Park to Park Tickets & How Many days

[tink9702]

Hi All! I haven't been to Universal in about 15 years and a lot has changed! My family is traveling to FL Easter Week. My DH & I are in our 40's, DS will be 12 & DD will be 11 at the time of trip. They both love roller coasters and Harry Potter.

We have 4/22, 4/23 & 4/24 available to play with (Friday, Sat, Sun). We 100% want to ride Hogwarts Express at least once. Can I purchase a single day ticket without park to park and then tickets with park to park for a second day? I know with disney that's an issue with the park hopper so checking here to see if that's possible with Universal tickets. Also would you recommend two days or three days to do US & IOA? I'm also seeing the parks closing at 6pm those days - is that likely to change?

 

[cschaaf]

Park to Park is sold as a 'length of ticket' option. So, to only have it one day, you'd have to purchase two sets of 1 day passes and add Park to Park on one of them. Check prices on all of that, it may be worth having Park to Park for both days. I did a very quick look and it looked like it would be (slightly) cheaper to buy 2-day P2P passes than it would be to buy two 1-day, non-P2P passes - add in P2P to one of those and you'd be way over.

P2P at Universal is nothing like at Disney. The Universal parks are right next to each other and you jump parks in minutes. Very convenient for days when one park is super busy and the other isn't. Also convenient if they have different opening/closing times. And it seems like you are aware, you need P2P to ride Hogwarts and Hogwarts provides a different experience in each direction.

Also check pricing on annual passes - again, a different experience at Uni vs. Disney. With one AP in the group, you can possibly take advantage of a good rate at one of the three premiere hotels and get the included Express Passes.

Universal hasn't announced park hours for April yet. They typically only publish about 30-60 days in advance. Someone may track historical data though, and can guess based on that.

If the parks are really closing at 6, I'd take as many days as you can.

 

[AJA]

If your children are BIG Potter fans I would do 3 days. That would give 2 days to devote to rides and 1 day for all things Harry Potter/wands/wand magic stops.

Especially if you think they would really enjoy getting wands and the interactive wand windows (don’t discount watching other kids practicing “magic” with their wands, turning wands into a MUST DO)

Watch some YouTube videos of the interactive wands and see if they would be a big part of the whole experience. If not you can get through your must do’s in 2 days. Get Park to Park for both days.
You never know with kids. Sometimes their favorite part of a vacation is having a full day to devote to the pool!