This Tricky Transportation PROBLEM Could Totally Ruin Your Universal Orlando Plans

We’re getting SO CLOSE to the grand opening of Epic Universe, and we couldn’t be more excited!

We just got the chance to check out the first of the THREE new Epic Universe-area hotels that will be opening over the course of the next few months. The first hotel, Stella Nova Resort, is officially open, and as part of our visit to the new hotel, we took the bus to see how long it would take to get to CityWalk, which is where you’ll go to enter the other two Universal theme parks. While the trip overall went smoothly, there’s something VERY important you need to know about the journey.

The Universal bus system is pretty reliable — we almost always find a bus ready to take us where we need to go, and it was the same situation during our stay at Stella Nova. We walked up to the hotel bus station, and there was a bus ready to take us to CityWalk.

While the drive over to CityWalk was only about 12 minutes, DO NOT be fooled! We didn’t hit any traffic on our ride, but that’s because of a few reasons. For one, Epic Universe isn’t open yet, and there wasn’t any traffic from regular guests attempting to park at the park. Secondly, we know firsthand that Universal Drive, which is currently one of the roads the bus takes to get to CityWalk, gets PACKED with cars around park open and park close.

Seriously — we’ve sat in standstill traffic for 20+ minutes on this road around opening and closing park times, so if you’re trying to take a bus over to CityWalk to make it to rope drop, you’ll want to leave AT LEAST an hour in advance, and even that might be pushing it. Traffic also gets bad around this area during special events like Halloween Horror Nights and concerts.

Universal buses have a special lane they can travel in, but we don’t think that will alleviate this problem entirely. Unlike Disney, where their buses can travel on private roads to decrease traffic instances, all the roads we traveled on were entirely public. If you’re heading from CityWalk to Epic Universe or vice versa, we recommend always allowing at LEAST half an hour, but allowing an hour for travel is ideal (during busier times, an hour and a half is the safest bet).