“When will Universal Orlando include Epic Universe in Annual Passes?” is a common reader question. Many theme park fans are itching to purchase APs, especially Floridians or those who have avoided buying regular 1-day tickets to visit the new park. We’ll share the company’s official position and speculate as to when APs might be sold.
Let’s start by covering what has and has not been officially announced. Universal Orlando has confirmed that Annual Passes for Epic Universe will be available at some point. Back when tickets first went on sale, they shared that “more details regarding Annual Passes that include Universal Epic Universe will be announced at a later date.”
That’s still in an FAQ on the official Universal Orlando website, although it hasn’t seen any updates in months. Universal Orlando has also extended certain existing UOAP perks to Epic Universe, and passholders are eligible to purchase discounted tickets to Epic Universe. So it’s really not a matter of “if” when it comes to Epic Universe, but rather, the logistics: when and how much?
Of course, we don’t have the exact answer to that question. This post is purely speculative, and spends a lot of time explaining the why of APs at Epic Universe (or lack thereof right now). If you’re only interested in our answer, scroll down to the photo of Donkey Kong Country’s entrance at night, towards the bottom. If you’re only interested in official news, sign up for our free newsletter and we’ll notify you when Epic Universe APs go on sale.
When Universal Orlando will offer Epic Universe Annual Passes is basically a math problem. Or rather, a few math problems.
Diehard theme park fans and locals hate to hear this, but Annual Passholders are less desirable. Some of you might remember when Disney’s dearly-departed CFO mentioned on a quarterly earnings call that Disneyland’s results were worse than expected due to an “unfavorable attendance mix.”
This garnered a ton of backlash among fans, with some even brandishing the title as a badge of (dis?)honor. There was such an uproar that Disney even issued a statement to the Wall Street Journal that “‘unfavorable mix’ is financial parlance meant for investors, and ‘not a consumer term.’”
This always struck me as odd, even as an “unfavorable” guest, that so many of my fellow fans viewed objective per guest spending data as some kind of personal affront. This is something we see via reader comments here whenever pointing out that, statistically, Annual Passholders spend less per visit than tourists and other demos. Without fail, people mention how much they personally spend each visit or over their lifetimes.
Regardless, anecdotes are not data and it is incredibly well established that guest spending is higher via regular tickets than it is Annual Passes. Deep down, we all know this. If that weren’t the case, why would you even be reading this or asking the question? Instead, we’d all be quietly going about our business, relishing in just how much money we’re saving by buying 1-day Epic Universe tickets as opposed to APs!
Obviously, that is not the case. Spending $159+ per day on Epic Universe admission is considerably more costly than a lump-sum Annual Pass purchase for most fans, especially those who would visit Epic Universe at least once per month. (Never mind even more frequent visits.)
Of course, admission is not the only consideration when it comes to selling Annual Passes. If it were, no theme park anywhere would offer APs. And yet, with the exception of Tokyo Disney Resort, every other Universal and Disney theme park does offer Annual Passes. So let’s break down the rest of the equation now that we’ve established the “unfavorable” part.
For Universal Orlando, one upside of delaying the rollout of Annual Passes for Epic Universe was capturing more 1-day ticket sales.
As noted above, that’s more revenue on a per visit basis than an AP would generate, even an add-on with an aggressive pricing structure. There was a period of time in the early days of Epic Universe when this was savvy, as it pushed locals to spend more on single day tickets.
Based on crowd trends, this demand has been long-since exhausted. Locals and theme park fans are largely sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Annual Passes or other discount admission to become available. This makes sense.
As exciting as Epic Universe is, there are only so many times even the most diehard fan will pay full-freight to visit. Some might still go seasonally as a special treat (so perhaps there will be another burst of interest among Floridians this holiday season), but weekly or even monthly visits are uncommon.
For Universal Orlando, the downside of delaying the rollout of Annual Pass sales would be reduced revenue if or when the parks have surplus capacity. If they are no longer capturing this single-day ticket revenue from locals, Annual Passes provide a nice boost and a new revenue stream that does not come at the expense of regular admission.
On top of revenue from the sales of Annual Passes themselves, having this local population would also help fill Celestial Park’s surplus of restaurants (all of which do have excess bandwidth). And if there is excess capacity, APs help put a floor under wait times that incentivizes sales of Express Pass to tourists.
However, the massive caveat there is the “if or when the parks have surplus capacity.” It was precisely this asterisk that prevented Walt Disney World from selling APs for a while during the phased reopening and pent-up demand period, back when the parks were still not operating at full capacity.
With per visit spending being significantly higher among tourists, there’s a tremendous opportunity cost in allocating park capacity to Annual Passholders if the bandwidth does not exist. Allocating capacity and balancing tourists versus locals or frequent visitors is really the whole ballgame.
