CMU grads help Universal Orlando one-up Disney with Epic Universe

In an era when filmed entertainment is fragmented among thousands of choices — TV, streaming, cable, gaming, YouTube, TikTok — experiences offer a differentiator, a business where media companies don’t have to worry about ratings, ad sales, time-shifted viewing and the nonstop fight for eyeballs.

Disney now leans more heavily into its cruise line, adding four new ships in the past three years. Comcast, parent company of Universal theme parks, will add a permanent Halloween Horror Nights-style haunted houses attraction in Las Vegas on Aug. 14 and next year will open a new, smaller-scale theme park for younger children, Universal Kids Resort, near Dallas. Paramount just announced plans for a “Top Gun” experience in Las Vegas, due to open in 2028.

Comcast’s biggest bet of the decade debuted late last month with the opening of Epic Universe, the third theme park of Universal Orlando Resort (alongside Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure). The addition of Epic makes Universal just one theme park shy of Disney’s four Orlando parks.

Epic, a $7 billion project, was built over the past six years on the site of a former Lockheed Martin missile and fire control testing site. It marks the first new, major American theme park since Universal’s Islands opened in 1999.

Universal Orlando Resort president Karen Irwin explained the rationale for a third theme park and what Universal hopes to gain in terms of travelers’ time and vacation budgets.

“It truly transforms Universal Orlando Resort into what I will say is more than a full week’s vacation destination,” Irwin said during a reception May 19 at Helios Grand, a new Loews Hotel adjacent to Epic Universe.

Orlando remains Western Pennsylvania’s No. 1 outbound market for domestic leisure travel, per AAA. But it’s not just vacationers who make the journey to America’s theme park mecca. Several Carnegie Mellon University grads work on the Universal Creative team and helped develop Epic Universe.

Celestial Park

While Disney opened its first park with themed areas (Fantasyland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, etc.), senior creative director Peter Carsillo considers Universal’s first “truly immersive, 100% comprehensive land” to be The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which debuted at Islands in 2010.

For Epic, Universal chose a hub-and-spoke layout that organizes the park around a central hub, Celestial Park, that acts as a gateway to four portals based on intellectual property: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic, How to Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk, Super Nintendo World and Dark Universe, devoted to classic Universal monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, etc. (There’s space for at least two more portals based on large empty acres of land glimpsed “backstage” at Epic during a press preview May 19-21.)

Celestial Park is home to two non-IP rides: Constellation Carousel and Starfall Racers, a dual-launch, racing coaster whose intensity matches or exceeds Islands’ Velocicoaster and Hulk coaster.

Celestial also houses the park’s most upscale restaurants. The food at Epic, in Celestial Park and elsewhere, is quite tasty. From a juicy smoked brisket at Celestial Park’s Oak & Star Tavern, to salmon on a stick in Berk, to a Butterbeer crepe in Wizarding World, to a Donkey Kong Crush Float in Super Nintendo World (more pineapple-y than banana-y), Epic’s culinary offerings erase dismal memories of dry amusement park hamburgers of yore.

Super Nintendo World

Universal Creative hired Kevin Primm, who earned a master’s degree in entertainment technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2013, when Epic was in the planning stages. He previously worked for a Los Angeles-based company and designed ride vehicles for Warner Bros. World in Abu Dhabi.

Primm served as production designer on Epic’s Super Nintendo World, working to eliminate “scope gap,” which Primm described as “missing pieces that just fall through the cracks.” He also worked on the fabrication and installation of elements throughout the portal.

Universal Studios Hollywood opened the first American SNW in 2023 with a MarioKart ride, but the two-story SNW at Epic is larger with two additional rides besides MarioKart, including a Donkey Kong coaster designed so it appears your ride vehicle is constantly running off its tracks. (It’s a clever story conceit, but the ride is rough.)

“I was doing a lot of the creative championing of what needs to be done,” Primm said. “Make sure the paint is the right color and the sculpt is the right form and shape to make sure Nintendo’s work is being brought to life correctly.”

