Any experience with the non-private VIP tour at Universal Orlando/Island of Adventure?

[moonsky]

I am debating whether we should do the VIP tour for our next week trip. Has anyone tried it?

 

[bchbetha]

Run a search on here. Within the last year someone shared their experience and answered questions. It sounded pretty nice! I couldn't do it budget wise but if you can, go for it.

 

[jagafen]

Yes, we just did it in June. It was DH's father's day gift, and in general, a vacation splurge for us (in the one and done line of things). DH and DS really enjoyed it (as did I). DS, who is 14, commented to me "that you really went all out on this vacation for us!" which is just about the best compliment a teen boy is going to give his mom. We loved the front of the line access, we hit all the major rides in both parks, except for RRR (weather issues, did Simpson's instead, which I skipped). The only "down side" to it is that we were go, go, go all day, except for lunch. It wasn't a rushed pace, but we were typically moving all the time. Our guide also didn't do any of the ride "Extras" like the mummy tour or immigration tour, which I was kind of expecting were the norm, but apparently aren't. So in general, relative to the men folk, I was a little disappointed because I had read reviews whenever I could find them and knew what others got that we weren't "getting". I didn't say anything to the guys about it, so they didn't know what they were not getting, and they were totally happy with the whole thing.

With that said, we did it because I wanted a special splurge. We did it on our first park day and hit just about everything. We were at HRH for a week, so we didn't NEED to do the VIP tour. It would have been plenty of time for us to get in what we wanted to do. The only good thing about it was we ended up losing a day and a half of park time due to sickness, so our in park vacation as a bit shorter than intended. I have a thread in the trip reports section with our full review.

ETA: angryduck71 also did one in May, and has a trip report in the trip report thread too.