Revenue soared nearly 19% at Universal's theme park segment over the past three months, compared with the same period one year earlier.
Universal owner Comcast reported its third-quarter financial results this morning. The opening of the new Epic Universe theme park at the Universal Orlando Resort helped boost the company's theme park revenue during the quarter ending September 30, 2025. Comcast reported that its theme parks earned $2.717 billion in revenue during the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for theme parks was up 13.1% for the quarter, to $958 million.
"We're really pleased with the early results from Epic, which are driving higher per cap spending and attendance across the entirety of Universal Orlando," Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong said. "We remain focused on expanding ride throughput as we build to run-rate capacity, and expect Epic to continue scaling over the next year, with higher attendance, stronger per caps, and improved operating leverage."
The attendance at Epic is not coming at the expense of Universal Orlando's existing parks, Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure, Comcast executives said.
"One of the nice things [we are seeing] is that lesser cannibalization of attendance from our two pre-existing parks than we had expected," Comcast President Michael Cavanagh said. "In terms of Epic itself, our focus now is driving increased ride capacity. It's a new park and very technologically advanced, so we are working on the labor and the kinks to drive it to full capacity. We've been holding back a little bit to make sure the experience is what we want it to be, so we expect it to fully scale up in the month ahead."
This seems like they're trying to prove that the poor attendance from '24 isn't that bad because EU is performing well.
I'm not sure these results are as rosy as they sound, especially since Universal has not broken out revenues for each of their resorts. While 19% seems like a good year over year increase, 3Q24 was not a particularly great quarter for Universal as a whole, and as shown in the recent TEA Report, USF and IOA hemorrhaged attendance in 2024, mostly attributed to guests holding trips until Epic debuted. Considering that this quarter is probably the first full period where Epic was running at or near optimal capacity, this would represent the best case scenario for the resort, and would expect to show major gains over the prior year's period given the 3Q24 performance.
Also, 3Q25 included the debut of Horror Unleashed in Vegas, which is another source of revenue for the company that could be masking the overall impact of Epic.
I do think Universal is generally pleased with the lack of cannibalization from USF/IOA, and this is not only reflected in the statement here, but in the recent moves to change ticketing options at Universal Orlando by selling single day tickets for Epic and soon to allow park to park privileges across all Universal Orlando parks.
However, I do think it's a bit concerning that despite what appear to be positive numbers for the first full quarter of Epic's operation, Universal is not releasing a more detailed analysis showing exactly how much Epic impacted the company's financials. If Epic is performing so well, you'd think Universal would be screaming from the top of Wall Street about all the ways that they hit the jackpot, but instead they've kind of hidden those details in a bunch of generalized and company-wide results.
Disney vision impaired folks say this is bad … as expected, no matter what the numbers would have said there’s some conspiracy or hidden secrets
It's undeniable that Epic has been a driver for Florida trips this year, but given how much the park has been hyped, I'm actually surprised those numbers aren't higher. I do think some external factors beyond Universal's control definitely impacted summer attendance this year and I definitely didn't expect everyone to come right away, but as the launch of the park hasn't exactly been perfect the mixed reviews it seems to be getting from general audiences (compared to the positive reviews the other two parks receive) could have a negative impact on future quarters. This was the first quarter of full operation for the park, so it's far too early to call anything.
"Disney vision impaired folks say this is bad … as expected, no matter what the numbers would have said there’s some conspiracy or hidden secrets"
Agreed. I know several.
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These seem like ok, but not incredible results for Epic Universe. Last year’s Q3 2024 results for Universal’s theme parks were not very strong so the YoY increase of 19% isn’t as impressive as it sounds. As Robert and others often discuss, summer isn’t as strong of a season as it used to be for Orlando theme parks. I’m really interested to see how the Q4 results are for Universal’s theme parks.
I don’t think Universal is saying that attendance at Epic isn’t cannibalizing attendance from their other parks. Instead, they mentioned that there has been less cannibalization of attendance than they expected.