universal hollywood alternate waiting areas ?

[afnaechiquita]

i don't know if it's better to ask here or over on the DL/socal board, but i figured trying here first wouldn't hurt.

we are going to go to universal hollywood next weekend. Dbro will be in a wheelchair (with ability to transfer, but not ability to wait in line without the wheelchair). i am reading through the universal website, and all i am gathering is that they guarantee physical access for the wheelchair. no real info on sensory/cognitive issues, which Dbro has. he needs to wait in a line separate from the main crowd, and out of the sun. how do they accommodate this?

i see they sell outright front of the line tickets, so we will consider that option as well if it's not possible to wait in a separate area (length of wait is not an issue if there are not many people around). i am just looking for an idea of what we can expect.

thank you!

 

[Princess Disney Mom]

We were at universal Hollywood last year. At each ride they gave us a time to come back and ride. We could wait anywhere.

 

[clanmcculloch]

For sensory issues I bought the FOTL pass. I prepurchased it to guarantee that we would have it. I worried too much that they would sell out and to me it was a must-have. I got a slight discount by purchasing through Orbitz plus I went through ebates and got cash back.

For some attractions you'll be sent an alternate way into the attraction and for those ones we couldn't use the FOTL pass. For others both the FOTL and the regular queue are accessible so the only way to get a shorter wait was with the paid pass.

There wasn't a single attraction we couldn't get on with our DD's wheelchair (she also transfers).

I would strongly recommend you get there at RD head straight towards the lower level when you arrive. The elevator doesn't take long but waiting on the van to take you from the elevator the rest of the way down can be up to a 20 minute wait. When we got there (at RD) the van was sitting there waiting as we were the first guests to need it.

Once you're done with the lower level, I would urge you to do the Studio Tour. There are limited trams for wheelchairs. If there are a lot of people in wheelchairs then you may have to wait on another tram and it's not like they're one right after the other. With our FOTL pass we didn't have to wait in the line on the upper level (an employee tried to stop us from going down the FOTL line saying "wheelchairs go in the regular line" and it took a minute of waving the FOTL pass in her face and repeating that we had the paid FOTL passes before she would let us proceed through the FOTL queue; I guess people frequently try to go down that queue just because they're in wheelchairs when there's no need) but once we got down we had a much longer wait than we would have had otherwise because we had to wait for the wheelchair tram. Coming back up we had to wait through a couple of elevators because there were a lot of strollers ahead of us.

The elevators are small. Prepare your brother for this.

 

[afnaechiquita]

thank you both! this is very helpful. i wasn't aware it was a two-level concept, so the elevator information is good to know.