CyndiLooWho
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2009
- Messages
- 1,400
We got back very early this morning from a week in Orlando. We were offsite at WBC. We did the parks 4 days (Su 6/7, M 6/8, Th 6/11, F 6/12) and had a fabulous time. We arrived between 8:30 and 9:30 each morning, and stayed until between 2pm and 4pm each day.
Sunday, the parks were nearly empty. Rode Gringotts with a 15 minute wait. It was the only time this trip, partly b/c it was closed M and partly b/c the boys preferred other rides). Crowds were much heavier the other days we were there, and we never saw Gringotts below 30 minutes the rest of the trip.
Rides:
If you don't like the HP stuff, get to the parks early! People head there first thing and the other things are mostly zoom through the queue and ride. Every day we were there, we rode things like the Mummy, MIB, Transformers, as walk-ons. Spiderman was about 15-20 min wait. By 10:30 am, those rides were 30 minutes and climbing most of the time. JP was 15 min when we got in line at 10:30 and over 40 min when we exited, so it really pays to get to the parks early. FJ was less crowded later in the day. I think it was 30-40 min the day we rode.
We never, even on our earliest days, saw DM at less than 45 min, so we did not ride that. It climbed to as long as 140 minutes, though I think 85 was the wait we saw most often.
The HE wait times ended up being all over the board. They were longest early in the day; most days if we waited a until closer to lunchtime, the waits were 10-15 min.
Water rides had lower lines earlier in the day, too. Bluto's Bargest seemed to have the lowest wait times during the days we did wet rides. The guys LOVED that one!
The Universal App was great for wait times, once you got the hang of how it worked.
Note we did not ride any of the big roller coasters (we have one true ride-chicken and one who only thinks he likes coasters). The ride chicken handled Gringotts just fine, though he talked about not liking the small drop. He also rode JP, though I don't think he realized the drop he was going to get. We did get the other one on Mummy, 1x only, and then he was done with coasters.
Food:
We only ate lunches in the park. Hands down fave was the family feast at Three Broomsticks, closely followed by Finegan's. Simpsons Food Court was ok, and Richters was "cafeteria food" as dh put it. Simpsons was nice for the variety; 4 of us had meals from 3 different spots and paid all at once. The Big Pink we split at the end was very good. Our snacking was limited pretty much to butterbeer items, but we didn't want anything else! Had frozen and ice cream and both were good. The ice cream had a very mild flavor to it.
WARNING: 2 of our 4 lunches, the credit card system was completely down and they were using the old fashioned carbon and imprint system. To us, this was not very secured. We were very happy to have brought cash into the parks. We paid $50-60 per lunch for two adults and two teens (after 10% discount) except for Finegan's. Note that on the days they could not process our AmEx for the discounted meal, they did give us either the AAA discount (showed card, but not voucher) or the AP discount (we do not hold AP) to allow us the discount we would have gotten.
Discounts:
For the AmEx discount - 3 of 4 food purchases in HP areas asked for "the app" before giving us the discount (Florian Fortescue, 3B x 3 [for butterbeer purchases as well as a meal]). I bookmarked the UniversalOrlando.com AmEx page and showed that each time. No one else asked to see anything, just my AmEx for payment.
Finegan's and Hard Rock did not do the AmEx discount, but did do AAA without asking for a voucher.
HP shops did not take the AmEx discount, but we were able to use it for our end of the parks purchase at the Universal Store for our purchase exceeding $50.
I think the discounts saved us around $45, which takes care of one lunch.
Kennedy Space Center:
We drove to KSC on Wed, and the boys think it was the best part of the trip. If you have gearheads, you could easily do 2 days here. Admission is $50 for one day, $75 for two days or for an AP (they offer an "extended" ticket to come back for a day for $25 - don't know if you can upgrade your one day to an AP). We arrived at 10:30 and stayed until after 5pm. Did the bus tour / Apollo bldg, shuttle bldg, lunch at Apollo bldg, 1 of 2 IMAX movies. We completely missed the second IMAX, the Mars stuff, the Astronaut Hall of Fame, the Florida history area, and probably more than that. We also did not do any of the "add-on" tours, like Lunch with an Astronaut. Had to promise the boys we would return and do 2 days the next time.
The route is a toll route, about $7 in tolls if you do not have a SunPass.
Tolls/Sunpass:
We drove from KY, and decided to purchase a SunPass mini transponder this trip. Talk about a time-saver! We bypassed long lines of out of state cars when we left yesterday morning and followed just 2 cars through the SunPass lane as we left Orlando. Also saved time on the trip to Kennedy, since we did not have to route out to go through the toll booths. The transponder allowed us to stay on the main road at highway speed.
The mini transponder was just under $5 from a vending machine at the Welcome Center on I-75 SB. I was unable to set up my account via smartphone, but it was relatively easy to use the phone number to set it up. I put $15 on as a one-time purchase, and I think I have about $1.25 left on it. With about a 25% discount on the tolls, I figure we spent about $2 on the transponder and saved travel time and husband grousing about people in the toll booth lines.
