I had completely forgot that while we were in town last year, we took a ride share over to one of the resorts and then explored the Skyliner routes. (Probably the “cheapest” day to spend in Orlando, if you don’t stop and buy food and drink while visiting them 😉
I am still going through the VR360 footage and uploading it to my Park Hopping in VR YouTube Channel as time permits:
There are a few nighttime ones taken at Universal Epic Universe in the Dark Universe area of the park. They are pretty cool to watch, even if the low-light quality is pretty poor. It is a much more accurate way to “see” what it is like in that immersive area compared to photos.
I also have a similar on walking through the portal (green pipe) to Super Nintendo World all the way to the entrance to Donkey Kong Country. These, and more, will be showing up soon-ish.
Meanwhile, my submission to Google Street View of the walking path from Stella Nova Resort to the entrance of Universal Epic Universe has been processing for 11 days so far. While it is promising that it did not get rejected the first day, as often is the case (gaps in the GPS signal being the usual suspect), it is bothersome that it is taking this long. I am now bracing for some new error telling me to try again.
Before visiting a new theme park or such, I like to verify what they do or do not allow to be brought in. While Universal Orlando allows selfie sticks, Universal Horror Unleashed Las Vegas does not. This makes me wonder if Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights even allows them. I’ve had mine with me the times I have gone, but we were already in the park. The park may allow them in, but perhaps they stop allowing once they are letting in HHN guests. Does anyone here know?
I reached out to UHU Vegas to clarify something about camera equipment after seeing someone sharing their point and shoot was not allowed in. While no photography is allowed inside the haunted houses at Universal, I saw plenty of cameras and YouTubers there with their cameras.
NOTE: This page is a work-in-progress and will be updated in the next few weeks with videos and more details.
Much like the Garden Walk (see my maps for them here) that connects Universal resort hotels to CityWalk and the theme parks, there is also a walking path from the new Universal Stella Nova Resort to the entrance of the new Universal Epic Universe theme park.
Depending on how fast you walk and whether or not you have to wait for a traffic light, the walk can take about 5 minutes from where you board the bus at the hotel to where the bus drops you off at Epic. The total walk from hotel lobby entrance to park entrance is about 8-10 minutes (again, depending on if you have to wait for the light to change and how fast you walk).
I will have a VR video of the walk available on my Park Hopping in VR YouTube channel soon. (The screenshot above is from the Street View submission.)
I have also uploaded this VR video to Google Street View. If they approve it, it will be live on Google Maps soon, as well. (Currently, Google’s satellite imagery of the area is from during construction but this Street View will still work.)
Photos of the walk
If you want to see it in photo form, I have images in my Universal/SeaWorld photo gallery. They start at the bus pickup spot at the hotel. This may help you see how far the walk is from where you’d get on the bus to where the bus would drop you off:
The walking path follows the road the bus drives on. Both walking pedestrians and the bus have to stop at the same traffic light. The hotel informed us that the walk was quicker than taking the bus, but if you get to the bus stop right when the bus is about to leave, the bus ride could be faster. From what we saw, unless you walk slow, that is really the only case when the bus is faster.
Since the bus will wait for awhile before departing, walking could also let you get to the light and cross the street before the bus even leaves, making the walk considerably faster that the bus.
I just wanted to post this now to get it in the search engines. Check back for more details.
I have a few VR photos and videos taken at Universal Orlando Resort’s Universal Epic Universe. (Yeah, that full description is a mouthful full, innit?)
Many of the photos have already been shared in the Park Hopping in VR Facebook Group in albums:
These videos always take a long time to process, with some reports saying it can take about a week for an “8K” 360 video to be completed. We shall see how it goes this time. Right now, I am just seeing “Video processing is taking longer…” and “Checks still running” messages.
While we wait, here is a boring 30 second reel looking out the Helios Grand Hotel top floor where Bar Helios is located. At least during our visit, anyone was allowed to enter the hotel and go to the lobby level bar as well as the rooftop bar. This view is away from the theme park. Turning around is a short hallway where the elevators are, then it opens into the hosts are to sit you at a table (if you choose) or just let you go sit at the bar or patio.
That video is posted to my non-VR Park Hopping YouTube channel:
And if you think that one is boring, wait until you see my extended video looking around the top floor of Bar 17 Bistro at Aventura hotel 😉 Michael Bay has nothing to worry about!
Thousands of photos taken last week at Universal Epic Universe have been sorted, and are currently being generated into a gallery. It will take a day or so to get it all complete and uploaded, but they will be in the Universal-SeaWorld gallery:
I have also fixed some mistakes (misspelling of “Sapphire Falls”, having the wrong Water Taxi destination, moving some files to where they need to be), but nothing significant.
