RELATED: Don’t miss our ultimate guide to gluten free dining at the new south campus (or EPIC Universe) hotels, including the Helios Grand Hotel. Click here to find it.
Welcome to our EPIC Universe ride ranking! We experienced every ride at the new park, and we’re bringing you the facts. (Plus the spoiler free details you need to know about the new rides.)
With the opening of Universal Orlando’s EPIC Universe this week, there’s a whole new world of attractions to explore—and if you’re like most guests, you want to know what’s worth your time before you step foot in the park. From high-tech thrill rides to immersive dark rides and family-friendly adventures, EPIC Universe is packed with experiences that promise to impress. But which ones actually deliver? We’re here to fill you in.
We ranked every ride at the new theme park except the one we didn’t ride. Read on to find out more.
RELATED: Click here to see our ranking of every major attraction at Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure. We’re also getting ready to post a new ranking combining all of them—new meets old. (No offense, OG theme parks. You look *amazing* for your age.)
Our Rankings, Explained
In this guide, we’re ranking the major attractions at EPIC Universe based on the full experience—not just the ride itself. We’ll touch on the immersion and detail in the queues and exteriors, the ride’s overall impact, and whether it’s a good fit for certain age groups or sensitivities.
RELATED: In this guide, we do NOT include restrictions and access for attractions. However, if you click here, you’ll find our very handy complete list of every EPIC Universe attraction, and it includes all requirements (including height, weight, and accessibility) and access for every attraction (including express pass and child swap access).
Two of the major attractions at EPIC Universe are kids’ play areas (Astronomica and Viking Training Camp) and as we usually do (don’t?) with play areas, we did not rank them.
Our hot take from riding these new attractions is that this park was built to compete with Disney. The rides are all more juvenile than either Universal Studios Florida or Islands of Adventure. EPIC Universe is a wildly beautiful spectacle of a park, but the focus is more on visuals and immersion in the worlds (and rides) than on thrills. Which to us, plants it firmly in Disney’s lane. If you love Disney, this park will make your wildest dreams come true. If you’re a Universal purist there for the thrills? You might be slightly disappointed.
RELATED: Don’t miss our ultimate guide to gluten free dining at Universal’s EPIC Universe. Click here to find it.
Minimal spoilers here, so you’re safe to read even if you want to go in blind. Use the Table of Contents below to navigate around, or just read the whole thing! Let’s get into it.
RELATED: Planning your first trip to Universal Orlando? Don’t miss our EPIC first timer’s planning guide. (See what we did there? 😁) Click here to find it.
Our Universal EPIC Universe Ride Ranking
11. Mine-Cart Madness™ (forfeit) ⛔
- Where: SUPER NINTENDO WORLD™
- What: Rollercoaster
- Family friendly: Yes!
- Most similar to: Nothing we can think of.
What you should know before you ride:
It jerks you around. A lot.
This is lowkey the most popular ride at EPIC Universe so far. It’s also the one with the most technical difficulties (and that’s saying a lot, unfortunately).
Both these things mean the ride has been closed a lot and when it does open the lines are extremely long. This is one to use the coveted express pass for, if you can snag one.
What we thought about it:
To our great surprise, this is the only ride we weren’t able to get to. We thought it would be either Battle at the Ministry or Monsters Unchained. But during our preview Mine-Cart Madness was extremely popular and the lines were either unmanageable or the ride was closed. So it gets a forfeit non rank for now. We’re sure it’s great (if the popularity says anything it might be the best one). We’ll ride it in the future and come back to adjust our rating. Stay tuned!
If you’re looking for them, there are videos of this ride all over the place. In case you haven’t though, we don’t want to spoil too much. Suffice to say, the details of this family friendly coaster are game changing, mind bending, jaw dropping … we could keep going. Kids will love it. And more than a few adults.
10. Dragon Racer’s Rally ⭐⭐
- Where: How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk
- What: Thrill ride
- Family friendly: If your kids are brave and over 48 inches, sure!
- Most similar to: Literally nothing we can think of. It feels most like a local fair ride.
