Hi all! I was at universal for my first time on Wed March 30th. I got a lot of great advice & wanted to thank everyone for the help and give a quick recap of our time there.
We stayed at RPR Tuesday night so we could get express passes and EE as our main focus was WWOHP! My two main questions here were 1) could we do/see everything in one day (we had 15 hours) and 2) which HP world do we go to first.
The answer to the first question is ABSOLUTELY! As long as you have express passes (during peak season) it is very easy to do both parks in one day! We rode everything we wanted..many of them twice and had time to spare! The longest EP wait all day was 20-25 min both for Mummy & minions (neither of which i loved). Many of the rides, we either walked on or waited 5-10 minutes! Even with the outrageous price I paid for one night at RPR, it was worth it's weight in gold for the EE & EP!!
As for HP world, I would definitely go back & do it differently! Due to circumstances beyond my control, we were unable to get our tix ahead of time & had to buy them at the hotel in the morning at 6:30. Because we got a later start than I expected, we decided to go to IOA first because it was closer. We were there before rope drop & walked right into FJ. It was a great ride, (although it made me a little nauseous!) Here's where I made my mistake...
We took a few pictures and did a quick look around then hopped on HE to get over to Diagon alley before the 8:00 opening for general public. We got there in plenty of time bu the ride was already at a 60 minute wait, it even temporarily shut down once while we waited. It was a phenomenal ride as we all loved it! We then took the time to explore DA as we figured we could go see Hogsmeade later. That's where we were wrong! We went to Hogsmeade twice later in the day and you could not even move!!
Diagon alley, no matter how crowded, is built much wider and more open so it's easy to move around! Hogsmeade was not! If I had truly known that, I would've stayed there much longer in the morning to really explore it all! I believe someone on here gave me that advice but I really had no concept of just how crowded they were talking! So I'm thankful that we rode FJ at least once but my kids wouldve loved to ride it again & I would've loved to explore more but it wasn't meant to be! We did ride gringotts twice and both times it was an hour wait.. Not too bad in my opinion! I'm not sure if I'll have the chance to go back but if I did, I'd love to see more of Hogsmeade!
A couple other random thoughts...
I was not expecting most of the rides to be motion...or at least as extreme of motion as they were. My kids and their friends(ranging ages 15-18) loved them! I on the other hand, felt slightly motion sick all day! Not enough to ruin my day...I was a trooper and went on most of them (you only live once!) but it definitely caught me off guard.
Everyone's favorite non HP ride was Rip rockit roller coaster! Very cool coaster...they all went on twice and myself once. I chose sabotage by Beastie boys for my song & it was awesome!
Food was decent..we did Simpsons food cour for lunch. There were 7 of us & everyone found something they liked! We did italuan for dinner, can't remember where but it was pretty good.
It was 85 and sunny while there and by about 2:30 we were getting pretty tired do we grabbed a fruit cup & some Gatorade and sat in a cool restaraunt for about an hour to recharge. That made a world of a difference to get is through the rest of the day!
Lockers definitely get crowded but you just have to be patient! Twice our locker got "disabled" for no apparent reason but we found someone & got it taken care of quickly. The biggest problem in my opinion is that our locker would be activated but someone would be standing in front of it taking their sweet time loading or unloading their stuff. By the time they moved..our locker would be deactivated, that was frustrating! It's a rude people issue more than a universal issue! Either way, in the scope of the day the inconvenience was minimal & worth it to know your stuff is safe!
RPR was wonderful! We got there at 10am Tues morning, checked right in & went straight to pool! Room was ready by 11:00. Enjoyed the whole day by the pool, ate & drank at the Bula bar & service was wonderful!
Overall, we had a fantastic experience! Things were run very smooth in the parks, everyone was friendly & it was very clean! We left the park about 15 min before close, walked back to the hotel, jumped into our car and headed back to our beach condo! Everything went very well! Thanks again for all the he advice! If anyone has any questions..feel free to ask!
We stayed at RPR Tuesday night so we could get express passes and EE as our main focus was WWOHP! My two main questions here were 1) could we do/see everything in one day (we had 15 hours) and 2) which HP world do we go to first.
The answer to the first question is ABSOLUTELY! As long as you have express passes (during peak season) it is very easy to do both parks in one day! We rode everything we wanted..many of them twice and had time to spare! The longest EP wait all day was 20-25 min both for Mummy & minions (neither of which i loved). Many of the rides, we either walked on or waited 5-10 minutes! Even with the outrageous price I paid for one night at RPR, it was worth it's weight in gold for the EE & EP!!
As for HP world, I would definitely go back & do it differently! Due to circumstances beyond my control, we were unable to get our tix ahead of time & had to buy them at the hotel in the morning at 6:30. Because we got a later start than I expected, we decided to go to IOA first because it was closer. We were there before rope drop & walked right into FJ. It was a great ride, (although it made me a little nauseous!) Here's where I made my mistake...
We took a few pictures and did a quick look around then hopped on HE to get over to Diagon alley before the 8:00 opening for general public. We got there in plenty of time bu the ride was already at a 60 minute wait, it even temporarily shut down once while we waited. It was a phenomenal ride as we all loved it! We then took the time to explore DA as we figured we could go see Hogsmeade later. That's where we were wrong! We went to Hogsmeade twice later in the day and you could not even move!!
Diagon alley, no matter how crowded, is built much wider and more open so it's easy to move around! Hogsmeade was not! If I had truly known that, I would've stayed there much longer in the morning to really explore it all! I believe someone on here gave me that advice but I really had no concept of just how crowded they were talking! So I'm thankful that we rode FJ at least once but my kids wouldve loved to ride it again & I would've loved to explore more but it wasn't meant to be! We did ride gringotts twice and both times it was an hour wait.. Not too bad in my opinion! I'm not sure if I'll have the chance to go back but if I did, I'd love to see more of Hogsmeade!
A couple other random thoughts...
I was not expecting most of the rides to be motion...or at least as extreme of motion as they were. My kids and their friends(ranging ages 15-18) loved them! I on the other hand, felt slightly motion sick all day! Not enough to ruin my day...I was a trooper and went on most of them (you only live once!) but it definitely caught me off guard.
Everyone's favorite non HP ride was Rip rockit roller coaster! Very cool coaster...they all went on twice and myself once. I chose sabotage by Beastie boys for my song & it was awesome!
Food was decent..we did Simpsons food cour for lunch. There were 7 of us & everyone found something they liked! We did italuan for dinner, can't remember where but it was pretty good.
It was 85 and sunny while there and by about 2:30 we were getting pretty tired do we grabbed a fruit cup & some Gatorade and sat in a cool restaraunt for about an hour to recharge. That made a world of a difference to get is through the rest of the day!
Lockers definitely get crowded but you just have to be patient! Twice our locker got "disabled" for no apparent reason but we found someone & got it taken care of quickly. The biggest problem in my opinion is that our locker would be activated but someone would be standing in front of it taking their sweet time loading or unloading their stuff. By the time they moved..our locker would be deactivated, that was frustrating! It's a rude people issue more than a universal issue! Either way, in the scope of the day the inconvenience was minimal & worth it to know your stuff is safe!
RPR was wonderful! We got there at 10am Tues morning, checked right in & went straight to pool! Room was ready by 11:00. Enjoyed the whole day by the pool, ate & drank at the Bula bar & service was wonderful!
Overall, we had a fantastic experience! Things were run very smooth in the parks, everyone was friendly & it was very clean! We left the park about 15 min before close, walked back to the hotel, jumped into our car and headed back to our beach condo! Everything went very well! Thanks again for all the he advice! If anyone has any questions..feel free to ask!
