Super Nintendo World and more revealed for Universal Epic Universe theme park
Super Nintendo World has been delighting guests in Japan for a few years, myself included as I was there in December 2023 and a much trimmed down version of the land exists in Hollywood. We have known for 5 years now that Super Nintendo World would be coming to Orlando and now we have the first official details.
The below map shows you were all the new lands, including Super Nintendo World are going to be located within Epic Universe. As you can see the map below just states 2025 as the opening date, previous mentions were always Summer 2025, or Winter for us, so the lack of a season could be telling of a later in the year opening.
That image is actually quite similar to the same one that was released when the new theme park was first announced back in August 2019. Today a new piece of art was released, showing more detail to the various lands, including the addition of the Donkey Kong expansion for Super Nintendo World.
Sticking with Super Nintendo World, the land will be entered via the themed entry portal, where guests will walk into a giant warp pipe and then be transferred up a level to exit out of Peach’s castle, which overlooks the land.
The land itself will be the same as is currently in Osaka, Japan with the Mario Kart and Yoshi rides. The major difference for this location is that the Donkey Kong expansion, which is set to open in a few months in Japan, will be opening day one with the theme park in Orlando. Check out this video that Universal Studios Japan released last year when they confirmed the lands opening window.
Here is a panorama that I took inside of Super Nintendo World Japan last year, though you will notice that there are lots of people being cut off as the camera was panned.
One new aspect for Super Nintendo World at Universal Epic Universe is that there will be a dedicated store located outside of the land. The existing locations do have merchandise being sold in other stores, but they are general stores, the newly announced Nintendo Super Star Store, is the first dedicated store.
The stores façade is themed to match the location it sits in, Celestial Park. As such the details in the store are more mythological than anything else, but as you can see on the roof in the second piece of concept art, there are constellations made up of Mario characters and elements.
If you plan on visiting Super Nintendo World, then there are a few hotel options available to you, including the Universal Helios Grand Hotel, which is actually built on the boundary of the park, meaning that guests of the hotel will get a dedicated entry into the park from the backside of the hotel.
While prices for that hotel have not yet been announced, given its location and grandeur, $400 AUD a night is likely the low end of the pricing spectrum. For those on a budget, there are two new hotels outside of the park being built, they are the Terra Luna Resort and the Stella Nova Resort.
Considered value hotels, they will be priced around $200 AUD a night, but their price will be more expensive in the opening months. The Stella Nova Resort is set to open on January 21st, 2025 and then roughly a month later on February 25th will see the Terra Luna Resort open. You can see what they look like in the official renderings below. The outside of each hotel is wrapped in a series of reflective tiles, which provide a look similar to the cosmos as viewed from space, which suits the Epic Universe motif.
There are more lands being included in the park, How to Train your Dragon: Isle of Berk, Dark Universe and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic. Details on each of the lands have not been revealed yet, though there are plenty of videos and photos of them online. We do have official art of their entry portals below, which are again designed to draw you into each world, along with some small blurbs on what each is about.
How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk, where guests can soar with dragons in a colorful world filled with Viking adventures based on the wildly popular How to Train Your Dragon film franchise.
Dark Universe, where guests encounter everything from the experiments of Dr. Victoria Frankenstein to the shadowy landscape where monsters roam in a world of myth and mystery.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, where guests will discover a different era of the wizarding world in an all-new land that blends 1920s wizarding Paris from Warner Bros. Pictures’ Fantastic Beasts films with the iconic British Ministry of Magic from the Harry Potter series.
If you want to see the model and hear from some managers about the new park, you can check out the video below. However below that is a more detailed flythrough of the parks main area, Celestial Park.
