Universal’s attractions push the boundries of what a theme park attraction can do that sometimes we wonder if they bit off more than they can chew (remember USF opening Jaws in 1990?) With roughly a year of Epic Universe operations we decided to look at the year to date 2026 downtime data for attrations at the resort.

What is Ride Downtime?

Ride downtime is the percentage of the operating day the attraction is closed. 100% downtime means the attration is closed that whole period, while 0% downtime means the attration was open during that period (aka 100% uptime). This means on a day where the park is open 10 hours, a 10% dowtime rate would mean the attraction, or park, lost 1 hour of attraction capacity that day. We are looking for lower downtime. Lower downtime means less capacity lost thus shorter waits for attractions.

Downtime can be broken into several factors – weather delays for outdoor attractions, a ride breakdown, medical emergency (or “protein spill”), and other acts of God (a power station explosion has caused issues for more than one Orlando park this decade.)

Attractions like The Simpsons Ride, Dr. Doom Fear Fall, and Dragon Racer Rally have dual ride systems where one side can experience downtime but the other can still operate. This doesn’t create downtime for the whole attraction but does impact overall waits as the attraction’s capacity is effectively halved.

Ride Reliablity by Park Overview

Our data will be looking over the period of Janurary 1 through March 15, 2026. Percentages are the average total downtime from this peroid including downtime due to planning maintenance.

Islands of Adventure’s high rating at this time is due to two attrations closed for maintenance. Universal Studios Florida is dragged up by one attraction as an outlyer, more on that later. Finally Epic Universe remains elevated to due several attraction issues.

Universal Studios Florida

Shockingly, Fast & Furious Supercharged has had a large amount of TouringPlans recorded downtime. We’re not sure if this is seasonal closures, reduced operation hours, or something else, but it quite odd. After that is is Kang & Kodos, an outdoor spinner flat ride, also shut down for extended periods, odd considering the average weather based downtime at this period was 2.5%. Besides those two attractions the rest of the park is a beast of reliablity, with most attractions at or under 5% downtime average per day.

Islands of Adventure

Pteranodon Flyers’s maintenance woes started in 2024 and continue into 2026 with an extendied bit of unplanned refrubishment downtime at the begining of the year. Jurassic Park River Adventure is down for planning maintenance and refurbishment till late 2026. Once you get past those two closures you see Islands of Adventure has fantastic ride reliability – most are under 10% downtime when factoring in weather and technical issues. Universal’s work on Hagrid’s Magical Creature Adventure has really paid off with a downtime rate of 5%.

Epic Universe

Stardust Racers is the standout due to its ongoing maintenance shutdown. After that is a plateu of four attrations around 12-13% downtime: Ministry, Fyre Drill, Mine-Cart Madness, and Wing Gliders. All the other attractions at Epic come in comparable to Universal attractions in other parks.  If Universal focuses on sorting out Ministry’s capacity and downtime issues it will go a long way towards making the park easier to tour.

Reliablity Tanks

There are some attractions that, either due to design or parallel redundancy, have infrequent downtime. These are the tanks of the resort, solid workhorses that are dependable for a ride. The first and foremost is Race through New York starring Jimmy Fallon with it’s amazing 1.2% downtime, or 98.8% uptime. Next up is Caro-seuss-el, the whimsical carousel flat ride in Seuss Landing at Islands of Adventure with 1.9% downtime. For anyone who visited the park from 1999 through the early 2000s would be astonished to find the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man has an equally amazing 2.2% downtime in 2026. Following up the last two on our list are the duo of Dispicable Me: Minion Mayhem (2.4% downtime) and VillainCon Minion Blast (2.2% downtime)