What you should know before you ride it:
There are two ride systems that make the queue go slightly faster. This ride is possibly the least forgiving in terms of the ride seat, so make sure to use the test seat before you get in the line.
When the list of ride lockers came out, we were shocked this one wasn’t on it. There’s clearly no place to keep your bags on this attraction. But it’s misleading because there are ride lockers. They are just different than the usual ones.
They are little cubbies that you store your stuff in right before you board the ride, and that you pick up right when you disembark.
Also, look up “dragon racer’s rally barrel roles” on social media before you ride. You’re supposed to be able to flip the ride seat. We couldn’t figure it out in less than a minute. But maybe you can!
What we thought about it:
Dragon Racer’s Rally was our biggest disappointment based on what we knew beforehand and our excitement going in. It was very underwhelming. The concept and the ride itself are good, but the ride lasts frankly an unacceptably short amount of time. For instance, the aforementioned barrel rolls seem like a really great part of this ride, but most people don’t have enough time to figure them out.
The good news is this is theoretically fixable. Most people reviewing this ride have complained about its length, which might get Universal’s attention. And similar to a carousel (and unlike a coaster), they should be able to control how long it is, i.e., how many times it goes around. We’ll keep watching.
Bottom line: For now, it’s not worth the line for us.
9. Fyre Drill ⭐⭐
- Where: How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk
- What: Kid oriented, interactive water ride
- Family friendly: Absolutely.
- Most similar to: Nothing.
What you should know before you ride:
There are two points of view on this water ride. And there is basically a guarantee that you’ll get wet. There are also interactive elements.
What we thought about it:
This is a very chill, family friendly, longish water ride with a slight interactive component. It’s like if someone took that fair game where you shoot water at a target and made it life size. The only problem is, there’s no prizes or points, which is slightly disappointing.
The theming is on point, just like every part of the Isle of Berk. But overall, a kid’s water ride isn’t going to rank high for us. (You have no idea how much it hurts our Toothless hearts to rank two (2) of the How to Train Your Dragon attractions this low!) But it’s good for what it is. Beat the heat and get off your feet for a while with this one.
8. Mario Kart™: Bowser’s Challenge ⭐⭐
- Where: SUPER NINTENDO WORLD™
- What: 3D/4D, motion simulation, and interactive gaming experience
- Family friendly: Yes!
- Most similar to: Cross between Men in Black: Alien Attack and Transformers: The Ride – 3D
What you should know before you ride:
You keep your bags with you on this motion simulation, interactive ride. And, as is true for the entirety of Super Nintendo World, there are a lot of stairs. You put on a hat that connects to a gaming console when you board the ride. It’s kind of heavy. It also has a pre-show. Click here to read more about our opinions on those.
UNLOCKED TIP: We recommend tackling Super Nintendo World as a whole early in your trip when you’re fresh on your feet.
What we thought about it:
We weren’t super impressed with the ride itself. It is interactive and you’re trying to get points.
This was one (1) of two (2) rides that we got to use the single rider line for. Unfortunately, the single rider line on this attraction skips a huge part of the immersion in the queue. (It also skips the pre-show, though, and we’re not complaining about that.)
The theming in the queue is completely insane and on point. It’s literally in a castle straight out of Super Mario Bros. gaming world. This theming carries over into all of Super Nintendo World. It’s wild.
The ride itself gets a little more interesting toward the end, but not enough to save it from a relatively low ranking.
7. Curse of the Werewolf ⭐⭐
- Where: Dark Universe
- What: Rollercoaster
- Family friendly: Eh … kind of.
- Most similar to: Pandemonium at Six Flags. Click here to watch the POV for that ride if you’re unfamiliar.
What you should know before you ride it:
Unlike certain other outdoor rides at EPIC Universe, this queue has fans throughout. A welcome relief in an hour long line.
Will it make you sick? Eh … hard to say. It didn’t make us sick, but neither does Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, so we probably aren’t the best judge. If you can’t handle a lot of spinning, it might not be for you.
