Please come back and share your experience- we have preview tickets for 5/19 and are staying at Surfside, so I'm very eager to hear how your day goes! We are also Disney peeps and have never stayed at any Universal property.
My hope is to catch the first bus over for rope drop; I've heard that busses start an hour before Early Entry: can anyone confirm?
Epic Universe Trip sharing...maybe some tips and tricks
I just went yesterday 5/17 to the Epic preview.
Hotel and travel to Epic
Stayed at Universal Endless Summer: Dockside. First time staying there and it was great. We stayed Friday and Saturday. We got in late Friday night and figured we would be at the park all day Saturday. I had a team member give us an upgrade when we checked in to the hotel. I didn't do anything special besides being super nice, as I alway am, and let him know it was my first time staying at a Universal property. He didn't even tell me he upgraded my room. We walked in and it was the family suite with with 2 queens, an additional queen separate bedroom, picnic style table, fridge, sink, etc... We ate at the quick service both nights and it was decent.
We wanted to get to the park early the next morning. Like first thing. I made an Uber for the morning(6:50AM) commute because I wasn't sure when the buses would start. Desk said they would start buses at 7AM. When we got to our Uber there was a bus at the resort loading people at 6:50.
**This was our experience on this day. There are two separate gated entrances before you get to the main gate. There is where the resort buses drop off. We were told there was a lot of people over there. Then there is a gate where ride share, disability, and some other valet services drop off. They let both gates open at the same time to go to the front gate of the park. These gates maybe open on normal days and it maybe just on the day we went they were shut. Needless to say we only had about 20-30 people on our side so we were one of the first to line up at the main entrance. They made about 14 lines where you will wait to go through security. We were first in line due to being in such a small crowd. Everyone will eventually want to go through the portal entrance so a line in the middle will get you there quicker. Ensure you line up where there are people at the security area. They pulled extra workers up because people had lined up where there wasn't anyone. They got us through security and then had us wait at the person with tickets. We had pre-scanned our faces on the Universal App and that is all they needed for entry. There were parties that did not do prep work with loading tickets and this caused an issue beside us. We were let into the park right at 8AM. Everyone was let in the park at 8AM. This is important to know. Early entry was checked at rides(Stardust racer), Nintendo world, or dark universe on our morning. You need a key for everyone in your party.
When the parked opened non-hotel guests and hotel guests went straight to Harry Potter Portal. They started to line up for Ministry of Magic. Looking back at our morning we could have gone straight there and had that been our 1 hour wait. Then again, I am not sure at what time the ride actually started taking guests. They were not prepared for the influx of guests this morning being it was the second day they had a stand by line. Some guests said they waited 5.5 hours.
At early time of entrance, the only operating rides were Stardust Racers and Monsters Unchained. Nintendo World was going to be open for hotel guests but Mine Cart Madness wasn't operational on that day and Mario and Yoshi where not working yet. I think they opened Monsters Unchained because of the issues with Nintendo World. Curse of Werewolf was not operational the whole day. We decided to go to Stardust Racers first thing since we had early access and I was afraid everything would not be operational for the day. We rode Stardust twice(both Green and Yellow). I am team yellow but in the minority. Then we decided to get in line for Battle of the Ministry, this was at 8:50AM. At that time, Nintendo World was still all down except Yoshi and no other land had opened and there were lines at all the portals.
We stayed in line because there was no communication on Ministry of Magic. Our wait was 4 total hours. It could have been longer. The line literally wrapped around all of Paris that morning. We wanted to do the ride and were not sure if it would break down or run all day so we committed. At the entrance, they were putting guests into 2 different lines. One line went outside while the other went straight to the Floo Network. They were stating both lines went to the same place but the other added at least another 1.5 hours on your wait. We fortunately stayed right and later they stopped putting people in that line. When you get to the Floo network/Ministry you think you are close. You are not. It is about 2 hours from that point.
We got our food at Cafe L'Air De La Sirene around 12:40PM. I had ordered and we sat down and scanned our table. This place is beautiful and the food was awesome! Basically by 1PM we had done Stardust Racers twice, Battle of the Ministry, and ate a sit-down lunch.
The park closed at 8PM and we got a lot of things complete even though we only had about 7 hours left after lunch.
Here is what we got accomplished after lunch: Monsters Unchained, Mario Kart(single rider), a few mini games with power up band, Hiccups Wing Gliders, Untrainable Dragon show, met Toothless/Hiccup, ate at the mead hall(also really good and loved theming), Dragon Racer's Rally, road Stardust racers 2 more times to close out the night.
We then waited for the bus to take us back to our resort at 8:45PM. Our resort/Surfside was the longest lines for buses. We had to wait for a second bus. It goes to Surfside first.
We had a great day! I went in expecting it to not go as plan since the day before they got rid of the virtual que. I knew things would go differently.
This is at least a 2 day park if you want to do everything. Nintendo World and Berk are the areas you could easily spend the majority of your day. There is so much we didn't do and areas we didn't see but here are the rides/shows we didn't see: Fire Drill, Mine Cart Madness(not operational), Yoshi Adventure(decided to do Stardust 2 more times instead), Harry Potter Show, Curse of Werewolf(not operational), Carousel, a bunch of Nintendo mini games. There is a lot too do at this park. We hustled most of the day to get what we got done. We lucked out with Mario Kart(40 minute single rider and they let us sit together), Hiccups Wing Gliders opened from a delay right before we got on(10 minute wait). Our second longest wait on our trip was meeting Toothless(1 hour).
Highlights:
Park: The whole thing is beautiful!
Stardust Racers is an amazing coaster. I liked Yellow the best but my daughter liked Green. Pretty similar in my opinion with green maybe being more intense. Yellow had a couple items I liked the best. My daughter said one inversion on yellow was her favorite but overall chooses green. You can't go wrong.
Hiccups Wing Glider: Great coaster for younger kids. Slinky Dog but I think better and smoother. Probably a little more intense.
Food: It was all great. Best park food I have had.
Other tip: Talked to someone staying at Helios and they said it took them forever to get through security that morning at the hotel. The said they would be there early the next day.
