First time to Universal - Advise appreciated

[DisneyCrazyX5]

We are planning trip to Universal this summer. We are planing on staying at Royal Pacific for 3 nights and getting 2 day/2 park tickets. I want one day to go to Downtown Disney and go somewhere to watch the Disney fireworks. We then we plan to go to Cocoa Beach for 2 nights and visit Cape Canaveral for 1 day.

The twins will be 17 so they will love the thrill rides and we all love Harry Potter.

We were at WDW in 2014 and plan a big trip in 2019. This is an extra trip - we all miss Florida. We will be driving from Ohio. Any advise would be appreciated. We will be eating breakfast in our room, but would love restaurant suggestions or things we should not miss.

Thanks in advance

 

[quandrea]

We loved Toothsome Chocolate Emporioum and Red Oven Pizza. Take advantage of early entry. Try the butterbeer!

 

[DisneyCrazyX5]

Butterbeer is at the top of my list. Toothsome Chocolate Emporium looks great, but expensive for us with the boys, do they have some
choices?

 

[perditax]

Second Toothsome. Think twice about the milkshakes, though, they're gigantic.

A lot of CityWalk and UO restaurants take reservations via OpenTable, but not all (Toothsome and Cowfish don't, for example). Some need to be reserved via UO site. I've read repeatedly here that reservations aren't really necessary, but I like having them anyway.

I really liked the Apple crumble ice cream from the ice cream shop in Diagon Alley.

(Speaking of that--the DA entrance is really easy to miss. I knew this in advance and still walked right past it.)

Lines to buy park tickets were kind of long and slow moving, and we were there in low season. We had to stand in those lines to activate our APs, but if you're not buying APs I'd buy your tickets online and print them out, and skip that first annoying line of your park visit.

Remember your hotel express passes = ride as many times as you want. (We went on several rides more than once.) but they don't work on the HP headliners.

 

[DisneyCrazyX5]

Should we do the Harry Potter rides the extra hour in the morning. Since we have 2 days we could start at on park on day and the other rite next. We will get our tickets with our hotel package. We are driving down from Ohio so no annual passes for us.

 

[quandrea]

We rode the rides for hp at the early entry park. Then grabbed the first train of the day over to the other park and rode the hp rides over there.