Earlier this month we took a trip in which we had Express Passes (1 time per ride) for each day of our trip (basically 1 day at Epic, and then 1 full day at each of the others plus two more days when we park hopped at them). The cost of Express Passes was more than the cost of our tickets! I had a lot of questions (many were answered for me before we got there), but I wanted to put together one thread with some things I learned in the process, in hopes that it will help other people. So, in no particular order:
- Express Passes are "express" but are not anywhere close to "Front of the Line". This was my biggest surprise - even with Express Passes, we often had significant waits.
- I think the "official" thing they tell you is that you will have less than half the wait of the regular line. In many of the cases, I think that was about right - the wait was maybe half of the regular line. So, when there's a 1 hour line, you might still be in line for 30 minutes. As an example, at Hagrid's we still had a wait in the EP line of more than 45 minutes. The regular line was longer.
- On most rides, at some point the EP and regular lines merge, so obviously there's no benefit after that. Or, the lines will move at the same speed at some point (e.g. in Gringott's, EP let us skip the line before you get into the bank lobby, but from there on the line moved identically to the non-EP line (I know since the same people in that line stayed even with us, both times we did this)).
- On rides with a "cycle", EP might help you get on a cycle or two earlier. For instance, I think we saved one loading cycle on the carousel in Epic, and we might have made it on to a Hogwart's Express ride that we might not have gotten on in the regular line (it was borderline whether the regular line would all get on, but EP got on for sure).
- On occasion, though, the EP was a huge time savings. We got into line for Velocicoaster when the regular and EP lines were nearly to the entry gates. The posted wait time was 135 minutes. But, the ride had evidently to be paused for a while, because all the lines were not moving at alll for the first 15 minutes. Then, they started moving the EP line. As far as I could tell, the regular line was not moving *at all*, while we basically moved steadily in the EP line until boarding; it still took a while overall (probably 45 minutes total until we got off the ride), but it probably saved us a couple of hours over what the regular line would have been.
- I had wondered how EP worked for shows. Here was our experience:
- For at least some of the shows, the EP basically gave you the first entry to the theater and the best seats. We had front row seats at the Horror Makeup show, and ideal seats at the Untrainable Dragon show. EP was really nice in these cases.
- If you are a little later, or the show is less than completely full, there was no benefit to EP. This is what we found for Le Cirque Arcanus and the Bourne show (which was an incredible show, by the way - we think this may have been the most impressive thing in any of the 3 parks).
- The ticket folks will happily scan your EP even when there is no benefit to using the EP. More than once we went to a ride, scanned our EP, and then discovered that we immediately were mixed with the regular group; there was no benefit at all. I kind of felt like we had "wasted" our EP, but it's not like we were going to want to use it again later that same day, so it was never an issue.
- There was never a time when we felt we missed part of an interesting queue due to EP. In some of the queues (e.g. Forbidden Journey) we actually moved slower through the queue so we could take everything in, but we never felt we had missed anything because we were in the EP line, and any "extra" things the regular lines saw were really minor.
- The one-time-per-ride EPs are one time per day, not one time during the entire multiday period. The wording on the website is confusing, but it's definitely one time each day (i.e. you can use an EP on the same ride the next day).
- For our family, the "unlimited" passes would not have been any benefit over the "one time per ride" passes. Our first day in each park we kind of tried to do as many different things as possible, so there was never a chance to go back to the same ride. And, on our return days we were going back to hit highlights, and were never in a "ride as many times as possible" mode.
- If your EPs are on your phone, then on rides where you can't take your phone into the line, you can bring the phone to the person checking at the beginning. They will look at your passes and give you a temporary paper pass. Then, you can put your phone in a locker, and return to the line, and use those paper passes for that one ride. Overall, having them on my phone worked fine (I had printouts as a backup, but never used them).
- Overall, we found the EPs "worth it", but that will certainly depend on your own money and time situation, the time you travel, and so forth. But, it was not as clear of a "win" as I had been expecting before I went. As the trip planner in our family, I was really pretty disappointed with how much we still waited in lines, while my wife and kids were very happy with how much time we saved in lines compared to not having EP. So, your view of how much it's worth the cost may depend on a lot of things and your own expectations.
- That is, we definitely did more with EP than we could have done without it.
- As a side note, I have used TouringPlans in the past, and found it useful at Disney, and got it again this time. But, they were totally and completely off in terms of estimated wait times with EPs. If you are using EPs, don't count on TouringPlans estimates for wait times. This is part of what led to my disappointment in terms of expectations
