Monsters Unchained vs Ministry of Magic

Monsters vs Ministry

Two of the newest attractions in the world and are two rides commonly at the top of best Epic Universe rides and two of the best dark rides in the world if I could add. Both are extremely good, both have amazing queues, incredible reveals, and some of the most advanced animatronics I have ever seen. Which one wins this clash of heavyweights?

Ministry of Magic is the newest Harry Potter attraction part of Epic Universe. It is the typical hybrid dark ride that relies on physical environments and screens to tell a story. Just a couple of gripes before we enter the good. The projected faces of animatronics need to go, it completely takes you out of the immersion and just looks bad in my opinion. The worst offender of this is Frozen Ever After at Epcot, but the Delores Umbridge animatronic is not great either. The difference in the deatheater animatronic, the magical rhino (I don’t know the common name, and I bet most don’t either) and Delores Umbridge is evident. The heavy reliance on screens during the first section of the ride can make me feel a little fuzzy as someone who doesn’t do well with screens. Once after the first screen section and the physical sets start is when this ride becomes incredible. I am running it through my brain and I really can’t find any more issues with this attraction. I guess I could add that the screens are the bigger portion of the attraction with the physical items as support the screens. The scale of this ride is undeniable, the ride vehicle is large, the animatronics can be large, the physical area is large, and the queue is large. The queue of this attraction has one of the BEST reveals in any theme park. Once you go through the Floo network, which is a fun effect on its own, you enter the ministry, and you are smacked in the face with the grand scale of the hall. The statue is amazing, and you feel like you have stepped into the movies. After that grand reveal, the queue maintains good theming, but it is nothing compared to how great that first room is. I do love the house elf (ministry elf?) animatronic at the end of the queue. The deatheater animatronics look like they have a hired actor working on the ride, it is so fluid, and I am left in awe every time I see them. They interact with your ride vehicle and the screen and when the deatheater reacts to your ride vehicle it responds to his movement which makes it very immersive. The magical rhino animatronic, and just the entire scene at the Ministry of Magical Creatures is really fun and my favorite part of the ride. The scale of that animatronic truly is incredible. I love a large animatronic like Kong at Islands of Adventure. I wish the vehicle went closer to it just to see how incredible it is. The final trial room is very cool too with the Azkaban outfit transformation on Umbridge. I would like it more if there were no projected faces on it, and if I didn’t get stuck in this portion for 20 minutes my first ride through. Overall, it is a strong attraction. Universal dialed up the scale of this ride and queue. But does it come close to Monsters Unchained?

Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment is the E-ticket attraction in Dark Universe. It is the first land to celebrate the classic Universal Monsters and it is fantastic. I loved all of the Halloween Horror Night houses dedicated to the monsters so for them to finally get their own land makes me happy. The reveal of this huge castle is incredible, you walk in the streets of Darkmoor (the fictional town) and you turn a corner and come face to face with a massive castle illuminating blue with electricity. The same electricity that you see at the front of this land, and the same electricity you see in the queue, and the same electricity you see on the ride. At night time, the castle has an electricity show moment and it just makes this land incredible at night. I love how the theming continues from the start of the portal all the way through the line, and you even see it when you get out of the ride vehicle too. The queue for this ride is filled with details that references the land, and references the backstories for the ride, it also shows many details of the classic monsters. The scale of the castle once you get inside is much smaller than the Ministry of Magic but it still packs a punch full of details. The preshows that are attached to this attraction are top tier as well. I remember looking at my dad’s face starting to freak out when Ygor was showcasing the ride vehicle and making it move all over the place, it is fun to dial up the anticipation and fear. The second preshow is incredible with the animatronic of the Monster. Less so for the projected face animatronic of Victoria Frankenstein. The one bad/good part? Most of the time, these preshows are not even turned on due to the minimal waits that this ride gets, another good, and more on that later. The loading room is another stop on this Electric Avenue and it is grand, a truly fantastic loading area. I love the costuming for the team members as well, it is a wonderfully themed ride from start to finish. Within the first 20 seconds you get to see your first fluid animatronic of Ygor taking charge of your ride vehicle. After that you see a static figure of Hunchback which is okay, I wish he was an animatronic, but immediately after, I would say is the best scene of the whole ride. You see a sign that showcases all the monsters that Victoria has captured, with Dracula the only one having red along his name, and after that you get to see a giant Phantom playing an organ with FLAMES coming out of it. This has to be one of the coolest show scenes of any ride. The animatronic is fluid, you get very close to it, and there are FLAMES pouring out from his organ. That is one incredible part of this attraction, it is a more intimate experience than the grandness of the Ministry attraction. You get up close and personal to all of the animatronics. There are plenty of screens in this attraction, but I think that there is a huge difference between the two. The screens support the physical sets in Monsters Unchained. The physical sets support the screens in Ministry of Magic. After you leave Phantom, you get close to Victoria Frankenstein’s animatronic that leads you down a pathway of electricity that a huge animatronic of the Monster interacts with in the next scene, and once he does you can feel that moment in your ride vehicle and seat. The next scene is when you come face to face with Dracula, in which he escapes his prison and reaches out for you making your vehicle fall away… He also has no shoes on, an interesting addition to this ride…. Once you pass Dracula you come face to face with a curtain. A huge, unthemed black curtain. This highlights an issue with the theming of this ride, it has the tendency to pull you out of the immersion a few different times with offstage being visible like a chair, a curtain, and even an exit sign. Immediately after these lapses of theming, a huge show scene happens that puts you right back in the action. You survive the rest of the encounters with the Wolfman, a huge Mummy, the brides of Dracula, Gillman, and finally Dracula again for the climax of the ride. This ride is full of these incredible animatronics which is amazing to see if they are all working. Unfortunately, due to the complexity, there are repeatedly different things that aren’t working. One ride, the flames weren’t working, one ride Ygor at the beginning of the ride was broken, sometimes the Dracula animatronic doesn’t jump out at the final section. If they are able to maintain this attraction properly, I think it could be a timeless attraction, similar to how the Universal Monsters are classics.

I think you can probably guess which ride I am going to say is better. I would also like to say that I don’t think they are extremely close. The entire experience of Monsters Unchained is almost entirely better than Ministry of Magic. The queue is the only thing that I might give the edge to Ministry and it is exclusively for the reveal. Including the wait time in this discussion makes this even more of a runaway. Monsters Unchained has such a high capacity that everyone in the park that day can almost always get on it unless it breaks down, which has happened to me on two of my visits. Due to this ride being one of the few rides in Epic Universe with good capacity, it leaves this line with almost always a ten-minute wait when I go to enjoy it. This means the preshows are down and you just walk right into the experience. Even if it does get a little busy, the single rider line can get you on this ride very quickly as well. So you have an E-ticket attraction at a brand-new theme park, that is one of the shortest waits in the park? I can’t name a single attraction similar to this at any theme park. It is always funny to see the Donkey Kong Coaster being a two hour or more wait, and then to scroll on the app to see Monsters Unchained at 10 minutes. This was an easy article to write. Monsters Unchained has shot up my favorite attraction rankings and is the new gold standard for a dark ride and theming. I remember when I first got off this ride, I thought it was the best ride I have ever ridden.