There are also new photos from Universal Studios Florida, CityWalk, Islands of Adventure, and resorts such as the new Stella Nova, and visits to Aventura, Hard Rock Hotel, and even Grand Helios Hotel (with its downstairs bar, and upstairs bar). Lots of new stuff in this one.
And Discovery Cove still needs to be sorted, including underwater photos from the SeaVenture uncharge experience.
During a recent trip to Orlando, I heard an interesting tidbit concerning the fate of the The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights at Disney/MGM Studios. Disney had this display in their park from 1995 until 2016, when it was removed due to construction of the new Star Wars land. Here are some photos I took in 2006:
A bartender at one of the Universal resorts heard us mention Silver Dollar City and came over. He was originally from Arkansas, and that is where the Osborne’s originally had their display before it went to Walt Disney World.
He said that Silver Dollar City ended up with (some of?) these displays after they were removed from Disney, but they were not allowed to mention where they came from. This is similar to when certain off-the-shelf rides from Disney ended up somewhere else, but the new owner was not supposed to tell folks “it’s a Disney ride!”
Indeed, when we first visited the Silver Dollar City event in 2024, there were a number of displays that really reminded us of the Disney/MGM displays.
Silver Dollar City Christmas, 2024.
He said there were side-by-side photos online that showed some of the former Disney displays and the current Silver Dollar City ones.
Does anyone reading this know more? Please leave a comment. If we drive down to SDC this Christmas season, I may take the photos I took at D/MGM with me and see if I can spot anything that looks like a match.
TL:DNR – Gushing posts about how epic many things in Universal Epic Universe are will be coming. But there are already some maintenance issues that are a bummer to see.
After spending two days visiting Universal Epic Universe within four months of the public opening in May 2025, I find myself comparing it to when I visited Islands of Adventure in November 1999, just six months after that parked opened in May 1999.
I will have about 2500 photos from the new park to add to my Universal/SeaWorld photo gallery in the next week or so. I will also be adding photos from the new Stella Nova hotel, as well as new photos from Universal Studios Florida, Islands of Adventure, and SeaWorld’s Discovery Cove.
It is clear to me that this park sets new standards in theming and experience. Whereas Disney will occasionally throw in a single high end animatronic (the wicked witch from Great Movie Ride or the one in the Pandora Avatar ride, for example), Universal seems to have only put high end animatronics in their two dark rides – Monsters Unleashed and Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry. These two rides contain some of, if not the, best animatronics I have ever seen. It seems unlikely Modern Disney(tm) would ever spend that much money in one of their attractions — at least not here in the U.S.A.
Yet, for a park that only opened to the public four months ago, there are already things broken that really shouldn’t be. For example, stairs leading down to the fountain viewing area are roped off due to many cracks…
I fear that “today’s construction” is sub-bar compared to how things were built in the past.
The new “carousel” (calling the Constellation Carousel a “carousel” is doing a disservice to that ride — it is far, far beyond what any of us likely think of when we hear the term “carousel”) already has paint in very bad shape:
There are just two examples, but there were other spots in pavement that had been roped off with similar cracking issues, and areas where the “shiny and new” paint jobs looked like they needed to be redone.
“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”
When I visited Islands of Adventure for the first time in 1999, I waited six months after public opening to give the park some time to settle in and get things working. Even then, almost nothing in the park was working the first hour or so on the day of that visit. A few hours in, we managed to ride basically everything in the park that we wanted to. The crowds that November were low and lines were short. Islands of Adventure did not end up being the “Disney killer” many had hoped it would be, in spite of amazing theming in some areas. I still miss the Enchanted Oak Restaurant.
But, during that first visit, we noticed shortcuts. On a “castle” column, there were windows. The outside of the windows was nicely painted, but the edges remained unpainted wood.
At the fancy Enhanced Oak, they had nice menu boards, but no lighting installed yet. Instead, they used some clamp-on lights like you might buy at Home Depot. This clashed with the extremely nice theming of the rest of the establishment.
Pavement that should have been shiny and new had already begun cracking (and not in the intentional way they crack it in places like Lost Continent; it was cracking in places like Toon Lagoon).
There was already mildew (? or something ?) collecting along one of the water rides.
I *think* this may have still been during the years when Disney would brag about changing light bulbs before they were expected to burn out, and would sell you multi-day tickets where unused days would “never expire.”
It was a different time.
But still Epic…
But even with some “the construction company should be fired” issues, the park is indeed Epic. While eleven rides and two shows may not feel like a very big park, when you compare it to the “half-day” parks Disney has opened in the past, it is quite ambitious.
We can’t wait to return. But in the meantime, I’ll get some photos posted, as well as some VR360 video clips, and then break down some things we found most epic about the visit.
