First time at Epic. A little underwhelmed, but looking forward to how it develops

Just back from a Disney & Universal holiday. 17 nights away and it still wasn't enough to do everything we'd have wanted.

We (2 parents, 2 kids -10 and 12 years old) planned two full days in Epic on our last two full days of the holiday and that ended up being more than enough to do basically everything in the park, and if it wasn't for one of my kids feeling unwell on our first day in the park, we could have done everything on day 1, which surprised me.

First impressions though are that the park is aesthetically outstanding. The theming in all the lands is beautiful and if there is any park from Disney or Universal I could choose to go to just to soak up the visuals, this would be it.

Our first day there, Saturday 8th August, we got there early to rope drop Mine Cart Madness, but we were a long way back it seemed in the Nintendo World queue, then not having been there before we got a little lost on the way to the ride which I'm sure allowed quite a number of people to get in front of us adding precious time on to our wait time...

Anyway, 55 mins in the queue and we were on Mine Cart, and it was not worth it. Why is there such a long queue for this ride all day? The ride was very jerky and short. We liked the imagery of it, with the broken track and jumping tracks etc., but overall weren't that impressed with the ride. We'd probably only have chosen to ride it again if the queue times dropped to 20 mins or less.

I'm very much for waiting in the queues as little as possible and at this point the other two rides in Nintendo world were either too long or delayed, so next we moved to Dark Universe and on to Monsters Unchained with a 10 min queue, if that. This one was fun, very impressive from start to finish. The fact the queue is almost always quite short just makes this ride more attractive!

Next, it was over to Curse of the Werewolf with about a 10-15 min wait. We were really enjoying this rollercoaster and then it was over. Everything about it was great fun, except its length. It was just too short. It deserved a much longer ride as it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

At this point, queue times across the park were getting too long for us to want to wait in, so we started soaking up the ambiance, atmosphere and theming in both Dark Universe and Nintendo World. They both just look so good. We didn't have the power up band for Nintendo world, so can't comment on that but appreciate that that would have added even more to our enjoyment of the world.

Anyway, we went to ride Constellation Carousel next with a near walk-on queue. We're not carousel fans, but we weren't going to leave this unridden. It looks great and it's a carousel, so you get what you would expect to from a carousel. We weren't fussed by it, but a carousel is what it is, and this one looks very nice.

The heat of the day, and the queue times for the rides suggested popping over to Isle of Berk for the Untrainable Dragon show was a good idea. Of all the lands Isle of Berk was probably my least favourite aesthetically as it just didn't have the wow factor that the others had in their visuals. The Untrainable Dragon show was fun, with a great flying dragon, but overall we were a bit 'meh' with the show. It was great for getting in an air-conditioned room and off our feet, it has some entertaining bits and the 'wow' of the flying Toothless, but we didn't love it.

Back out in Celestial Park, which suffers from not enough shade, Stardust Racers had a shorter queue, and 20-25 mins later one daughter and I had been on the yellow track (other daughter and my wife aren't as into the fast and more intense rollercoasters). This rollercoaster was a lot of fun and easily the highlight ride of the park.

A quick lunch (Kimchi Bao buns - very nice - and Pork Soup Dumplings - quite nice), then it was over to the Wizarding World, first to do some wand stuff, some of which give obvious and fun indications that you've successfully done the spell, others less so, then to soak up the visuals of Paris and the Ministry of Magic (WOW!!!) then to La Cirque Arcanus. I wasn't overly impressed with this one. From the main queue which we were at the front of the stand-by line, to being herded into the pre-show and constantly being told to move further forward so they can cram even more people into the already quite tightly packed room, for the stand to watch pre-show, which seemed to take forever to get started... visuals aside, first impressions weren't good. Then into the main show area to sit down, at last. The show starts as a circus type show, then changes to a Fantastic Beasts story. Honestly, I preferred the circus part. I know Newt Scamander is a nervous guy, but his speech in this was quite annoying! We weren't overly enamoured with the show.

The World though - WOW! The Ministry of Magic in particular is just spectacular, and as we found out the next day, the queue for the ride takes you through a lot of greatly detailed and impressive rooms.