This is another ride that surprisingly wasn’t listed on the ride lockers list. But unlike Dragon Racer’s Rally, there actually are no ride lockers on Curse of the Werewolf. You carry your stuff with you on a legitimately fast rollercoaster. And it’s … not a good idea. We were afraid for 100% of the ride that our stuff was going to fly out. Do with that what you will.
What we thought about it:
We did not expect these thrills to be lower than Hiccup’s Wing Gliders thrills. But they were.
We aren’t horror fans, but boy are we coaster fans. So we were pretty excited about this one. And yet much like Dragon Racer’s Rally, the length made it very disappointing. These two ride types (coasters + flies + spins) are right up our alley and therefore were the ones we were most excited about. And yet as a result of the length, they became the biggest let downs.
At first we thought the line moved slowly for a rollercoaster, but it ended up not being that bad. It took about an hour when it said 75 minutes. But Laney was typing this post the whole time, so maybe it went faster for her than the other Unlocked guests? Who can say!
Positives: The theming in the queue is quite beautiful. It’s a walking path on the first part through a recreation of a forest. Kind of like E.T. but outside. It has good signage and props. Did we mention the fans? It also has these little walls that you can totally sit on in the early part of the queue.
For a long part of the line we thought the ride wasn’t running because you can’t hear it. But the theming is loud and the loading is quiet so actually you just can’t tell when the trains leave even when you’re right on them.
The queue also reminds us of a queue at Six Flags (complimentary). It’s very wooden and tarot card …y. The ceiling fans in the covered areas are not as helpful as the fans in the uncovered part of the queue. We humbly suggest having the outside fans everywhere for every ride. This is Florida heat we’re talking about.
And it is not so immersive that the theme will be too scary for people who aren’t horror fans. We’re not and still loved it.
The theming is great, but we’re in it for the thrills. And this one does not deliver. And, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like something that can be fixed like Dragon Racer’s Rally. We would probably call this the biggest disappointment of the park for us. It gets ranked higher than the other disappointments because it’s a coaster. And we’re coaster people.
Bottom line: Be prepared for how short it is.
6. Yoshi’s Adventure™ ⭐⭐⭐
- Where: SUPER NINTENDO WORLD™
- What: Kid friendly, interactive ride
- Family friendly: Yes!
- Most similar to: The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride!™
What you need to know before you ride:
We have the same note here as in all Super Nintendo World rides, which is beware the stairs. This is a slow moving, family friendly ride that you can take your stuff on.
You’re going to get a lot of sun on this one, as a good part of it is uncovered and outside.
What we thought about it:
We love a calm ride that gets you off your feet! The downside to this one? There’s no roof on your ride cart like there is on the Seuss Trolley. So the Florida heat sort of takes away a bit of the relaxation. It’s slightly interactive, and it’s a great way to take a break from walking and still take in great views of Super Nintendo World.
The theming in this queue, as with everything in Super Nintendo World, is incredible. There are interactive moments, characters, and beautiful scenery. It’s also inside out of the sun.
We also loved that this ride is quite long, given our disappointment in other ride lengths at EPIC Universe.
Bottom line: It’s great for kids and adults that want a break from walking and stairs. We can’t rank it higher than this, but it’s a great kids ride.
5. Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment ⭐⭐⭐
- Where: Dark Universe
- What: Motion simulation
- Family friendly: No.
- Most similar to: Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey™
What you need to know before you ride it:
Don’t take kids on this unless they are particularly brave or into horror. The immersion on the ride is really effective and will likely scare little ones.
This ride is essentially mechanically identical to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Take any precautions on this that you would on that. For example, they tell you it is ok to keep flip flops on, but we don’t recommend it. When we’re wearing flip flops for Forbidden Journey, we take them off and sit on them. We recommend doing that here as well.
Also like Forbidden Journey, this ride loads with a moving conveyer belt.
Unlike the Forbidden Journey queue (but similar to the Gringotts queue at times), so far the single rider path does not do a good job of letting single riders experience the queue. You get to see parts of the amazing castle, but it’s more or less a back channel path to the ride. Take that into account if you’re planning to shorten your wait in the single rider line.
