Strategy for a stacked deck...No EE, No EP, No evening touring

RJstanis

Negative, I am a meat popsicle
Joined
May 21, 2014
....But we have park-2-park tickets lol

Long story short(ish), we are planning a very last minute partial day trip to US/IOA on Friday June 1st. We are not staying onsite - so no EE, not doing EP, and have to leave by no later than 4pm to catch our flight (maybe 530p-ish if we decide to forgo DME and Uber to MCO instead - flight is at 830pm). We hope to be there before RD, but no guarantees due to us spending the entire day at AK the day before (AK was planned and paid for before deciding to do US/IOA, but AK will be a leisurely touring day with a mid-day break and relatively early evening at AK). These tickets for US/IOA will be free, and we have a trip planned to return in Sept with more time and will be staying on-site then, so anything we do this trip is gravy.

DS5 last checked was about 47" last month, so hopefully he's grown, and DS7 is about 52" (I think).

We'd like to do HP- Gringotts ( and FJ if DS5 has grown), Mummy (hopefully all will be able to ride), and Marvel Land (primarily Spider-man Ride and characters - kids are CRAZY superhero fans) if possible. Anything else I figured would be dictated by how and where the crowds are with use of the line times app. Realistic to do the above 3 desires w/o ridiculous lines? Any suggestions/strategies? I believe the EE park is US for our day, and TP predicts both parks to be 6/10 in terms of crowds. Also, SIL (the ticket giver) is a HP nut, but shes "just happy to walk around the HP lands", so would like to try and give a her a decent taste of HP w/o killing too much time there.

Help me DIS-kenobi, you're my only hope.
 
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Suggest you go to www.universalorlando.com and read about what is in each park

Check out the park hours

Look at the park map so you will know the direct way to rides, shows, street entertainment and eateries

Read the stickies and trip reports to gain more info on how others did a short Park day

 
That seems pretty doable to me. Even if you had substantial lines you could get all that done. Be at the non--EE park at rope drop and look at everything beyond what you said as gravy and my guess is there will be quite a bit of gravy.
 
That looks ok. Mummy is probably too scary for your kiddos (ds2 is pretty brave and he chickened out in line when he was 8- and we were glad he didn't ride the ride since he thought the line was scary!).
Don't waste your time on DME! That's a huge time suck every way you slice it. :)
 


Just really watch the wait times and don't make any ride a "must ride". Get there very early and ride the big rides first.
 
Suggest you go to www.universalorlando.com and read about what is in each park

Check out the park hours

Look at the park map so you will know the direct way to rides, shows, street entertainment and eateries

Read the stickies and trip reports to gain more info on how others did a short Park day

I've done all of this tirelessly and have a pretty good handle on what's available, where it's at, etc. That's why I posted here to see where I should start or a general direction to go. Only place I hadn't exhausted was trip reports, I didn't think to search there so will definitely dig in those for more help. Thanks for the reply!


That seems pretty doable to me. Even if you had substantial lines you could get all that done. Be at the non--EE park at rope drop and look at everything beyond what you said as gravy and my guess is there will be quite a bit of gravy.

Awesome, thanks for letting me know where to plan on starting. I vaguely remembered reading where someone should start w/o EE buried in a thread somewhere but couldn't find it again. I couldn't remember if it was good to start at EE park since most would have been there done that in that section, or try to get a jump on where the EE crowds would prob go to. I've seen that some recommend avoiding HP first thing bc everyone goes there first thing, but since I can't tour the evening I really didn't have the luxury of waiting for it to die down that much, so was trying to see what my recommended strategy to be. Thank you so much!

That looks ok. Mummy is probably too scary for your kiddos (ds2 is pretty brave and he chickened out in line when he was 8- and we were glad he didn't ride the ride since he thought the line was scary!).
Don't waste your time on DME! That's a huge time suck every way you slice it. :)

Great suggestions! My kids are thrill seekers and liked the Mummy movie as well as any and all rides at Disney (Space Mountain, Tower of Terror, Expedition Everest -which is their favorite, etc), but I'll double check ride videos for myself to make sure they'll still be ok. Thrilling they're good with, horror-scary and violent they're not allowed to see as I don't think they would do well in that regard. As long as no animals are hurt the youngest never seems to be phased by anything, including characters dying in movies, but if an animal gets hurt or dies, it's game over lol.

Lol on DME. Makes sense to me too, but its been hard to wrap my head around the fake "free". I need to figure out what's more valuable, $40-50, or extra time :)

Just really watch the wait times and don't make any ride a "must ride". Get there very early and ride the big rides first.

That's basically the mindset I'm trying to keep and portray to my fam. Obviously I/they want us to ride or experience everything, but that's not anywhere close to possible and trying to be realistic as we can :). It helps that most of our group is coming back in a few months. We have rode most of the similar longer-lined 40" rides in US Hollywood 2 years ago (Kong, F&F, Minions, etc), so we can essentially move those to the bottom of the list unless crowds and times allows. The 3-4 rides I mentioned we haven't done so that's main reason why I was trying to (hopefully) get those in. Thanks for your reply and help! I appreciate any suggestions I can get.
 
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