At this point, my rollercoaster buddy daughter was starting to feel unwell, so my wife took her back to the hotel, and my other daughter and I stayed for more Epic action. Back to Isle of Berk for Dragon Racer Rally. 40 mins later on a posted 25 min queue and we were on it. Takes a moment to get the hang of the wings and how they make you spin, and then the ride is over. Again too short a ride, but probably a necessity to keep the queue moving fast enough. I'd probably only choose to ride this again if the queue was near walk on.

Then a short hop over to Hiccups Wing Gliders and a 20-25 min queue. We both enjoyed this one a lot. Except for the queue. For this first ride, the queue was all under cover, but we rode it again the next day when the queue was longer (near 50 mins) and large portions of it were in the baking sun. It needs more shade.

Now at this point the queue for Stardust and Fyre Drill were both really short, but my daughter wasn't wanting to ride Stardust and neither of us wanted to get wet on Fyre Drill, so it was back to Nintendo World for Yoshi's with a 10-15 min wait. It is definitely aimed at a much younger audience. It was slow and we were glad the sun was low/down for it. Then a short pop over to Mario Kart and a 25 min wait to get some racing on. I struggled a bit with this trying to figure out what was going on. At times it felt like a load of random stuff was flying across my field of view. My daughter enjoyed it more. I don't know whether I enjoyed it or not due to not being able to tell what was going on a lot. I think this was a me problem not a ride problem.

The only rides left we hadn't done on this first day were Stardust Green, Fyre Drill and Battle at the Ministry. It was 8.10pm, and the first two despite short queues weren't ones we both wanted to do at that time, and BatM had a 100+ min queue. So we went to Pizza Moon for some very nice pizza before heading back to the hotel. With their queue times we COULD have done both Stardust and Fyre Drill and been in the queue for BatM before 9pm when the park was closing, so we COULD have done pretty much everything in the one day, but we chose not to. Picking the right times to ride rides I think goes a long way!

Anyway, next day we went on the remaining rides and some re-rides so that now-feeling-better daughter could get on ones she'd missed.

We got lucky with Battle at the Ministry, it was showing as a 70 min queue at one point and we figured it wasn't going to get any better than that so we went to it. As far as queues go, this one's was visually the most impressive of any in the park, up there with Monsters Unchained, and 55 minutes later we were on the ride, after a false start as our first elevator malfunctioned before it took off somehow. Visually stunning ride, good fun, but very rushed. They try to fit too much story into the ride's duration and each part then becomes too rushed. Afterwards, I was honestly quite underwhelmed by the ride. Fantastic visuals and some of the animatronics looked great, and there's a definite WOW factor in some of the rooms/scenes. But too rushed a story detracted considerably from my enjoyment.

Then it was on to the only ride left that none of us has gone on, Fyre Drill which had a short 15 min queue. Now I don't mind wet rides at all. I loved Popeyes and Ripsaw in Isles of Adventure, but this one was a rubbish ride. Shooting water at targets, some of which get a re-action when shot enough, and then because there's so little reaction or fun involved in shooting the targets, you aim for other people when you can just to get some sort of other reaction. It is rubbish as a shooting ride due to the lack of outcomes to the shots you make, it's rubbish as a team shooting ride as there's no points scoring or keeping to make it a team V team type ride. The most pointless ride in the park.

We did more re-rides, got my more timid daughter on Stardust (yellow track) which certainly pushed if not exceeded her limits, but she coped and was very pleased she did it, even if she didn't enjoy it, got on Stardust Green with my less timid daughter and we loved it too. We didn't think there was really any significant difference between the two tracks, so if doing again we'd both just choose the one with the shortest queue.

So in summary:

Visually stunning park, but not enough rides, nor enough top tier rides.

Stardust is the main highlight, and Monsters Unchained is another top ride. Hiccups comes next and is probably one of the better family style coasters.

The rest were largely either good but too short, or decent but not amazing, or just entirely 'meh'.

I'm certainly looking forward to whatever expansions come to the park, as I do feel it needs more.

The two 55 min queues we waited in (Mine-cart and BatM) were the longest queues we waited in all holiday after doing pretty much every ride at all four Disney parks and all three Universal parks (got on Hagrid's in 35m after a weather delay), so we did very well with our "queue as little as possible" mentality!