Am I kidding myself?

[mskani]

My family and I (dh, dd8, ds6 and nephew9) are going to WDW, Sea World and USF/IOA 8/2-8/9. We are not staying onsite at either resort. I'm not so worried about WDW, but it seems that you must stay onsite at Universal, else face hours (and hours) of waiting time.

Naturally, I want to see as much as possible, as we have never been to USF/IOA or SW. We are only scheduled to be at Seaworld 1/2 day on 8/4; Universal for 1/2 day 8/4 in the late afternoon-early evening; 1 full day 8/6; and a 1/2 day on 8/9. The days are broken up like that due to ps at WDW that we cannot change.

My questions are: How have you off-site visitors dealt with crowds, waiting times, etc? Will we still enjoy ourselves, or are we pushing it?

Thanks

 

[rangebob]

If you take advantage of Universal Express you would be fine. You will have some lines but we are starting to wind down the summer season that weekend. That is the last weekend that Orange county schools are out before returning to school.

 

[robvia]

You'll get to see everything.
On your first day of 08/04, the place will be packed. Just walk around, use single rider line for MIB, and do attractions like Earthquake, Twister, T2, and the shows. The kids will probably stay in the Fievel's playground for a while. This part of the park has the pet show, Barney show, ET, and the play areas.
On 08/06, you will probaby do IOA, arrive early, parking lot opens at 8am, get to the gate first, ride Hulk in the front, Spiderman, Dr Doom, and you'll have no waits.
On 08/09, same thing, arrive early to USF, do Shrek, the Mummy, any other favorites you missed, then leave.
Don't let the huge crowds frustrate you on 08/04, the place will be packed, it will be hot, and the big attractions will have a 90 minute wait. On the other two days, if you get there early, you can do everything before the crowd hits at 11am with no waits.

 

[Tasha+Scott]

I just got back from WDW, SW, US, and IoA. Had no problems at WDW or SW. US seemed like the worst with the lines and we also stayed offsite. If you have the money, buy Express passes. They are only good for one day and one park though. You will have to repurchase them every time you go so (w/ you and 4 other people) this may not be your best bet.
You may want to get there as early as you can and go to the machines outside of the attractions that you really want to do. Put your ticket in and it will give you a pass telling you when you can come back and you should not have to wait very long in line. (This is like a fast pass at WDW.) The only thing is you can only get an express ticket for one attraction at a time this way, and they tend to run out of tickets for the more popular rides early. The quickest way is to do the single rider lines. I found that these were even faster than the express lines. I also found that the lines are shortest if you wait until an hour or a half hour before park closing to do the most popular rides such as Spider Man, etc.
As far as IoA, it can seem crowded too, but it's like a water park, so it won't seem as hot when you wait in the lines (since you will most likely get soaked) so it won't seem as bad as US.
Whew! I am out of breath from typing so much! Hope this helps some though!

 

[Tenacious D Fan]

Also even if you're queing up its quite fun when your inside and you see things like in the spider man queue they have the Daily Bugle strips for you to read or on Dudley-do right you get to see movie posters with spin off titles. Theres a lot to dobut have fun because the parks are fun