Primm said at CMU, he worked with real clients to create projects, which helped prepare him for his current role, particularly as part of a CMU student team that over 15 weeks designed, fabricated and installed an exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

“We got to see the children at the museum starting to interact with it and play, and seeing the happiness on their faces was something that ignited my passion for continuing to do that in the industry,” Primm said.

SNW’s third ride, Yoshi’s Adventure, is intended for small children. It’s essentially a Nintendo-themed version of Walt Disney World’s PeopleMover if PeopleMover was slower and baked you like a rotisserie chicken. (Unlike PeopleMover, Yoshi has no roof to protect riders from the sun as the vehicles creep along at a snail’s pace; prepare to swelter in the Florida summer heat on this one.)

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic

Originally envisioned as more of a tie-in to the “Fantastic Beasts” spinoff film series from Harry Potter, when the “Beasts” film franchise fizzled, this portal reverted to the more popular Harry Potter brand, but the setting is still 1920s France where “Fantastic Beasts” took place.

Vestiges of “Fantastic Beasts” are most visible in the special effects-filled Le Cirque Arcanus stage show, which features human characters interacting with enormous puppet creatures.

The portal’s main attraction is Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, a ride that transports guests through “time and space” — which explains its presence in 1920s France rather than England, where the Ministry is located in the Potter stories — to help Harry and friends capture Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton reprises her role from the movies in the ride’s filmed segments).

Guests enter the Paris Metrofloo system and, with a puff of smoke and green light, get transported inside London’s Ministry, a grand, black-tiled hall that’s as impressive in its visual design as the ride itself.

An assistant director for projects in attraction development at Universal Creative, 2013 CMU mechanical engineering graduate Anisha Vyas-Burgos, oversaw the project team for Battle at the Ministry, from creative to engineering to construction to architecture.

“In the Ministry, we combine so many different technologies in a new way, and innovate on new technologies as well,” Vyas-Burgos said. “My engineering background has been very handy in all of that.”

The Ministry ride vehicle looks like the Tower of Terror vehicles at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but the Ministry vehicle behaves differently as it whisks guests mostly horizontally, not vertically.

“We wanted the ride to not feel like it was just going through an environment but really responding to everything that’s happening,” Vyas-Burgos said. “When you see Death Eaters fighting in front of you, it shouldn’t just be static and still. We knew we wanted (the ride vehicle) to interact with the environment and that led us to having to make a new vehicle, a new system, so we ended up creating that from scratch.”

This latest Harry Potter area includes not only Universal’s signature Butterbeer beverages for sale, but also a new Butterbeer crepe and a Butterbeer-chocolate candy bar.

How to Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk

Surely the largest Epic portal by square footage, Berk hosts three rides, a Viking Training Camp playground, a meet-and-greet with the dragon Toothless and Epic’s best live show, musical spectacle “The Untrainable Dragon.” First staged at Universal Beijing Resort, “Untrainable Dragon” sees Hiccup and Toothless soar over the audience.

The portal’s exquisite detail, inspired by the animated “How to Train Your Dragon” films, is visible in every structure, extending even to restroom sink basins that look like they’re made of copper dragon scales.

Rides include family coaster Hiccup’s Wing Gliders (my favorite ride in Epic, especially after dark; it’s on par in mid-range intensity with Magic Kingdom’s Seven Dwarves’ Mine Train), boat-based soak-fest Fyre Drill (you WILL get wet) and soaring Dragon Racer’s Rally, similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell Shock in Nickelodeon Universe at Mall of America near Minneapolis.

Dark Universe

The most adult of all Epic portals, Dark Universe marks the first American park to pay homage to Universal’s classic monsters in an immersive way. There’s a spinning Curse of the Werewolf coaster and a wild, dark ride through Frankenstein Manor, Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment, where Dr. Victoria Frankenstein welcomes guests into her lab to witness her ability to control monsters. Her efforts go sideways when Dracula escapes. Monsters Unchained, which relies on a smoother version of the ride system used in Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Islands, is a more impressive dark ride than Battle at the Ministry thanks to Monsters’ seamless interaction of animatronics and filmed sequences.

Set in the village of Darkmoor, Dark Universe features wandering characters who interact with guests, including Igor and The Invisible Man. When bells gong, it’s an indicator that the windmill behind Curse of the Werewolf will erupt into flames, evoking the name of the restaurant the windmill sits atop, Burning Blade Tavern.

