IOA December 28 and 29

[DeluxePrincess]

Would you have still gone to Disney w/o staying onsite? [/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

Absolutely not! We utilized EMH and that really helped us avoid crowds. We left the parks in the afternoon and came back in the evening. Can't imagine parking twice in one day with the possibility of getting shut out of a park.

 

[cutegirlsmomma]

We spent the 27th and 28th at Universal and it was ridiculously crowded, which I expected. However, we had just spent 5 days at Disney and found that we could work around the crowds and enjoyed ourselves immensely. So, I figured with Express Pass we could be pretty much stress free at Universal. Sadly, this wasn't the case. Even Express pass had long waits. We left the parks by noon. DH tried to take DD over to Harry Potter area at around 8 o'clock last night and they had the crowds lined up way back to Jurassic Park and Mythos with people just waiting to get in Harry Potter land, not even the ride!

On a positive note, we did get to ride Forbidden Journey a couple of times at 7 am yesterday and today before we checked out. Without that hotel perk, our Universal stay would have been a disappointment. We still had fun, but our past summer visits have been so much better.

Live and learn. We will never attempt Universal again during Christmas week!

i was at IOA yesterday.....we were in the harry potter land at 8PM and it wasnt bad at all....we went on forbidden journey and only waited 30 minutes.

 

[Metro West]

Absolutely not! We utilized EMH and that really helped us avoid crowds. We left the parks in the afternoon and came back in the evening. Can't imagine parking twice in one day with the possibility of getting shut out of a park.

Yeah...that would be a nightmare!

 

[DeluxePrincess]

i was at IOA yesterday.....we were in the harry potter land at 8PM and it wasnt bad at all....we went on forbidden journey and only waited 30 minutes.

We must have taken the crowds home with us on Saturday morning then! There was no getting near Potter on Friday night!

 

[THREEBOYSPLUSONE]

We were at IOA on 27th and studios on 29th. It was crowded and there was some things we didn't do but we had a great time. My husband won the trip and this was the only time we could go. We didn't do roller coasters because our kids don't like them. We never got to WWOHP because there was a huge standby line just to get in section and our boys don't really care about it. The longest we waited for anything was about an hour. In the studios we didnt get on Despicable Me because the shortest line we saw all day was 100 minutes. W e did get on a couple of things a little quicker because of my disability, Cat in the Hat has a separate handicap entrance so even though the line was 45 minutes we got right on both times we went on. We never made it for park opening usually about half hour later and we stayed for 12 hours in each park. We really enjoyed it. At IOA we ate lunch around 11 and there were no lines. The only place we encountered lines for the bathroom was the studios and that was only in the afternoon. Before lunch time it was really nice walking around and a lot of things didnt have long waits but after lunch was a completely different story. I would have no problem going that time of year again.