What we thought about it:
The Halloween Horror Nights contingent (of which we are not a member) loves this ride. The castle and the queue theming is great. But even the exterior and queue are weirdly similar in design theory to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. The ride apparatus is nearly or actually identical. If you want a copycat ride to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, this is the one for you.
Also, unlike Forbidden Journey, our big complaint about this one is that you can easily see the other ride carts moving around you, which takes away a lot of the immersion for us.
We loved this ride because the single rider line was open and we hopped on and hopped off. Which we couldn’t say about any other ride at EPIC Universe during our preview. It likely would have ranked lower if we had to stand in line for it.
Doing single rider meant we also got to skip not one (1) but two (2) pre-shows. And you know how we feel about pre-shows and antechambers.
Bottom line: It’s a little too much like Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey for us! And our personal preference will always be Harry Potter over Frankenstein. Because we aren’t horror fans? So there’s an obvious bias in our ranking for this one. Maybe just ignore us, who knows. Put it this way: we aren’t going to rank it higher than five (5), but if Halloween Horror Nights is your thing, you will likely rank this number one (1).
4. Constellation Carousel ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Where: Celestial Park
- What: Carousel
- Family friendly: Yes!
- Most similar to: Caro-Seuss-el™
What you need to know before you ride:
This is an exceptionally beautiful carousel at any time, but we highly recommend riding at night.
What we thought about it:
Are you surprised to see a carousel ranked in the top four (4)? We were, too! But this carousel and its theming really blew us away. Especially at night. Celestial Park is visually stunning across the board, and this carousel, as its centerpiece, is a big part of that.
The exterior is gorgeous from afar, whether you’re walking around EPIC Universe or taking in the views from the Bar Helios rooftop bar at the new Helios Grand hotel. The interior is beautifully spangled and a delight as well.
The ride itself is a smooth carousel with lots of different vehicles to choose from. We just have no notes about this. At the end of the day, much like Yoshi’s Adventure, we can only rank a low thrill ride so high, but we can’t recommend this experience enough. It’s a relaxing feast for your eyes.
3. Stardust Racers ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Where: Celestial Park
- What: High thrill rollercoaster
- Family friendly: If your kids are brave and over 48 inches, yep! (We think VelociCoaster is family friendly though, so maybe we aren’t a reliable narrator. It does have child swap access. For more on that, click here.)
- Most similar to: The old Dragon Challenge/Dueling Dragons coaster. Click here to see this ride POV if you never experienced it at Islands of Adventure.
What you should know before you ride it:
The queue is outside but covered and with really good fans. The ride lockers are halfway through and double sided similar to VelociCoaster at Islands of Adventure.
You have to go through metal detectors on this one, so make sure to store everything you have and don’t pocket your phone.
It’s not as smooth as you think it’s going to be.
What we thought about it:
This was underwhelming, if we’re being totally honest. It’s a good length, and at the end of the day it’s a high thrill roller coaster, so it’s going to rank high for us. But we were expecting more.
The dueling isn’t quite as much of a factor in the experience as we wanted. There’s more up and down motion than centripetal motion. So you get lots of air. But it’s also much jerkier than we thought it would be or wanted for a roller coaster built in 2025. It reminded us more of The Incredible Hulk than VelociCoaster.
The queue has an interesting train station vibe. We expected it to be more … celestial? But you’re going to have to ride Constellation Carousel for that. We love the VelociCoaster locker system, and this is identical to it. You store your stuff in the middle of the queue and pick it up on the other side. It really curbs the locker room traffic.
Bottom line: It’s a high thrill ride that delivers high thrills. And as is true for much of EPIC Universe, it’s better at night.
2. Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry™ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Where: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ – Ministry of Magic™
- What: Motion simulation
- Family friendly: Yes.
- Most similar to: Transformers: The Ride – 3D/The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey™, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts™
What you should know before you ride it:
For some reason this is the only ride that understood the air conditioning assignment. But it’s lovely and cool inside.
The queue is just as amazing as the ride, but don’t worry about taking in the atrium until you finish because that’s the exit of the ride as well as the entrance, and you can spend as much time as you want there to take pictures or just take it in.
