Touring plans and walking distances

[nervous1sttimer]

I have been checking out some touring plan suggestions for IOA and USF and they seem to suggest a lot of backtracking, like doing Forbidden Journey then Minions then back to WWHP. We are doing Universal at the end of six straight days at Disney and I know my peeps are going to want to minimize the amount of walking wherever possible.

Is it better to hit the headliners first to avoid lines if it means criss-crossing all over? Or can we go land-by-land, like we typically do at Disney? We are going end of January, but I don't expect to be able to go as early as is typically recommended. I see us rolling up around 9am and probably not making it into the parks much before 10am.

 

[VacaPlanner2012]

I think the mindset can be very similar to Disney. If you wish to reduce walk time (highly encouraged by my feet), you can tour area by area. If you want to reduce standing time but are ok walking, you can make that work. Islands of Adventure is very similar to Magic Kingdom in both are honestly a big circle/wheel. No spokes at IofA, there is a big lake in middle. Universal Studios is not laid out quite as simply, but a few minutes with the map and you can figure it out.

The only thing to note is if you have park-to-park, know if you are going to walk entrance to entrance or ride Hogwarts Express. For example, if you can't wait to ride Spiderman (it is awesome) - if you come in the front gate, you turn left (counter clockwise)and make a short walk, maybe similar to Jungle Cruise at Magic Kingdom. If you ride over on Hogwart's, it is the opposite side of the park and you have to pass multiple areas to get there - think walking from the Goofy roller coaster to Jungle Cruise.

Keep in mind, that the main draw is Potter, so many believe that early or late is the best way to tour those areas. Despicable Me is so close to the front gate that it draws a long line early, and never really lets up. In late January - don't be surprised if you are in Springfield or Men in Black with very low crowds, then walk into Diagon Alley and think "Where did all of these people come from?"

Your touring plan is dependent on your wishes, which is why it is difficult for us to craft for you. If we are doing a Sea World/Discovery Cove vacation with one day at Uni, we tour it very differently than when we stay onsite for 5-8 days. Common sense, I know - but it does matter. If I am there one day - I "hope" to be around Mummy and Transformers when the Blues Brothers perform so I can head over for five minutes, on longer stays I make it a priority to see the entire show multiple times.

Good luck and have a great time!!!

 

[dancemonkey]

If you are staying on site make sure you get the express pass and do early entry. We would do this for the Harry Potter attractions. Then go back for breakfast and then return to the park later in the day.

 

[nkereina]

Will you have express pass? Without express pass, you'll want to criss-cross the parks to avoid long waits. Forbidden Journey and Gringotts do not have express pass, which is why it's recommended to do those first and preferably at rope drop. Those lines easily creep to 45+ minutes throughout the day. You can do single rider on Gringotts but we find the wait can still be long on single rider.

If you have express pass, you can tour more how you want, just going in order. But I would still start with the two Potter rides since EP won't help you there. No EP on Hogwarts Express either, so try to do that one early or late in the day.

 

[angierae]

I ran touring plans for our dates (1/9, 1/10 and 1/11/2016) and then rearranged the steps to do each area one at a time, and the waits didn't see that unreasonable for me, but we're going on two very low crowd days and one middle day (2, 3 and 5, I think)

 

[showers2flowers]

I did what angierae did. I ran it once using 'optimize' and then dragged the steps to essentially order it so we were going from one area to another and then 'evaluated' that--the total time wasn't all that much different (within minutes), and it made more sense to me that way. We had fairy low crowds (11/5-11/7), so we loosely followed the plan that went area by area, but were easily able to deviate when we wanted to because it just wasn't that crowded (except in Diagon Alley!).

ETA: we did have Express Pass, but we rarely used it because the crowds were so low