universal shared a first look at the meet and greet experience with Toothless and Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon-Isle of Berk! This character interaction is likely going to be one of the most popular in the park.

 

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Universal Orlando also shared this Reel on Instagram showing the first look at Astrid and Stormfly! These character experiences look amazing.

Adventuring with Annie shared on X this first look at the How to Treat Your Dragon mystery box.

How to Treat Your Dragon mystery candy box!

These mystery boxes contain a dragon trading card and a mystery candy egg. There’s a blackberry popping egg, orange and pineapple popping egg, cookies and cream egg, and a cotton candy crispy egg. pic.twitter.com/UmvavwJTT7

— Adventuring with Annie (@AnniesUniUpdate) March 17, 2025

These are similar to the Chocolate Frog boxes at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter as they also include a trading card. You can see the Night Fury one she found in this box below!

Universal Team Member family previews have been extended into April. This phase of previews allows Team Members to bring along family and friends. Guests have been given permission to share photos of merchandise so we've seen quite a bit (like the bit I shared above!) revealed on social media. Permission has also been granted to share photos of the photo op with Toothless and Hiccup. Since Team Member family previews will wrap up soon, we can expect information on Annual Passholder previews any day now!

In an interesting reveal courtesy of a sweepstakes from TODAY, we found out that the opening ceremony for Epic Universe will actually take place on May 21, 2025. No other information is available yet, this is likely going to be a ceremony just for media and Universal employees and executives.

Epic Universe Photos Revealed from Universal

This week we're going to shift away from construction photos and instead share these impressive photos of the new lands shared directly by Universal Orlando.

In this first photo shared by Universal we can see a close up look at the portal into Epic Universe with the phrase, “Beyond this gate find gardens green and epic worlds to fill your dreams.”

In this photo, we can see a close up of the How to Train Your Dragon-Isle of Berk. This land is one I am most excited for!

This photo had me the most hyped… such an impressive visual of Dark Universe! It's hard to believe this isn't concept art!

This photo gives us a close up look at Yoshi's Adventure in Super Nintendo World. The bright visuals of this land are so stunning.

This stunning look at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter- Ministry of Magic is really giving me EPCOT vibes with how well they themed this area to France in the 1920s. Pure magic!

First photos via Universal Orlando.