If capacity is a scarce resource, it’s always going to be tourists who are prioritized over locals. Capacity is no longer scarce at Walt Disney World for 350+ days per year in 3 of 4 parks, hence the relaxation of reservations and no restrictions on AP sales.
Thus far, it has been a totally different story for Epic Universe.
For the first few months of the park’s existence, Epic Universe ticket data could be obtained by scraping the Universal Orlando backend website. Unfortunately, Universal finally wised up and closed the loophole that allowed this data to be acquired, so we no longer can see how many tickets are available and how many have been sold.
Prior to the data lockdown, we knew Universal Orlando was originally limiting attendance at 12,000 to 15,000 guests from the start of previews through the end of June, depending upon the day. That then expanded to roughly 22,000 guests per day in July. That’s where the upper limit stood through the remainder of 2025, per the data.
There were some changes to those allocations that expanded the number of tickets available, but the bottom line was that Universal Orlando has been selling around 15,000 to 20,000 tickets (with a few outliers that expand the range to 13,000 to 22,000) per day. This is despite Epic Universe having a theoretical capacity of 35,000 to 45,000 guests.
Given this, it would seem like Epic Universe did have excess bandwidth, right? Not at all. Even though the regular tickets were available for purchase most days, Universal Orlando was purposefully introducing a lot of friction to discourage guests from purchasing them.
The reason for that is simple: Epic Universe crowds have been awful. Epic Universe set a record for its busiest day ever on July 16, when average wait times were 85 minutes and the crowd level was 10/10. That was followed by back-to-back 80 minute days August 6-7. There have been several other days at or above 70 minutes, with daily lows in the mid-to-upper 40s.
Late June was the start of a stretch when weekly averages were 64-68 minutes for 6 consecutive weeks; with all but one week in the 64-66 minute range. Since then, crowds did cool down in August and September, with some weeks in the 51-59 minute range. That’s progress! It was also the off-season, though. Fall Break brought with it more record crowds, and although there was not a repeat of that over Veterans Day, Thanksgiving is right around the corner.
To put these numbers into perspective, it’s also worth noting that Walt Disney World’s two busiest days since 2019 have been 71 and 70 minute waits–both came during the weeks of New Year’s (early 2020 and late 2023). Walt Disney World’s average wait time since Epic Universe opened has been less than half of Epic Universe. The same goes for Universal Orlando’s other parks. On some days, Disney and Universal’s other parks are averaging wait times one-third to one-quarter of Epic Universe.
This may seem contradictory, but the nutshell version is that Epic Universe has been seeing New Year’s Eve level wait times on a near-weekly basis since opening despite having attendance that’s one-third to half of the park’s theoretical capacity.
Wait times at Epic Universe are worse than any other park at Universal Orlando or Walt Disney World despite the likelihood of lower daily attendance than any of them. As we’ve stated countless times before, the high wait times at Epic Universe are due to ride reliability and operational efficiency (or lack thereof), and not overwhelming demand.
Consequently, even if Epic Universe is only admitting ~20,000 guests per day in a park that could theoretically accommodate 40,000 or more, the reason they wouldn’t sell APs is because that latter number is theoretical. Epic Universe is still new and finding its footing as it works to address downtime, ride reliability, throughput, and general efficiency.
I’d be inclined to argue that, at this point, its actual operational capacity is not even 25,000 guests–and certainly not over 40,000. The number who can be comfortably accommodated without guest satisfaction dropping to unacceptable levels is far, far lower. Based on statements from Universal leadership and their actions in throttling attendance by introducing friction, they recognize this. And that is why Annual Passes are not available.
As for when Universal Orlando will start selling Annual Passes to Epic Universe, there are a lot of other things that will happen first.
The first is that operational efficiency needs to improve. This will happen gradually over time. It always does with a new park. Team Members will become more adept at dispatching ride vehicles at faster intervals, maintenance teams will reduce ride breakdowns, and uptime will increase. It’s impossible to predict when this will occur; it’s a gradual process.
The other thing that will happen first is Universal will pull other “levers” for increasing attendance at Epic Universe. They’ll reduce friction and make it easier for tourists to visit the park.
The first step in this direction came with the release of 2026 Epic Universe 1-Day, Multi-Day, Park Hopper & Discount Tickets. In case you’ve missed it, Universal Orlando tickets for this year have included Epic Universe as a separate entitlement instead of allowing park hopping or choosing how many days to visit the park as part of a multi-day one park per day ticket.
The result is that multi-day tickets for this year have all offered only a single day at Epic Universe, regardless of duration. You could buy a 14-day and still only get one visit to Epic Universe. (The most extreme example, for guests from the United Kingdom.) This has made Epic Universe visits even higher stakes and more stressful, which is compounded by crowds, downtime and delays, weather closures, etc.
