Universal has announced the opening date for Epic Universe as May 22, 2025 and details are now coming out about who, how and when people can get tickets. They’re also releasing details and rates for the signature Helios Grand Hotel. There are are two ways you can get access to Epic Universe in the early days. If you’re a current Universal pass holder starting today (October 24th) you can purchase single day tickets to the park!

Epic Universe is not currently included in the season pass, so you will have to buy a ticket, but your pass only has to be valid at the time you purchase the ticket, not at the time of use (so you can let your pass lapse between now and then and still get in). If you’re not a pass holder you can still buy tickets for Epic Universe, but only as part of a 3-5 day ticket package with only one of those days being at Epic Universe. As of last night ticket packages for May 2025 were still available! The Helios hotel is also available for reservations with rates advertised as low as ~$300/night, but to get a rate in that vicinity you’ll need a multi-night stay and probably won’t end of with a park view room. Lamby Lamb’s YouTube channel has a very concise explanation of all of this.

Epic Universe is slated to have many great dark rides, flat rides and 4 coasters. These include the Donkey Kong themed Mine-Cart Madness coaster, How to Train Your Dragon’s Hiccup’s Wing Gliders family coaster and Dark Universe’s Curse of the Werewolf spinning coaster. However, the most anticipated coaster(s) is Stardust Racers, the dueling racing launch coasters by Mach. Each of the tracks will be over 5,000 feet and soar 133 feet in the air at 62 mph. The ride will feature original music and have a 48″ height requirement. It will also sport a lighting package on the trains themselves to appear like comets streaking across the night sky and even interacting with the environment as the track itself stays dark. Universal had a whole podcast about Stardust Racers with lots of great details. If you follow some of the YouTubers reporting on the build like Alicia Stella’s channel Theme Park Stop you can see videos of this testing already!

This ride has in fact been operating and testing for months and Universal themselves even released a video about this themselves as part of their Ride Guys YouTube series. In the video they check out the station and even get to sit in a train. It’s highly likely humans have already ridden Stardust Racers (this was alluded to on the podcast) and I’m extremely jealous! I’m also still trying to stop myself from calling it Starfall Racers, which was the ride’s original name before a lawsuit from the Starfall Education Foundation.

The story on the ride seems like a lot of fun in that the people of Celestial Park or “Celestians” essentially like to catch and ride comets for sport with rumors of crashed comets in the queue line. This ride will be a kinetic showpiece that will be located in Celestial Park, essentially the front hub and entrance to the park. It should have massive capacity with 2 tracks with multiple launches and 5,000 feet to create the potential of a bunch of block zones and thus multiple trains per track. The signature moment appears to the the “Celestial Spin” which is an inverted crisscross where riders will essentially be head to head and alternating between top and bottom. No doubt the control system on this ride has to be wicked to know the weight of each train and provide the exact launch force to time this meeting perfectly.

When the park opens Stardust Racers may not get as much ink as the highly anticipated Harry Potter Ministry of Magic dark ride or Nintendo’s immersive and interactive land, but for coaster buffs this ride will be where it’s at. In fact we can actually say the park will have 5 coasters as Stardust Racers will actually count as 2 credits! This is also a huge opportunity for Mach Rides to make a big splash in the United States coaster market as they are more prevalent overseas. Mach does have some high profile USA installs like Slinky Dog Dash, Copperhead Strike and Time Traveler, but most of their US installs have been wild mouse style rides or water coasters to date. This is also the longest coaster Mach has ever built.

It’s great to see Epic Universe get an opening date as it all feels so much closer and more real now. Helios is supposedly already sold out for a bunch of dates already and on the website today you even need to wait in an online queue to have the chance to buy tickets (see below). No doubt there will be press previews and pass holder previews and technical rehearsals well before May 22nd as well. However, it appears one ride, Stardust Racers, is already running great and ready for guests. I’m looking forward to adding these 2 credits to my list some time in 2025 or 2026, we’re almost there!