But give me a week or so to get caught up from this visit, and get all the photos sorted and videos converted.
Although Google has driven around Silver Dollar City, as well as down a restricted employee-only road a bit, and users have contributed many 360 “photo spheres” from inside the park, there does not appear to have been any Street View inside the park.
Until now.
On a recent visit, I roamed the park a bit with my 360 camera. The footage was submitted to Google and has since been approved. If you go to maps.google.com (or use the app on your phone/tablet) and search “Silver Dollar City,” you can turn on the Street View layer and see where I roamed:
You will find many small blue circles which are 360 photos submitted by others over the years. Be sure to check them out.
You can also click on the blue line and begin exploring the park — or at least the portion of the park I explored. I still do not know my way around this park very well so I ended up finding alot of “dead end” areas and having to backtrack.
But hey, you can see Southern Gospel Picnic in full effect!
Have fun roaming around. If you have a 360 camera, consider contributing more footage to Street View. It is a great way to “look back in time” and see how things used to look as the park continues to evolve.
The 360 footage I submitted to Google Street View from Lost Island 2025 has been approved. You can go into maps.google.com, search for Lost Island theme park, then click on the Street View layer to see where I went. This time, I recorded one continuous path from the entrance all the way around the park then back to the entrance:
There are some random “squiggles” there as well, which were recorded in 2024.
If you did not make it to the park this year, you can now “see” where the new Fire Runner coaster is located:
Since I submitted footage of this area in 2024 as well, you can click back in time and see what it looked like before the coaster was there.
As I often point out, my first theme park visits where in the 1970s, including a big family trip to both Disneyland in California and The Magic Kingdom in Florida. Suffice it to say … I’m old and I’ve seen lots of stuff.
I have also become very good at procrastinating. Doing things early often means wasting effort as plans change.
Pack weeks in advance, and if something comes up and cancels the trip? Wasted time.
Get some work task done a month early, then the project gets cancelled? Wasted effort.
Book your Universal Orlando Resort hotels a month or more in advance, then the prices drop? Wasted … money?
A bird in the hand…
I understand why folks want to reserve in advance. That guarantees your seat on the airplane, and the room at the hotel, and the ticket into the new Epic Universe theme park.
If you are anti-procrastination, here are some tips that could save you hundreds of dollars.
Suppose on June 22, 2025, you booked a two-night stay at the new Universal Stella Nova Resort. The cost at that time would have been $358.88.
If you also booked five nights at Universal Aventura Hotel it would have cost you $1167.75.
Your $1526.63 hotel stay is now secured and you can sit back and wait for your vacation… unless you would like hundreds of extra dollars (potentially) back which you could spend to enhance your vacation (or just make it cheaper).
A bit of work can save some bucks…
Don’t stop there. Keep checking your dates at the hotel(s) and if the price drops, call in and request the new rate. For example, as I write this, the same two nights at Stella Nova have dropped to $283.50 – that is $75.38 cheaper!
And Aventura is now $673.89 for the same stay – that is $493.86 cheaper!
This means by just checking the website every so often, and rebooking when rates drop, this trip would cost you $569.24 less than when you booked early.
Let me say that again… $569.24 less!
That savings is more than enough for a $475 one-year Power Pass or come up with a bit extra or so and get the better $630 Preferred Pass.
Or maybe you just use the savings to add some extra days to the trip, or buy more beer.
But … Please note that I do not suggest procrastinating. That is gambling on the price going down, which is not always the case. As we monitor hotel prices, sometimes they go up. I suggest book early if it is a price you are willing to pay, then keep checking and call in each time you see a drop — even if it is just reduced by $10. That may seem small, but that buys you a churro or a soda or two.
Timeline of price drops.
Here is a timeline of the times these two hotel prices changed (we did not check every day so there could have been more):
Aventura price drops
6/22/2025 – $1167.75
7/10/2025 – $1150.88
8/19/2025 – $1121.63
8/21/2025 – $1075.50
8/22/2025 – $1037.25
8/24/2025 – $931.50
8/25/2025 – $916.88
8/26/2025 – $892.13
9/2/2025 – $776.25
9/4/2025 – $700.88
9/5/2025 – $673.89
Stella Nova price drops
6/22/2025 – $358.88
7/10/2/2025 – $329.63
9/2/2025 – $318.38
9/4/2025 – $283.50
…and there may even be some more drops. If so, I will update this page.
And as you can see, those who don’t procrastinate and book early, but do not follow up and check for price drops, may be paying alot more than those of us that wait until the last minute 😉
Unless things are really busy and selling out, in which case the prices are very unlikely to do anything but increase.