The queue past the atrium is incredibly long. And you keep your stuff on this ride.
What we thought about it:
Whew. From the minute we started hearing rumors about the … let’s be nice and call them “growing pains” … going on with the new virtual queue for Battle at the Ministry, we knew it would not rank first for us. We just don’t have a lot of patience for shenanigans. And to get on this one, the shenanigans ABOUND.
We don’t rank the Hagrid coaster at Islands of Adventure first in our previous ride ranking basically for this reason. It’s too hard to ride and we dock major points for that. Disney Tour Blog has a great step by step guide on how to get through the jungle to actually experience Battle at the Ministry. Check it out here.
In the past week, Universal has moved from the virtual queue to a standby queue, and the lines are predictably long. Three (3) or four (4) hours. It’s unclear what route they’ll go after the official opening. So far it has been a standby queue. But Hagrid had twelve (12) hour lines when it opened. So that wouldn’t surprise us here.
However, if you can get past all the hullabaloo to actually experience the attraction, it’s almost worth it. The queue is super long and every detail is wild. The immersion in the queue is better than the actual ride, in our opinion. But our opinion is biased by the fact that we have been saying since 2014 that it’s insane that a certain Wizarding travel method hasn’t been exploited for its ride potential. Now it has, and we’re over the moon.
The ride itself is also crazy good. We’ve heard some people call it the best ride in Orlando, but we’re not going that far. As you can see, it’s not even the best ride at EPIC, for us anyway. But it’s really, really good.
We’ve also heard people say it’s basically Transformers or Spider-Man, and we’re going to … take issue with that. If anything, it’s a combo of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts, and maybe a little bit of Spider-Man and Transformers (although there’s no 3D glasses for this one), but the way the ride apparatus works makes it better than all those. They also found a super clever way to incorporate surprise actors.
Bottom line: Not our favorite EPIC Universe ride, but possibly our favorite Harry Potter ride?
1. Hiccup’s Wing Gliders ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Where: How to Train Your Dragon
- What: Medium thrill rollercoaster
- Family friendly: Yes!
- Most similar to: Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure™
What you should know before you ride:
The queue is almost completely outside with the sun beating down on you, and no fans.
They told us during the preview that there was no single rider line because it didn’t make sense to have one. Which cannot be accurate. It’s just like any other roller coaster at Universal Orlando that has a single rider line. Hopefully they fix that.
There are ride lockers for this one, but no metal detectors. The lockers are part way through the queue, similar to Stardust Racers and VelociCoaster.
The boiling hot line has water fountains, and—for, we assume, people who think water fountains are going to cause another pandemic and why are we using them in 2025—there is a spout you can use to fill up your water bottle.
What we thought about it:
Like we say in other areas of this website, How to Train Your Dragon is a genius world to create because the Isle of Berk lends itself to a theme park land really well. This is also true of the theming of this simple coaster. It’s not overly complicated, but that’s because the simplest touches can make it feel like Berk. And we love that about it. Hiccup talks throughout the ride, including giving the warnings and explanations in the line.
This coaster is not quite up to the fun and the thrills of Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure, but it’s close. The characters and stories on the track are great, and it’s faster than you think it’s going to be. And very smooth.
Bottom line: We’re in love. It should be noted that How to Train Your Dragon is a major player in the Unlocked household. So that probably makes us slightly biased. But this coaster is more fun than it has any right to be. Our only note is add fans to and cover the ride queue.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading! Make sure to bookmark this page for your upcoming EPIC Universe trip.
Epic Universe raises the bar for immersive storytelling, and each of its major attractions brings something unique to the table. Whether you’re a thrill-seeker, a fan of cutting-edge tech, or just along for the ride with family, there’s something here for everyone—though not every ride is a must-do for every guest.
Our rankings are just our limited perspective, but we hope they help you plan your day and prioritize what matters most to you. As the park evolves and more guests experience these attractions, opinions will grow and shift—but for now, consider this your spoiler-free cheat sheet to EPIC Universe’s biggest rides. See you in the parks!
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