What's with no FOTL access before 10am?

[26555]

That's what we got at Neutron this weekend. The attendent said its been that way since he started 8 months ago. I've never heard of it. He was standing there at Express pass entrance explaining it didn't exist before 10am, seems like it would be just as easy to run it since he had to deal with unhappy hotel guests for an hour each day. It wasn't like it was "unmanned".

It probably doesn't matter most days but on MLK weekend, when you enter park at 9:30 and assume its been open for an hour, you don't expect a 25 min wait for Neutron that causes you to miss 10am Disaster first show. I guess I would have liked to have known that and would have taken more time getting to the park.

Not worth really complaining about but posting this as fyi in case anyone else wants to wait until 10am for US on a holiday weekend.

 

[the Dark Marauder]

You weren't staying onsite, were you? Onsite express = no restrictions. If you bought Express, the "Not until 10am" rule is in effect. It's like that because lines are generally Not Very Long between 9a-10a.

Also, Shrek & Jimmy Neutron always have longest waits early in the day because they're so close to the beginning of the park.

 

[phamton]

DM is correct. Express starts at 10:00 AM but if you have hotel express you should have been able to use that. Usually at 10:00 the express would be the same wait as the regular line.

 

[26555]

I was staying onsite, it was hotel key FOTL access that was denied, to me and others. For Neutron, I'm pretty sure I would have made the next group taken in if Express was going, we got in on about 3rd group waiting in line. I'm estimating 25 minutes, could have been 20, but it was just a little annoying since it was the first ride we were using our FOTL perk on and it didn't work out, and the manpower seemed to be there to run it.

I'm not the letter writing type but if someone reading this works for US, you might point to the Neutron powers that be the Express versus FOTL hotel distinction since it might save the employee working there from getting harrassed by upset hotel guests. We took it in stride but I heard a lady reading him the riot act.

Not much was open at 9:30 anyway so we weren't going to pass it up b/c FOTL was denied. It just added a wrinkle b/c we couldn't hit Disaster afterwards, since Neutron took longer than anticipated, we just missed the 10am and didn't want to wait until 10:30, skipped it for Jaws which didn't require FOTL, walkon, so it was a while before we felt like we really used FOTL access.

Thanks for the responses, seems like this problem is specific to Neutrons interpretation of no Express, hotel key or not, before 10am.

 

[jtdl]

We were there the same weekend and had no problems using our on-site FOTL passes before 10 am. We weren't at Neutron before 10 am on the weekend but I know one day earlier in the week we went to it right after park opening and were allowed to use our FOTL.

 

[apparition]

Sounds like the ride attendant doesn't know what he's doing.

 

[parentsoffour]

I spoke with someone from Universal a few weeks ago and they told me that FOTL access is NOT available to on-site guests until 10 AM. February will be my first time staying on-site so it will be interesting to see how this works. It might be that some attendants simply don't enforce the 10 AM rule.

Thinking about it, not having FOTL access until 10 AM make a lot of sense. The lines are relatively short and it encourages people to arrive earlier. My one complaint is that I could find no mention of this on the Universal web site. So, if you are staying on site you won't find out about this until you walk up to an attendant and present your room key, only to be told to come back (or wait in the regular line) after 10 AM. This doesn't seem like a nice way to surprise someone.

 

[Disneyhappy]

This happened to us last summer but I assumed it depended on the attraction. We were hotel guests and were told no express on Neutron until 10AM. The line was long so we skipped over to Shrek. Same thing so we moved on to the Mummy. It was 9:30 and we were admitted to express on Mummy. We ran into the same thing in October with Neutron. Never had it happen in IOA. Again, we just assumed express was not made available until 10 AM for certain attractions. It is interesting to now find out that we should have been given access.

 

[26555]

Thinking about it, not having FOTL access until 10 AM make a lot of sense. The lines are relatively short and it encourages people to arrive earlier. My one complaint is that I could find no mention of this on the Universal web site. So, if you are staying on site you won't find out about this until you walk up to an attendant and present your room key, only to be told to come back (or wait in the regular line) after 10 AM. This doesn't seem like a nice way to surprise someone.

Yeah, knowing about it makes all the difference, maybe take a more leisurely route to park or something. If you know about the 10am going in, no big deal, its good we are discussing it here so at least we know. I hadn't heard of it even monitoring these boards, somewhat, so it surprised me.

 

[nerdboyrockstar]

I've never heard of this but I have to admit.. when I'm staying on-site and I have Express, I feel absolutely no pressure to be there before 10am.

 

[apparition]

I've never heard of this but I have to admit.. when I'm staying on-site and I have Express, I feel absolutely no pressure to be there before 10am.

Ditto! I stay up late and sleep in.

 

[CPanther95]

We normally go first thing in the morning if we want to check out the non-express queue. Last year we did this to check out the Mummy queue since we hadn't seen it. (wanted to try blasting someone with the scarab)

 

[bubba's mom]

We normally go first thing in the morning if we want to check out the non-express queue. Last year we did this to check out the Mummy queue since we hadn't seen it. (wanted to try blasting someone with the scarab)

another "sleeper in-ner" here Last summer we went early to do first row of Hulk (and did Dragons while there too...altho, we don't mind waiting for them ) and MIB.... wasn't impressed with either, but wanted to see the "worm guys" in the MIB queue.... Turns out, THAT was all to see differently

My question is....what am I missing by not 'regular' queueing at Mummy??? We always stay onsite, so we always have used EP