Harry Potter and staying offsite

[clareita]

My family (DH and 3 kids) will be staying at Disney Dec. 3-7. I wasn't planning on going to Universal to see the Harry Potter extravaganza, but now I'm having second thoughts. My main concern is that since we're not staying at a Universal hotel, even if we get to the park for the opening (I'm a zealot about rope drops) we'll be faced with huge crowds and waits for everything. For those who have been to Potter land without the benefit of the early entry, how was it? What were the waits for Ollivander's? How was it getting in the shops? From what I've read, I won't mind a moderate wait for FJ (45-60min) since it sounds like the line takes you through the wonderfully themed castle, but over 90min is too much.

The day I'm thinking about going is a Monday, if that makes any difference.

 

[mollybeasley]

We'll be there shortly after that. Check out the long post about WWOHP to hear about recent lines. From what I can tell, if you don't get there early, it might be a lot better late in the day. The lines are reportedly longest for Ollivander's. I saw a YouTube video showing the Ollivander's demonstration. It was rather cool, but not worth a long wait imo.

 

[Drkaito]

My daughter and I just got back from Universal Islands of Adventure last week. We went there on a Friday. We got there shortly before opening. The lines were not too terrible, however there was a long line to get into Ollivander's. We decided not to go in there, because my daughter bought a wand at one of the other wand kiosks throughout Harry Potter. We saw it online and decided that it probably wasn't worth the wait. My daughter is 15, so it wasn't really a big deal. The longest that we waited was about 30 minutes to get on the Forbidden Journey ride. I had to keep my eyes closed during the whole ride because I started feeling ill. I went on it only to go on it with my daughter. She didn't want to ride alone and I felt bad! LOL

My daughter and I loved the ButterBeer! She probably liked it a little more than me, since she had two of them throughout the day! We ate at Three Broomsticks -- I had the ribs and rotisserie chicken and DD had the rotisserie chicken. We also got the chocolate/strawberry/whipped cream trifle that was so good! Overall, we loved the food/drinks at Harry Potter Land!!

Let me know if you have any questions I can answer for you, since we stayed in the Harry Potter section for over 5 hours. Most of the time we were just walking around in amazement!

 

[aubriee]

I stayed six nights at RPR at Universal August 29th-Sept 4th. I made a point of using early entry every morning to get into the Harry Potter World to ride FJ (love it, can you tell). I did do the wand show a couple of times also. I loved having early entry. However, I went back with my husband Oct 9th-17th and stayed at WDW. We used Mears two mornings (leaving CBR at 7:30am) and made it to Universal by GP opening. The first day we went to IOA and made a bee line to Harry Potter World. The crowds were alot worse of course than they were when I was able to use early entry back in August/Sept, but I was pleasantly surprised they weren't worse. The wait for FJ was about 30 minutes. After going through the general line so my husband could see the castle, we went back through the single rider line and the wait was less than five minutes. Now the line for Olivander was ridiculous, so we did not do that. The other two rides were not bad at all (almost a walk on). It took longer to walk straight through the empty queues than it did to get on the ride once we got to the front. We got into all the shops without any wait the first day, but they were as usual crowded. The second day we went to Universal we went to the Studios and finished up around lunch time, so ate at Emerils and went back over to IOA. My husband rode the Hulk in the single rider line, then we ran back over to Harry Potter Land again. The sign for FJ said it was a 60 minute wait, so we went back through the single rider line again with less than a five minute wait. Again the other two rides were around 5-10 minute waits. Olivanders again had a ridiculously long line, so we again skipped it. One difference between our first day over there and our second was that on the second day (when we went in the afternoon) there was a line outside the shops and they were only letting a few people in, as other guests left the shops, so we didn't get into any of the shops that second day. The first day we were able to just walk straight into any of the shops without any waits. We went on a Monday and a Wednesday. I'l be staying at WDW again Dec 4th-12th and plan on using Mears again to go over to Universal for a couple of days.

 

[momblanch]

We just returned. Visited US/IOA Wed 11/3-Sun 11/7, staying off-site. I found the parks manageable throughout our entire stay. Wed and Sun were the quietest days while Fri was by far the busiest. Did not visit on Monday however. The posted wait times for most rides in IOA were 15-20 mins or less including FJ, Hulk, Jurassic Park, and Spidey(higher waits Fri). Dragon Challenge was always a walk-on. The exception being Olivanders, of course and sometimes Hippogriff. We arrived to IOA Sat morning at opening and the line for Olivanders was already 90mins. We are big fans and decided to venture back to Olivanders Sun evening about 4:30 and the line was 30 mins, short enough for us to wait. All the other shops in WWoHP were busy at all times but much less so in the evenings. We have older kids so we did not do Suess land at all, and it was too cool to ride the water rides, so I cant help you with those. Good luck and have fun!