3 day park to park...wwyd?

I am excited, but nervous about our upcoming trip. Here are the basics: We check in to Royal Pacific on Sunday Aug. 16 for a 3 night stay. We are 2 adults and 2 boys, age 11 and almost 9. We can get there any time since we will be checking out of OKW. We have a rental car so no need for taxi. We need to check in first to get our express pass taken care of before hitting the parks.

Would you get to UO/IOA asap and hit the park? We plan to take advantage of the early entry the next 2 days. I thought it would be better to skip both Harry Potter sections the first day and visit the rest of one park. Does this make sense?

Which park might need more time, or is it true that 1 day per park would suffice so any extra is a bonus?

We want to enjoy the resort some as well. Is this the better day to consider doing this or save it for when we feel we did what we wanted to do....I guess it makes sense to save the resort for the end of the trip. We have an early flight out Wednesday, so that isn't an option.

I assume Sunday would be the busiest day since crowd projections drop for Monday, as do the resort prices. Is one park better than the other on a busier day?

We have a reservation at Mythos at 4 pm on Monday August 17. We thought we'd have CS the rest of the time, and appreciate any suggestions to try..or avoid.

Thanks for your help! I can do Disney with my eyes closed. It's been 14 years since we last visited so it feels new.

Thunder falls terrace in IOA near Jurassic Park River adventure is one of the best counter service places in the parks

How excited are your boys about the HP areas? Because I know I would have a hard time keeping my girls out of the areas on the first day... it is the first and last place we visit in the parks (but we are HP nerds...) .

We would go to the parks asap the first day. The next two days if you are doing EE, you can come back to the hotel in the afternoon and relax, go to the pool, change and go back out to eat and go to the parks again. It is soooo easy to get back and forth from your hotel to the parks... in the amount of time it takes to get to your car from the Magic Kingdom (across the lake on the boat or monorail and then on the tram to your car) - someone at Universal has gone to their hotel, showered, napped, changed and gone back out again!

Do you have park to park tickets? If so it won't matter which park is projected to be more crowded... because you can just leave and go to the other one. If not then I think Universal would be more crowded because the HP area is newer tends to have more ppl - BUT often times feels less crowded because Diagon Alley is bigger than the Hogsmead area.

Ya, I'd be doing the HP areas the first day and skipping everything else.

My family checked into PBH on a Sunday in late June and went to the parks after getting our express passes early afternoon and was surprised that Escape from Gringotts was only a 20 minute wait! It was a wonderful start to our vacation!

Enjoy - i was surprised that the two big HP rides often had manageable waits later in the day.

As for food, i wasn't a fan of Simpsons Fast Food Blvd. I did like Three broomsticks and we ended up saving a little when using the Meal Deals. Frozen butterbeer is $$ and an awesome use of a snack credit! I talked a lot about the Meal Deal in my trip report in my signature.

Your kids are the same ages as ours were in our recent trip (although a boy at 11 and a girl at 9). We stayed at Cabana Bay for 4 night and had a 3 day Park to Park passes and did both parks without express pass with lots of time to enjoy the hotel. We arrived on day 1 in late afternoon so we just hung out at the hotel and had a nice dinner at Portofino. We were up pretty early the next day (Sunday) to do HP Diagon Alley and then took the Hogwarts Express to Hogsmeade. The waits weren't that bad but the HP ride waits were definitely better at other times of day. For us, Sunday was the least crowded of all the days. All in all, we saw everything we wanted to see and some things more than once in our 3 days without having the express pass. We even took rather long breaks each day at the hotel (at least 4 hours each day to rest and swim). Generally, I say don't stress out about getting everything done in 3 days.

The good thing about Universal is you don't have to plan every detail like Disney. Go with a loose plan and do what you feel like from there. The time of year that you are going isn't going to nearly as croweded as summer/holidays. We went early December last year and easily did everything in both parks in 1 day, including Harry Potter. So don't stress and plan every detail. go and wing it and have some fun!