2 parks in 1 day...which on first?

[nikkimc]

We are "fast parkers". We've been to both US and IOA before. On our trip Feb 2011 we are gonna try to do both US and IOA in 1 day...which one should we do first? Does one of them get busy quicker than the other one? Is one of them generally not as busy as the other?

 

[*LittleMermaid*]

Universal Studios is less busy and normally closes earlier than Islands of Adventure.

 

[nikkimc]

So probably best to do IOA right away in the morning and then swing over to US?

 

[sarehm]

We were just there last Tuesday and did US first thinking all the Harry Potter people would be heading over to IOA. We walked to everything. I mean everything! It was weird how empty US was. We finished up by lunchtime and headed over to IOA. Here we walked on to everything again and only had a 5 min. wait for FJ. We were done with both parks by 3pm. We didn't do any water rides (I'm too high maintenance to be getting wet!) but all the major coasters were running mostly empty. It was awesome. Harry Potter land was very crowded but it seemed people were mostly in line for the shops. I couldn't believe we could walk on to Dueling Dragons and sit in front row, it was amazing!

 

[Metro West]

So probably best to do IOA right away in the morning and then swing over to US?

 

[MrsJackSparrow4Life]

I would start with US first.

When I was there last week I noticed everyone starts over at IoA (They all want to get to Harry Potter) and then would move onto US afterward. I decided to try the opposite one day and it worked perfectly.

We did everything in US (some things more than once) by around 12:30pm, got lunch in citywalk and then headed to IoA. We were able to do everything in IoA (except the water rides), spend a couple of hours just looking at all the details in HP and still left the park before it closed at 7pm.

 

[tamaraten]

I would start with US first.

When I was there last week I noticed everyone starts over at IoA (They all want to get to Harry Potter) and then would move onto US afterward. I decided to try the opposite one day and it worked perfectly.

We did everything in US (some things more than once) by around 12:30pm, got lunch in citywalk and then headed to IoA. We were able to do everything in IoA (except the water rides), spend a couple of hours just looking at all the details in HP and still left the park before it closed at 7pm.

Was that your first time there? I'm wondering for our upcoming trip, for the first time at Universal, how long we'd need between the two parks and what type of tickets to buy. (we're with four kids).

 

[MrsJackSparrow4Life]

Was that your first time there? I'm wondering for our upcoming trip, for the first time at Universal, how long we'd need between the two parks and what type of tickets to buy. (we're with four kids).

This was our first trip but I think we were on our 3rd day. 2 days would have been fine but the 3rd day made everything less stressful*. However, we were not staying on-site. I would think with the FOTL pass, 2 days would work out perfectly.



*We actually had the 14 day stay and play tickets that mapleleaf tickets were selling earlier this year, so we threw in a bunch of half days as well. They were not necessary though, just nice.