Some locals noticed that discounted Annual Passholder tickets for Epic Universe are available throughout 2026, and concluded that meant APs won’t be available at all next year. That’s one sign, but we hardly view it as conclusive. If Universal felt the need to sell Annual Passes, they’d change policies on the fly and deal with refunds or applying the value of tickets to APs. It’s not like they’re selling many of those 1-day tickets at this point; cleanup of that isn’t going to dictate their business plan.
What we don’t know is what kind of impact Park Hopping and less restrive regular ticket policies will have on daily attendance at Epic Universe. Tourist volume might spike as those with multi-day tickets might go from visiting Epic Universe an average of 1.0 days to an average of 1.5 days (it may not seem like it, but that would be a massive increase).
Alternatively, it might barely budge. Another possibility is that attendance normalizes throughout the day, or that the stakes are lowered for visiting Epic Universe and guest behavior evolves. Guests feel less pressure to do headliners, so they pace their days differently. We don’t know–no one does!
Even independent of this, Epic Universe attendance might organically increase. Word of mouth might boost numbers, and tourists who were previously sitting on the sidelines waiting for the initial rush to wear off or the hiccups to be resolved might start booking trips. Or word of mouth might be negative and that initial rush might wear off and there might just be a lull.
On top of that, we don’t know what other levers that Universal Orlando might pull to entice demand and fill the park with excess capacity. There are a lot of potential stops between 1-day tickets only and unrestricted Annual Passes.
Universal might try discounted Florida resident tickets, package deals, “free” days with new AP purchases or renewals (that otherwise exclude EU), and a variety of other promos. Simultaneously, they will need to find ways to prevent the other parks from hollowing out as a result of the less restrictive Epic Universe tickets. (The 2026 Universal Orlando Military Freedom Pass is a good example of this.)
Selling APs strikes me as the measure of last resort, once they’ve exhausted all other options for increasing revenue and attendance. Universal has plenty of other, better levers they can pull first. But on the other hand, Universal has not historically been as patient and methodical as they have with Epic Universe. At some point, they could revert to their norm.
As for an answer to the titular question, my best guess is that Annual Passes to Epic Universe won’t be sold before August 2026. This is the earliest date we’d predict that any APs will be sold.
A more realistic baseline scenario is January 2027. Although we just wrote that the 2027 ticketing policies aren’t conclusive, there is something attractive about a clean, calendar year break–just as there was with regular ticketing and park hopping.
The difference is that regular tickets are part of the annual product, whereas Annual Passes (ironically enough) are more revolving in nature. Even so, January 2027 makes sense because it gets Epic Universe past its second holiday season, and the single busiest week of the year.
Depending on how well regular ticket sales and vacation packages are going–or conversely, how badly operations continues–Universal Orlando might not need to sell Annual Passes at the start of 2027. If Epic Universe is doing really well (or badly) with just tourists, they might elect to put off pulling the AP lever until August 2027.
Color me skeptical on that. Even if it would be a good idea from a crowding or guest satisfaction perspective, I doubt Universal leadership will have the patience to wait that long. They want/need to recoup the investment in the third gate, and they’re historically more aggressive than they’ve been to date with Epic Universe.
Coming out of COVID, Universal Orlando didn’t use park reservations and pushed AP sales. More notably, Universal Studios Japan did the same thing even as its Super Nintendo World opened to record crowds. USJ is now the third-busiest theme park in the world, despite it not being able to comfortably accommodate 15 million guests annually. They’re being more measured with Epic Universe, but how long that lasts is anyone’s guess.
The introduction of an Annual Pass could happen earlier in some extremely limited capacity, such as a new ~$1,500 top tier AP like Walt Disney World or with a restrictive reservation system, but that just doesn’t seem like Universal’s style.
While I do think they will only offer Epic Universe add-ons to their top tiers of Annual Passes at first, I’m skeptical they’ll be that exorbitantly priced or go to Disney-level lengths to control access. I do think anyone expecting Epic Universe access at anything close to the current price points or extras like included Express Pass is in for a rude awakening.
Of course, Epic Universe could get APs earlier. If attendance is much softer than expected in early 2026, maybe Universal hastily rolls out APs then. If parent company Comcast is disappointed with the ROI on its new $7 billion theme park, perhaps the beancounters push for a quick fix. It’s also entirely possible that an externality, such as an economic slowdown or a recession, accelerates Universal’s plan.
My gut is that’s not what happens. That more realistically, we’re looking at sometime between the off-season next year after school goes back into session (around mid-August 2026) and mid-January 2027. That seems like a reasonable timeline for the rollout of Epic Universe APs. But if a time traveler told me they still weren’t being sold as of January 2027, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. I would be surprised if they’re sold before next August, though.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
When do you expect Universal Orlando to start selling Annual Passes that include Epic Universe? Think sometime in August 2026 is a safe bet, or will Universal be more cautious this time, waiting all the way until 2027 to ensure there’s ample capacity for more lucrative tourists? Would you purchase an Epic Universe AP right now? How much would you pay for access to the third gate? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!