We arrived at the parks about 9:30 on August 30th..At Universal we rode pretty much everything except for Shrek 3D. The longest wait time was for Despicable Me and that was no more than 30 minutes. I even took a quick taste test challenge for a frozen food company there and picked up free $10 US/IOA bucks which the kids used to purchase snacks. Around 2pm we headed over to IOA. First stop was of course Harry Potter. We walked right on the Dragon Challenge. The Forbidden challenge had a 30 minute wait time posted but we decided to use the single rider option and got on in less than fifteen minutes. We all had a wonderful time and were able to not only complete both parks in one day without an Express Pass but we were able to ride multiple times! Traveling late August is the way to go