Overall assessment

The detail in the theming of each Epic portal astounds, easily on par with and often surpassing what Disney offers.

“I think the biggest mistake you can (make) coming to Epic Universe is thinking that it’s just about the rides,” said Epic creative director Peter Carsillo. “When you come here, when you walk through these lands, you feel that you’re in Wizarding Paris. You feel like you’re in Darkmoor or inside a video game in Nintendo. It’s not just about, I got on a ride, I got off a ride. It’s about the whole experience and sharing those memories with your family.”

The park’s technology also impresses, especially through advances in projecting scenes on screens and how those projections interact with practical sets and animatronics or human performers.

“It’s integration, taking different technologies and combining them in ways that no one’s ever done before, (that’s) a big part of what Universal Creative does to make these parks new and original,” Carsillo said. “How the media is working together with the ride vehicle is also important. Sound is another big one. Music is a huge one. There are so many things that we did to make the experience feel alive and real. Some are old-school techniques. Some of them are very new, but it’s all about how you put them together.”

The only downside to a park so reliant on cutting-edge technology is that it may not be consistently reliable. Even on the park’s grand opening day, May 22, Battle at the Ministry did not work for hours.

“We’re absolutely aware that getting people to see the show is the most important part of this,” Carsillo said. “You are always balancing your ask when you decide, ‘OK, I’m gonna go and push the envelope here, but over here, I’m gonna play it a little safer so that we can be sure that these attractions operate all the time.’ You do have to trade off a little bit, but at the same time, always, always, always stay focused on evolving the art form and doing something that no one’s ever seen before.”

Once Epic Universe works out its predictable early kinks, this park is poised to truly live up to its name.

For your viewing …

On July 24, Comcast-owned streaming service Peacock will debut “Epic Ride: The Story of Universal Theme Parks,” a three-part docuseries chronicling the history of Universal’s attractions, including the creation of Epic Universe.

If you go

While Universal Orlando Resort’s Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, CityWalk and waterpark Volcano Bay are located relatively close to one another and are walkable from some long-standing Universal hotels, Epic Universe is not.

Located about 3.8 miles from CityWalk, the central shopping/dining hub that leads to the entrances to Studios and Islands, Epic is at least a 15-minute drive from the existing Universal campus, depending on traffic and how long the Universal shuttle bus idles in the station before departure.

Epic has its own hotels – Helios Grand is adjacent to Epic with its own dedicated entrance to the park — while Stella Nova Resort is across the street from Epic and Terra Luna Resort is further beyond Stella Nova. Anyone who plans to visit multiple parks has to accept that no matter where they stay, they’re going to have to get on a resort shuttle at some point if they intend to visit all of Universal’s properties. (Because Epic is the most far-flung and a one-day park, I’d opt for a Universal hotel near Islands, Studios, CityWalk and Volcano Bay so there’s just one day of longer bus rides to Epic.)

All the Epic hotels are on the pricier side, with Helios the most expensive ($567 per night on a weekday in mid-August; $226 the same night at Terra Luna and Stella Nova). Universal’s “value” properties are Cabana Bay ($169 on the same August night), walkable to Studios, Islands and Volcano Bay, and Endless Summer’s Surfside and Dockside ($154 on the same night), which is between the CityWalk parks and Epic and not walkable to any park. Staying in a Universal hotel gets guests early admission to Universal parks.

Regarding ticket pricing, the best deal likely involves staying “on property” in a Universal hotel. Without factoring in the hotel, as of May 24, the cost to spend three days at three Universal theme parks (one park per day) beginning Aug. 10 is $1,738 for a family of two adults and two kids. Add in once-per-ride Express Passes in two parks and the total is $3,527. The cost for three days at three (of four) Disney theme parks for that same family on the same dates costs $1,729. Disney’s app would not allow me to see the cost of once-per-ride express pass add-ons beyond June when the cost varied from an additional $129-$379 per guest per day, depending on the park, for Lightning Lane Premier Pass. Using the average of those different park Lightning Lane Premier Pass add-on prices, the total for a party of four for three days is $4,747.