Did I miss anything?
Sunday, the parks were nearly empty. Rode Gringotts with a 15 minute wait. It was the only time this trip, partly b/c it was closed M and partly b/c the boys preferred other rides). Crowds were much heavier the other days we were there, and we never saw Gringotts below 30 minutes the rest of the trip.
Rides:
If you don't like the HP stuff, get to the parks early! People head there first thing and the other things are mostly zoom through the queue and ride. Every day we were there, we rode things like the Mummy, MIB, Transformers, as walk-ons. Spiderman was about 15-20 min wait. By 10:30 am, those rides were 30 minutes and climbing most of the time. JP was 15 min when we got in line at 10:30 and over 40 min when we exited, so it really pays to get to the parks early. FJ was less crowded later in the day. I think it was 30-40 min the day we rode.
We never, even on our earliest days, saw DM at less than 45 min, so we did not ride that. It climbed to as long as 140 minutes, though I think 85 was the wait we saw most often.
The HE wait times ended up being all over the board. They were longest early in the day; most days if we waited a until closer to lunchtime, the waits were 10-15 min.
Water rides had lower lines earlier in the day, too. Bluto's Bargest seemed to have the lowest wait times during the days we did wet rides. The guys LOVED that one!
The Universal App was great for wait times, once you got the hang of how it worked.
Note we did not ride any of the big roller coasters (we have one true ride-chicken and one who only thinks he likes coasters). The ride chicken handled Gringotts just fine, though he talked about not liking the small drop. He also rode JP, though I don't think he realized the drop he was going to get. We did get the other one on Mummy, 1x only, and then he was done with coasters.
Food:
We only ate lunches in the park. Hands down fave was the family feast at Three Broomsticks, closely followed by Finegan's. Simpsons Food Court was ok, and Richters was "cafeteria food" as dh put it. Simpsons was nice for the variety; 4 of us had meals from 3 different spots and paid all at once. The Big Pink we split at the end was very good. Our snacking was limited pretty much to butterbeer items, but we didn't want anything else! Had frozen and ice cream and both were good. The ice cream had a very mild flavor to it.
WARNING: 2 of our 4 lunches, the credit card system was completely down and they were using the old fashioned carbon and imprint system. To us, this was not very secured. We were very happy to have brought cash into the parks. We paid $50-60 per lunch for two adults and two teens (after 10% discount) except for Finegan's. Note that on the days they could not process our AmEx for the discounted meal, they did give us either the AAA discount (showed card, but not voucher) or the AP discount (we do not hold AP) to allow us the discount we would have gotten.
Discounts:
For the AmEx discount - 3 of 4 food purchases in HP areas asked for "the app" before giving us the discount (Florian Fortescue, 3B x 3 [for butterbeer purchases as well as a meal]). I bookmarked the UniversalOrlando.com AmEx page and showed that each time. No one else asked to see anything, just my AmEx for payment.
Finegan's and Hard Rock did not do the AmEx discount, but did do AAA without asking for a voucher.
HP shops did not take the AmEx discount, but we were able to use it for our end of the parks purchase at the Universal Store for our purchase exceeding $50.
I think the discounts saved us around $45, which takes care of one lunch.
Kennedy Space Center:
We drove to KSC on Wed, and the boys think it was the best part of the trip. If you have gearheads, you could easily do 2 days here. Admission is $50 for one day, $75 for two days or for an AP (they offer an "extended" ticket to come back for a day for $25 - don't know if you can upgrade your one day to an AP). We arrived at 10:30 and stayed until after 5pm. Did the bus tour / Apollo bldg, shuttle bldg, lunch at Apollo bldg, 1 of 2 IMAX movies. We completely missed the second IMAX, the Mars stuff, the Astronaut Hall of Fame, the Florida history area, and probably more than that. We also did not do any of the "add-on" tours, like Lunch with an Astronaut. Had to promise the boys we would return and do 2 days the next time.
The route is a toll route, about $7 in tolls if you do not have a SunPass.
Tolls/Sunpass:
We drove from KY, and decided to purchase a SunPass mini transponder this trip. Talk about a time-saver! We bypassed long lines of out of state cars when we left yesterday morning and followed just 2 cars through the SunPass lane as we left Orlando. Also saved time on the trip to Kennedy, since we did not have to route out to go through the toll booths. The transponder allowed us to stay on the main road at highway speed.
The mini transponder was just under $5 from a vending machine at the Welcome Center on I-75 SB. I was unable to set up my account via smartphone, but it was relatively easy to use the phone number to set it up. I put $15 on as a one-time purchase, and I think I have about $1.25 left on it. With about a 25% discount on the tolls, I figure we spent about $2 on the transponder and saved travel time and husband grousing about people in the toll booth lines.
Did I miss anything?
