Epic Rides & Big Thrills: Inside Orlando's Theme Parks

Posted on 3rd Dec, 2025

On-Site Accommodation Benefits: Learn what it's like to stay at Cabana Bay, and discover the hotel's excellent amenities and essential complimentary park transport.
Time-Saving Strategies: The key to conquering wait times across all parks was the consistent use of the Universal App for real-time monitoring, coupled with utilising the single rider lane.
Epic Universe Standouts: Explore lands like Mario Land and Ministry of Magic, the thrilling Stardust Racers coaster, at the super Epic Universe.

Universal Orlando has always been a thrilling cruise destination, and with the recent expansion, it's more unmissable than ever. The new park, Epic Universe, is quickly setting itself apart with immersive lands, incredible new rides, and handy new features.

Specialist Cruise Consultant, Erica Todd, recently had the pleasure of spending four nights exploring Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios, and the brand-new Epic Universe, all while enjoying the perks of staying at on-site hotel Cabana Bay.

Read on to discover her top ride highlights, essential tips for cutting down wait times, and why Epic Universe is now her favourite Universal Orlando park!

Where We Stayed

I have just come back from the best 4 days in Orlando Universal, to check out the amazing new theme park Epic Universe! We enjoyed four nights at Cabana Bay in a family suite that was very spacious and even had a separate living room with a sofa bed.

We would stay here again - the hotel had great facilities too, including two big pools! One has a make-shift beach, which was lovely, great restaurant facilities with lots of options to eat if you just want to stay within the complex to dine. The hotel also had a Starbucks, which was great for breakfast each morning!

When you stay at any Universal Hotel, you get complimentary transport to the parks, which run from 7am through until 1am. That means you get an extra hour at the parks before the general public gets into the parks, which we took full advantage of to get on the main rides across the parks!

Islands Of Adventure

First port of call was the Velocicoaster, a great way to wake you up in the morning! There's only one word to describe this... WOW! It was amazing and terrifying all in one, but if you love rollercoasters, this is the one for you!

Next, we headed off to Wizarding World Harry Potter to try and get on Hagrid's Motorbike, but the waiting time was two and a half hours, so we thought we would go back later and keep checking the Universal app for waiting times.

This was a huge help for looking at wait times for each ride and a great way to help plan your day. The app gives information on show times and, if the rides close for any reason, you can put an alert on the ride, and you get a notification when the ride opens again.

We then went on the Jurassic River Adventure ride, a calm river boat they say, but it is a huge drop at the end! Yes, we did get soaked, so we thought, why not get more wet Ripsaw Falls!

We laughed at all these people with waterproofs on! I don't think I have ever been on a wateride and came off like a drowned rat, it was like a tidal wave coming over us! The ride was brilliant, I've never laughed so much! Luckily, the weather was amazing to help dry us off.

Last ride of the day Hulk, another great rollercoaster shooting you 67 miles an hour in the air! This ride, we tried out the single rider queue, and it worked a treat - we were on within 5 minutes compared to a 45-minute wait!

Epic Universe

What a park! It was beautiful, and is my favourite of all three at Universal. We took advantage of the early park admission and headed straight for Mario Land - again, within minutes of arrival, Mario Cars went to over an hour's wait, so we tried the single riders line and waited for only five minutes.

Mario Land is amazing for those of all ages, but especially for children! There is so much to do and see, we did the whole area and all the rides within 60 minutes because of the single rider lines, which I would really recommend.

We headed off to Dark Universe next. We only waited five minutes to get on the Curse of the Werewolf ride, and that area had some great shops, plus a Darkmoor Monster makeup experience where you can walk in as a visitor and walk out as a monster!

We also had a lovely walk around to Harry Potter Ministry Of Magic. If you are a Harry Potter fan, you are in dreamland here! It was such a fantastic area, and if you have a magic wand you could spend hours here going around all the shops and areas creating some magic.

Stardust Racers was next in line for us, and for me, this was the highlight of the trip! This ride did not disappoint, it was amazing - although I had to have an ice-cold beer in the sun afterwards!

We then headed to watch the Untrainable Dragon show - this was fantastic, however, I would say you need to get to this around 20 minutes before, otherwise you may not get in as it gets so busy! Although they do have a few showings of this performance throughout the day.

One really good thing about Epic Universe is that they offer lockers with a facial recognition system, so you stand in front of the locker, it takes your picture, and the door opens on the locker that is yours. This was a really helpful feature that we used on all of the rides at Epic Universe

Universal Studios

During our last day in Orlando, we headed back to Island of Adventures to ride Hagrid's Motorbike ride and save the best for our very last day, and took the Hogwarts Express to Universal Studios! When we arrived, we went straight to Harry Potter Forbidden Journey again on the single rider line, and we were on within 5 minutes! Again, if you're a Harry Potter fan, this area is great.

We walked around to the Men In Black ride, I loved this one too!, and then onto the Simpsons, ET, Trollercoaster, Minion Mayhem and Fast Furious rides. We did this park in a few hours, as the park was quiet. The park itself is full of really big rides which really throw you around - not for the faint-hearted!

Overall, we had such a fantastic week! Surrounded by great company, and the weather was beautiful every day.