Single day - what order to do Universal in?

[dawnhaze]

I'm spending one day at both parks on January 16 - not staying on-site, taking a shuttle over from WDW. There's very little at IOA I want to do - just the Harry Potter stuff and the Marvel rides, so I'm going to IOA first to get those out of the way.

At US, I want to ride most of the major rides if I can. I'll have express pass and I use single rider queues. What order should I hit stuff in?

 

[Metro West]

At US, I want to ride most of the major rides if I can. I'll have express pass and I use single rider queues. What order should I hit stuff in?

If you're going to have an EP, you can do the attractions in any other you want. Crowds should be pretty low then so there shouldn't be much of a wait. If you wanted to start in the front, hit Shrek 4-D and Dispicable Me and then head to Revenge of the Mummy, MIB, The Simpsons and around from there.

 

[toonaspie]

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is excluded in the Express Pass, so I would do that first to get it out of the way before the lines get bad.

 

[nuge67]

I'm spending one day at both parks on January 16 - not staying on-site, taking a shuttle over from WDW. There's very little at IOA I want to do - just the Harry Potter stuff and the Marvel rides, so I'm going to IOA first to get those out of the way.

At US, I want to ride most of the major rides if I can. I'll have express pass and I use single rider queues. What order should I hit stuff in?

What shuttle and where do you pick it up from?

 

[dawnhaze]

What shuttle and where do you pick it up from?

The company is called Mears. I bought a package through Dreams Unlimited that included one day two park admission and a ride from my WDW hotel to Universal. I found out about it on the Transportation board, they have a sticky.

 

[redrosesix]

It has been a while since we went to Universal but last time there we did 2 days -- everyone had said go to Harry Potter early, so we did. And so did everybody else. It didn't matter that we had purchased the EP -- it was CROWDED!!! so crowded you could barely move, couldn't see anything and couldn't get in to any of the shops.

On the second day we were smart and went to the Studios first, spent the whole morning there and headed to Islands for the afternoon. We actually ate lunch at the 3 Broomsticks a bit after the lunch crowd without waiting in line (compared to the half hour wait we had the day before) and got to see everything we wanted to with barely a wait, even though we didn't have the EP the second day.

btw, my second favourite place in IoA was Seuss's Landing -- a very close second.

 

[bowtie7]

Mid-week in January, the single rider line for Forbidden Journey should be short. You should be able to ride multiple times with limited wait. Make sure to to do the full line at least once. Since Islands is open until 7pm, I would go back at the end of the day to see the Potter area after dark.

 

[macraven]

last year there were a number of tour groups in the parks for january.

 

[DarleneW]

The company is called Mears. I bought a package through Dreams Unlimited that included one day two park admission and a ride from my WDW hotel to Universal. I found out about it on the Transportation board, they have a sticky.

This sounds like a good deal (I just checked the price) but can you tell me where they drop you off at Universal and where they pick you up. My DH and I haven't been there since IoA opened so it has been a really long time. We are going to WDW for 2 weeks in February and he really wants to see Harry Potter. I don't like roller coasters so I think doing the 2 parks would be a good thing. Unless it's changed, the other park had more of what I would do and no roller coasters. I could be totally wrong about that.

 

[Metro West]

btw, my second favourite place in IoA was Seuss's Landing -- a very close second.

Agree...a great place to spend some time just taking in the sights and sounds.