When is front of line access not front of line access?

[juliebro]

Answer: When it's Universal Express

We paid a premium rate ($239 plus tax) for room only for one night at the RPR on our recent trip (I found it impossible to get a cheaper rate due to it being Easter). We paid it to get what we though would be 'front of line' access to all the rides at US & IoA- as we knew it would be extremely busy.

However we found that we were standing in the Universal Express queues for 15-20 minutes at each ride. This was not what we were expecting - and so were a bit disappointed.

We have been at Easter before and certainly didn't wait that long in the express queues on previous occasions.

I have just re-read the info on the Universal site and I notice it says 'bypass the regular lines' and that you will have a 15 minute wait. I'm fairly certain it never used to say that. Or am I wrong?

Julie

 

[Mrs Dazzle]

Hi Julie

I think I understand what you mean. There are two different Universal "priviledge" queues - Express, which anyone can use - like Disney's Fast Pass, then there's Front of Line Access (FOTL) priviledge if you are staying on site - which is certainly what you should have done.

You don't use the Express passes, just head on over to the queue and in you go - but unfortunately when there are large crowds you do still have to wait .

We found exactly this difference last October (2003) as opposed to our October 2002 trip. In 2002 we went on Spiderman 5 times without touching any queues, just kept going round on the Express queue where your room key is scanned in (FOTL). However, last year was a completely different story. We had to queue for 30 mins on FOTL - disappointed to say the least.

Now for some people I know that's not a long queue, but given we'd gone exactly the same time the year before and encountered virtually no queues in any parks, that's why we were disappointed

We also found that now you can buy Front of Line Access (one ride per ticket on all the main attractions) this makes the FOTL that much busier.

 

[MsPennieLane]

Hiya, we had no problems with this when we went but I think maybe it was the time of year that we went. We had a 2 day pass to US and IOA so we spent the night at the Hard Rock Hotel. Compared to Disney, US and IOA were dead and we flashed our hotel IDs on every ride and got on in front of the regular queues no problem. Maybe at Easter, everyone had the same idea

Anz

 

[rob@rar.org.uk]

I think FOTL has always said up to a 15 minute wait.

Regards

Rob

 

[Mike Jones]

This has got me a bit nervous for June...hopefully we'll be ok!

 

[Hilary]

We were also there over Easter and all thought our FOL access was fantastic! We'd paid top whack for our HRH room (Good Friday night) but still felt it was worth every penny for the FOL.

Yes, we did have to wait up to 15 minutes (which was the stated possible wait) for some rides but, compared to the 2 hours for some of the stand-by queues, we didn't mind.

Having said that, we've never had any other experience with USF/IOA FOL access with which to compare the Easter times, so I'm sure that would make a difference to our perception.