USF/IOA parking schmozzle

[Josh Hendy]

If there's anything which will motivate offsite guests to either get up early and get to the parks, or else sleep in and relax until late in the day, I would guess it would be this image from maps.live.com.

Taking a wild guess from the direction and length of the shadows, I suppose this is taken sometime late-ish in the morning on a "busy day".

A couple of Q's for the veterans ... if it's expected to be a busy day in the summer, around what time should one plan on arriving at the parking entrance if intending to get to the turnstiles before opening time so as to get on the rides fustest with the mostest? What time do schmozzles like the one above tend to develop?

How long before park opening are the parking gates open?

And if one does snooze and arrive at the parking area with the crowd, does either one of the parking entrances (north, directly off Hollywood Way or south off the curly-cue from Universal Blvd) tend to have a shorter lineup?

Thank-queue in advance

 

[poeticdiabetic]

I went in April on Spring Break. I arrived around 7:30 AM and people were there. I walked into City Walk and some restaurants were serving breakfast. Music was already blasting. I was at the ticket booth to change over my vouchers to tickets. I was at the gate a little after 8:15AM.

At 8:30AM or so, they let us into the park, but just to that front side. At 8:55AM, they let us into the park.

But the biggest reason to come early is that you can take your time and leisurely walk to the gate. At gate opening, you can walk to your favorite ride and virtually walk onto your favorite ride. And normally, the big crowds, if you're going to have one, will start around 10:30 AM. But you can get those rides in before that starts.

Oh, and I've actually done everything I've wanted to do in one park and left after 2:30PM. So you can really take your time and have fun if you get there early.

 

[Metro West]

You shouldn't see that much traffic trying to get into Universal unless it's a holiday weekend or Spring Break. Normally...if you're at the garage by 8:30am you should have little or no traffic to deal with.

 

[Purseval]

Something doesn't look right about that image. If you saw such a huge line of cars waiting to get in you would expect to see an equally huge line on the other side of the entrance waiting to get in to the parking garage, yet it's empty. It looks more like there was some sort of a problem that held up the operators at the entrance.

 

[troobabiee7]

Whoaaaa I've never seen traffic that bad! There must have been a problem, or it was Christmas week. We go every summer and never have more than a 5-minute wait to get to the parking garage. Thankfully. And we usually don't even get there until around 2:00/3:00. We like to go later on since we've found lines are shortest as it gets later. We usually eat a big lunch first and then head out to the rides and have never had a problem. Fingers crossed for our trip in a few days!

 

[inkkognito]

Was that taken during the traffic accident the other day that shut down I-4 at Kirkman?

 

[Josh Hendy]

Was that taken during the traffic accident the other day that shut down I-4 at Kirkman?

I don't know when it was taken, but judging from the lack of images showing Rip Ride Rockit or Manta then I gather that the photos at maps.google.com and bing.com are at least 1 or 2 years old.

 

[neilsalop]

That's why we go for the valet parking

 

[Metro West]

Was that taken during the traffic accident the other day that shut down I-4 at Kirkman?

That's what I thought too but it's not the same road and probably wouldn't have had that kind of affect on the garage. Strange.

 

[UniversalJunkie30]

wow we came in around 10am and did not look like that at all, scary.

 

[A Mickeyfan]

That image doesn't look real. As a matter of fact, where you see shadows of cars where the arrows are, seems it is just that, shadows and not cars, but showing that is a path thru.. hense the arrows.... jmo...

and as others have posted, if it were that way before the parking booths, you would see a few more cars on the other side as well...

 

[Josh Hendy]

Yeah the cars look a bit weird and ghostlike because the web site superimposes translucent map labels over top of the aerial photo. If you pop open the link again and click on the "Labels" button at the top of the image, the labels will disappear.

Without the labels I think you'll see that the photo is real, although the lineup situation may not be typical. The cars waiting to go through the parking gates are backed up all the way onto Universal Blvd. The trickle of cars leaving boths gates are being directed up onto the roof of the south garage.

It's funny when you slide around on these photos because it keeps jumping from a photo taken on one date/time to a photo taken at another date/time. Therefore you can't slide the view from the garage into the parks to see what was going on that day or to assess how crowded the parks were.

Breaking news - I found another view taken on the same day, looking south. If you slide around you can see part of the parks. You can zoom in a bit with your mouse wheel and see the people walking around. It doesn't look that crowded to me, but I guess that's 'cause they were all stuck in the parking queue.

 

[Wilson]

These pics were taking during the time frame Mardi Gras was going on. So they could be from a Spring Break weekend which would expalin all the traffic at the garages.

 

[clownboy007]

Based on some things that I don't see (a roof on the CityWalk stage and, more importantly, no construction on the Blue Man theatre entrance), this photo has to be from before February of 2007.

The only times that traffic can get really snarled is on holidays or special events (HHN, Mardi Gras, etc.) and then it can be a little hairy all the way around. Usually, parking does a pretty good job getting people through quickly. When I've got friends in town I usually meet them at the parks around 10:00 and I've never run into traffic problems. Frankly, I don't even think they use that south toll plaza anymore...I'd actually forgotten that it was there.