After Footage Of People Running In Epic Universe Went Viral, A Theme Parkgoer Got Real About What Being At Opening At Disneyland Is Like

Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe is still in technical rehearsal, but more and more people are getting a chance to visit the park, and the excitement level is high. Nothing shows quite how true this is like a recent video that went viral that showed people literally sprinting from the gate to the popular Super Nintendo World, but another video shows that, honestly, things aren’t quite that different at other parks.

A regular Disneyland visitor who has been on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure more times than is healthy recently posted a video of rope drop at the nearly 70-year-old theme park. It shows a crowd that is also full of people running faster than they should to get to Disneyland’s best ride, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.

I've been to Epic Universe, so I know better than most what's going on there, and people are right to be excited about it. Having said that, I also go to Disneyland frequently, and so I've seen my share of rope drops. This is all very normal.

People really took issue with the video of people running in Epic Universe. To be sure, running in the park, in all theme parks, is against the rules, and it absolutely runs the risk of causing injury if people crash into each other. People should not run in theme parks. But also, people are always going to run in theme parks.

The running was seen as proof of the hype surrounding Epic Universe. While it’s absolutely true that people are excited to visit Super Nintendo World and everywhere else the new park has to offer. There are some incredible attractions at Epic Universe. However, if you’re visiting Disneyland for the first time, or even just the first time in a long time, the hype level is going to be equally high.

As I said when the first video went viral, people running at rope drop isn’t anything new or special. Even the people who aren’t running here are moving at a solid clip, most of them just short of running. If you’re there at rope drop, it’s because you want to get the first possible chance to get on a ride. The lines are unlikely to be shorter all day long than they are at the very beginning.

If anything, the Epic Universe video looks worse than others because the area in the video is very open, and thus running is much easier. And because Epic is in previews, there are likely many fewer people than will be there on a normal day.

The crowd looks much larger here, though a lot of that is because the path through Frontierland is tighter. Still, it means the people who are running are weaving through a crowded space, which means the odds of people colliding and actually causing a problem are much greater, but that’s not stopping anybody who wants to run.