Is WWoHP "all that" for the "Disney is better than Universal" crowd?

[Planogirl]

Okay, haven't read all of this, but I'll bite.

I'm guessing I agree with the general consensus. Universal is not the same as WDW, but in my opinion, individually, it has some great attractions.

HP is among the top reasons to visit Universal.

It is certainly worth seeing for yourself. then you can decide about return visits.

The other thing I always consider when I think of adding a Universal visit to a WDW trip (or visa versa) is the added cost. It is quite a bit less $ to stick with one or the other on any given trip. I can't ever remove cost from the equation. Really hte only good trnasportaion option is to have a car. So you not only have to figure the extra cost of tickets, you also have to add in the cost of a rental car perhaps, potentially staying at multiple resorts, and potentially some factors. Like if you have asmall kids- the rides they can/can't ride, a stroller (rental), a carseat, and so forth. I tend to do a two world trip when the logisitcs are going to be easy.

I agree! It gets costly.

In our case, we usually have a car anyway but there are the passes to consider plus the parking. During our last multi-park trip we stayed onsite at WDW and picked up a rental car at the Dolphin. We rented it for just four nights and did this early due to scheduling but then we missed the car once we had to rely on the Disney buses. It was fun but we definitely had to budget extra for Uni passes and parking fees along with a little gas.

I will only add that I think that Universal is just as nice nowadays as WDW. I love the TM's and some of the restaurants and just the overall atmosphere. Of course, different strokes.

 

[Planogirl]

I LOVE Disney and I thoroughly enjoy the Harry Potter movies and books. I visited Orlando last month and decided to finally try WWoHP. It was great, but not amazing. Honestly, I probably will never go back. I saw it and that's it.

The theming was great, but I found the WWoHP section to be ENTIRELY too small and entirely too PACKED! You could hardly move! You could FORGET about trying to get into one of the itty bitty stores unless you wanted to push your way in and push your way to see any merchandise (I later found that there is a great large store at the front of Islands of Adventure that has Harry Potter stuff, but if you want to see a "themed" store you have to go to one in the WWoHP section).

The lack of a Fastpass-like system at Universal guaranteed us that we would not be able to ride anything in WWoHP soon after opening. We literally RAN to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, waited 30 minutes and when we got out everything in WWoHP was over an hour, with HPFJ being 90 minutes! Not waiting for that! (Even if you PAY for their expensive version of a "fastpass" type system this ride doesn't support it).

It definitely wasn't Disney. Not by a far shot. WWoHP was the nicest part of Islands of Adventure and I wasn't even thoroughly impressed with that. The rest of the park was...BLEH. Wish we'd gone to Disney instead but glad that we don't have to keep saying that we need to eventually go see WWoHP one day! We got that out of the way!

WWoHP had to be small to satisfy JK Rowling. Universal had no choice if they wanted to even build WWoHP.

I don't agree with the 'Bleh' comment but as I've said before (just now! ) different strokes...

 

[Nudoru]

Ive been to both sites multiple times. I cant say that i prefer USO to WDW at all, except for the faster paced attractions. In regards to theming, I look at it this way..

Universal Makes movies....

Disney makes MAGIC.

 

[bcrook]

Ive been to both sites multiple times. I cant say that i prefer USO to WDW at all, except for the faster paced attractions. In regards to theming, I look at it this way..

Universal Makes movies....

Disney makes MAGIC.

not just magic... MyMagic+