Probably for well more than a century, Florida has had the reputation of being a place where people get financially screwed.
From its long history of being fodder for wild land sales speculation and other dubious shaky investments, to the many decades of well-documented tourist traps, my state has not been kind, especially to newcomers or visitors, looking for a great deal but finding instead a total scam.
In the past half century or so since the rise of Central Florida's theme park industry especially, it's been ever more present for visitors to experience a phenomenon I lovingly call being Orlandoed. It's like being screwed but specifically by an industry in a certain geographic location. And perhaps, like the pictured cartoon, by a funny looking theme park-ish creature gobbling up your hard-earned cash.
My recent big purchase at one of these theme parks has made me think that even though I should be savvy enough to know better, being a local and all, I may well have been Orlandoed.
So by my accounting, it seems that there have been now four options for purchasing Epic Universe tickets to have hit the scene since Epic Universe tickets became even available a couple months ago.
The first phase was a three park package whereby only one day could be selected for Epic Universe and the other two days would be used as entry into either of the other two parks interchangeably throughout those days. In other words, like a Park Hopper on those two days. This was the pricing plan that I originally quoted in this post. Then they changed it a bit and made the pricing a little bit lighter by restricting the other two park tickets to one park per day with no park hopping. This is the plan I bought. Then they changed it up a little bit more giving yet a little bit more of a price break by discounting the package and making it cheaper for Florida residents. This burned my butt a little bit since it meant that I bought too early to get this discount but figuring the discount isn't that deep anyway, I kind of shrugged it off. But now as of earlier this week, Universal came out with a new ticketing scheme where you can buy single day tickets to Epic Universe without any obligation to attend the other two parks. Now this is a significant difference. This is a game changer.
Instead of my ~$480 to attend only one day of Epic Universe, the park I really wanted to visit, and being forced to visit two parks that I've been to a bazillion times already, I could have bought three consecutive days of Epic Universe visits with this new deal had I just waited a bit longer.
I already checked of course and as I figured, all sales are final. Exchanges are not allowed. I cannot change what I've already purchased into single day tickets for Epic Universe. I've been Orlandoed.
What's more is that since they're now selling single park tickets starting June 1st attendance date, and my already purchased ticket package allows for my first day option to visit Epic Universe to be June 2nd, I'm worried that that now it will potentially squeeze me out?
I mean, it's literally been decades since I've bought tickets to a theme park. For the past 25 years or more, it's always been annual passes. And with my package, the tickets are open dated for a five day timeframe starting June 2nd and going to June 6th. So my ticket doesn't specifically say I'm guaranteed entry to any specific park on any one of those days. It just says that I get to choose one of those three parks on three separate days within that 5-day timeframe. I'm just self-planning to attend Epic Universe on June 2nd, being the first available day, since that's the one I'm most looking forward to. So even though I do plan on being there at rope drop, since my ticket is more open-ended, does that mean I could potentially be pushed aside because they may have too many pre-reserved tickets already sold for that day? I don't know how this works. Annual passes do not work this way. With annual passes you just show up.
Even though it's never happened to me, I guess there was always a potential whenever I had an annual pass, that I could show up during a massively heavily attended day and be told either I'd have to wait until people exit the park or come back another day. I guess the closest that ever happened would be the day I attended the opening of Wizarding World at Islands of Adventure. As you can see here, they didn't restrict anyone, it just took forever to get in because of the long lines which I guess you could say was also dependent on capacity as well but really only insofar as it pertained to that one island of the park since, as I think I mentioned in the video, attendance overall throughout the rest of the park wasn't that crazy, it was just the massive crowd wanting to get into what would colloquially be eventually called Harry Potter land.
Let me tell you though, I will not be a happy camper should I show up that Monday morning on June 2nd and be denied entry so that someone with just one third as much skin in the game, monetarily, gets to trod on in.
Another way of looking at it though, is perhaps Universal went to the single day ticket sales because the package deal (perhaps because it was so expensive and perhaps because the economy right now is so sketchy) may not have been selling as many as they were hoping to, and it would be really, really bad if attendance was not robust during the first few weeks, if not months, of this park's opening. Universal, I'm sure, frankly, must absolutely depend on stupendous numbers in order for social media and the traditional press to be able to say the new park is a resounding success, otherwise this could end up being a catastrophic financial failure for Universal theme parks if not the entire Comcast NBC Universal corporation. Remember, conservative estimates are that they spent upwards of 7 billion dollars on this one park, so it better pay off, so say Comcast shareholders.
So come one, come all to sunny Florida folks and get Orlandoed! Do it for the billionaires. They need some lovin' too you know.