Credit: UniversalTuesday was a wild day for Universal Orlando Resort Passholders.
Universal officially dropped the bomb that everyone had been waiting for: preview tickets for Epic Universe were now on sale. The new theme park doesn’t officially open until May 22, 2025, but starting April 17, Annual and Seasonal Passholders were invited to experience the park early with special 1-day preview tickets.
Sounds exciting, right? Well… what followed was absolute chaos.
The moment the announcement went live, the Universal website got flooded. We’re talking six-hour waits in a virtual queue, websites stalling, crashing, and straight-up freezing. People were refreshing their browsers like their lives depended on it, which isn’t a good thing since Universal shared explicitely not to hit the refresh button.
Social media lit up with fans venting their frustration, sharing screenshots of stalled queues, and wondering if they’d ever get through. The queue paused entirely—multiple times—just to stabilize Universal’s overloaded servers. If you thought getting Taylor Swift tickets was stressful, this was right up there.
But here’s the kicker: 24 hours later, there’s no wait at all. None. You can waltz right into Universal’s site, click “Buy Tickets,” and grab your preview pass like it’s just another Tuesday. All that panic? Turns out it was for pretty much nothing. As of the time of this writing, only one preview date (Saturday, May 3) has sold out. Just one. Every other day is still up for grabs.
So what happened?
It looks like a classic case of “everyone panics at once.” Universal didn’t really limit the number of days for previews—it’s a month-long offering. Yes, ticket quantities are allocated per day, but there’s plenty to go around, and you can even change your date if needed. Add to that the fact that these are Passholder-only tickets (of course, Universal Visa Card Members and Universal Resort guests are included now, too), and the odds were always in your favor if you had a little patience.
Now that the dust has settled, it’s kind of hilarious looking back at how quickly everything spiraled. Was it a poor rollout? Maybe. Could Universal have braced their servers better? Probably. But in the end, anyone who didn’t get through on Tuesday can now get tickets with zero stress.
So if you were one of the many stuck in queue limbo, take a breath—you didn’t miss your shot. In fact, your timing will be much better now, assuming you have more open dates than that one single Saturday that is blocked out.