Help with 2 day 1 night touring plan please

[MomtoGKC]

We are going up and staying at Portofino for 1 night, Dec. 21st. We will drive up early Monday morning and probably be in the park a little after lunch time. We would like to do most of the rides and none of the shows (except maybe the macys parade.). In the past this has been no problem, but with it being Christmas week and with the new HP area open I'm not sure how to plan our days.

The parks are open later than normal and we will use the early entry perk. I think the kids "can't miss" list would be all HP rides, Simpsons, mummy, Spider-man and possibly RRR, but I'm not sure they are going to be brave enough for that yet. Pretty sure I'm not!

Thanks for any advice.

 

[damo]

I'd try to get there earlier than lunchtime. You can check in early, early and get your express passes. Gringotts and Forbidden Journey don't accept express passes, so you may have a wait there. Hard to tell how busy the parks will be on those days.

 

[MilitaryMouse]

Depending on which park has early entry, I'd hit either Gringotts or FJ first thing during the early hour. As the HP areas get more crowded, I'd go ride the rides with express passes. Then come back at night for the HP rides you've missed.

Universal is pretty good about moving the express pass line along. Not sure what kind of shows they're doing during Christmas week, but one mistake we made was trying to ride RRR right after Mannheim Steamroller performed this past Saturday. EVERYONE headed there after the show and although we were in the express line, it took an hour to ride. Part of it was that they shut down RRR during the show, so it took awhile to get back up. Otherwise, the express passes worked wonderfully.

Another quick tip is to spend time chatting with the TMs in the HP areas. We've been so pleasantly surprised at how friendly and enthusiastic Universal TMs are! They're seriously amazing, and have COMPLETELY blown away our experiences with Disney CMs this trip. We've been here 2 days and have had 3 different TMs (all have been janitors) offer to walk us onto the Gringotts after chatting with them! We only accepted 1 offer, but it's been a really nice experience to have.