Best park for a potentially crowded day....Seaworld or Universal?

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

We will be in Orlando from December 31st to January 7th. We have booked Discovery Cove for New Years Day to ensure we can avoid the crowds on the holiday.

According to some of the crowd calendars we've seen so far, January 2nd sounds like it may also be a fairly populated day at the parks, so I'm wondering......on a day where crowd levels are forecasted to be potentially higher, what would be the better choice: Seaworld or Universal? (and if Universal, which park.....Universal Studios or IOA?)

We will not have FOTL passes for Universal, as we are staying at the Hawthorn Suites on Canada Avenue and not at an onsite hotel.

Also....anyone know which day the local children head back to school? Is it January 2nd or 3rd? Hard to plan this year when Christmas breaks are all over the board. Yet I am not complaining, as our strange Christmas vacation dates (kids going to school up to and including all day on December 23rd, then not returning to class until January 9th) allows us to take our highschooler to Florida for a much-needed week during our cold Canadian winter without missing any family holiday events or any classes less than a month before his semester 1 exams.

I have also posted this same question on the Seaworld board, hoping to get some great advice from those folks as well. Thanks again!

 

[Metro West]

We will be in Orlando from December 31st to January 7th. We have booked Discovery Cove for New Years Day to ensure we can avoid the crowds on the holiday.

According to some of the crowd calendars we've seen so far, January 2nd sounds like it may also be a fairly populated day at the parks, so I'm wondering......on a day where crowd levels are forecasted to be potentially higher, what would be the better choice: Seaworld or Universal? (and if Universal, which park.....Universal Studios or IOA?)

We will not have FOTL passes for Universal, as we are staying at the Hawthorn Suites on Canada Avenue and not at an onsite hotel.

Also....anyone know which day the local children head back to school? Is it January 2nd or 3rd? Hard to plan this year when Christmas breaks are all over the board. Yet I am not complaining, as our strange Christmas vacation dates (kids going to school up to and including all day on December 23rd, then not returning to class until January 9th) allows us to take our highschooler to Florida for a much-needed week during our cold Canadian winter without missing any family holiday events or any classes less than a month before his semester 1 exams.

I have also posted this same question on the Seaworld board, hoping to get some great advice from those folks as well. Thanks again!

Historically...local schools go back either 1/2 or 1/3 so you should expect that this year as well. I think the parks will still be crowded so basically it's a coin toss. SW might be a little less crowded but the Universal parks will still be crowded...especially IOA.

 

[DOOM1001]

If you know it's going to be crowded I would probably pick Sea World as it has less rides and more shows meaning less time standing in line.Check when kids go back to school to go to Universal which will make for a calmer day at the Universal parks.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Thanks so much for the input .

We'll do Discovery Cove on New Years Day, SeaWorld on January 2, then hit Universal Studios on the 3rd and Islands of Adventure on the 4th. The 5th and 6th can be one more SeaWorld and one more US/IOA day before we fly home on the 7th.

Crowds or no crowds, New Years in Florida sure beats New Years in southern Ontario......brrrrrrrrr! So long as it hits 50 degrees at some point in the day, we can always lounge around in the hotel pool as it will seem like a heatwave to us .

Now to just figure out the best plan for NYE !

 

[Wadecool]

I would go with Sea World as well.

 

[proud_canadian]

For a busier day, I'd pick sea world. It is much more shows than rides and the shows hold a LOT of people!