Is one day worth it? WDW experts--Universal newbies

[detroitdad]

Hello all-

We are DVC members and have been doing the WDW trip for many visits since 2001. We have never been to Universal since we never really were interested in going any where besides WDW. My kids are older (21, 18, 16, 14) now and our time to vacation together as a family is coming to a close soon. Last time we went to WDW was June of 2014. We enjoyed ourselves but a lot of the trip had a "well what do we do now", "been there done that" feel to it. We had the most fun on our days to Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon since we hadn't been there in quite a while. We won't go back to WDW until Avatar Land and Star Wars Land are built up.

That being said, we are taking a cruise in July of 2016 which departs on a Saturday. We are flying down Thursday night and will have the Friday free. Thinking about staying on site and going to US/IOA on the Friday. I realize that we won't get a good feel for the parks and the resort by only going 1 day, but is this even possible during the summer?

Would appreciate any suggestions/touring plans you may have.

Thanks!

 

[JustCallMeMommy]

With that age group, you can make a good dent in a day. You can at least hit the highlights. I would plan to do park-to-park and let everyone pick their top 2-3 attractions. If you have Harry Potter fans among your group, plan several hours just for those areas.

Be warned - they may decide they want a Universal trip next...we started with one day, too!

 

[lborne]

Staying on site is good because you will get the Xpress Pass and get into one park an hour early. Definitely worth it even for just one day.

 

[detroitdad]

Thanks! If we were to stay on site, it would be at Cabana Bay so no Xpress Pass. But we could still purchase it, right? We have friends who live in Orlando who have room for our family to stay with them. I know we lose out on early entry to Harry Potter, but if we get the park to park option and unlimited express pass would we still get to see a good amount?

 

[DisneyTravelers2008]

You sounds a lot like us...DVC members since 2008 with tons of WDW trips ....recently tried a 2 day trip to Universal (mostly to experience HP sections) and LOVED it!!! I would do it! Go ahead and get a park to aprk pass so you can ride the Hogwarts Express train from park to park If you are HP fans, you will love it! And there are lots of other great things as well. We didnt pay for express pass....just early entry We used a wait time app to make up for that and the lines were not too bad on a bust Presidnets day weekend...enjoy!

 

[VacaPlanner2012]

The best way to describe it since you are WDW experts is to imagine waiting in line for the two busiest attractions at MK, then having a Fast pass for every other ride/show in the park. Can you make a dent? Absolutely! Enough to wet your whistle and wanting more next trip? Yes. See everything? No.

I would run the numbers if you haven't already. The willingness to buy that many 2 park unlimited Express Passes might be cheap upgrading from Cabana Bay to Royal Pacific. Having to get 2 RPR rooms might be the difference, but the onsite hotels tend to be cheaper when comparing to 3 or more Express Passes.

Similar to Mommy above, we started our Universal touring on a tip to stay onsite one night and get two days of Express Passes. Once onsite, we were hooked and have never stayed onsite at WDW since.

 

[wookiebeck]

Please do check back with us all. With your family age group, I would not be surprised if after the trip they say the highlight was the one day you spent at Uni. Hope to see you in 2017 for a longer stay.

 

[SouthAfricaTraveller]

We have loved WDW and have had the best holidays there. This past Oct we spent a week there and went to UO and IOA for one day. It was amazing, the best day we have almost ever had at a theme park? Wag got there at RD and had 2park tickets with Express Pass. Stayed all day till park closing. We loved it, we have two kids dd11 and ds9, it was so worth if even if it was just one day!

 

[FoodieFriend]

We just went to WDW/USF from Sept 24-Oct 6 with only 1 day at USF. We did get to ride the all the HP things I never had seen before, but we did end up skipping lots of the stuff that I had seen before: Spider-man, Mummy etc. To see everything you would need at least two days but to catch the new stuff, 1 day should be enough esp since you have older children. I'm hoping the crowds won't reduce what you're able to experience. We chose to go on the lowest day on all different crowd calendar sites which ended up being about 20 minutes for the HP castle ride, 30 minutes for the HP bank ride & 40+ minutes for the Hogwart's Express train. It definitely had me wanting to go back for more at a slower pace so we could enjoy ourselves & ride everything else we missed.