Which park Which day with Which tickets?

[vacation_junkie]

I am trying to decide which park to do on which day… as well what type of park pass to buy.

Here is the situation.
We are Universal Newbies.
I am the "sightsee'r" while DH & DS are the Adventurous ride type. In other words... I'm the wuss that waits and checks out the sights while they go on all the big rides

Flight lands at 10:55am on a Saturday.

We will head straight to HRH
Check-in
Get our Express pass and head to a park.

Which park ? Not sure!

Sunday we will have a full day in the parks.

Monday we leave for our Cruise.

The day we get off the ship we will be able to head back to the parks for the day. We should be back at the parks by 10am.
But we will not have the Express pass as will be staying at Springhill for a few post cruise nights.

My question is
Partial day #1 – which park?
Full day #2 – which park?
Partial day #3 – which park?

Which park takes the most time?

Knowing our scenario should we get the 3 day single park pass or the 3 day park to park?

There is the buy 2 days get the 3rd free promo going on right now.

Help!!!!

 

[glocon]

Since it looks like you are going in January- is that right?- it should not be too crowded. You will be able to go back and forth between the parks easily since they are so close together, so I would do the park to park tix.

There will be plenty of things for you to enjoy even if you do not do thrill rides. Just looking at all the detail in the parks will keep you busy, and if you find the thread on the DIS about secrets at UO you will definitely not be bored.

And you can always explore the resorts as well if you wanted to. Everything is quite close together.

!Hope you have fun!

 

[kohlby]

Pre-kids, we took longer in IOA since hubby and I love the thrill rides and would do some over and over and over. Post-kids, IOA is still the favorite but for totally different reasons! It sounds like the third day is actually almost a full day? Crowds definitely make a difference in my advice. If you're going in Jan and not the very start of Jan nor MLK weekend, then my advice would be to do IOA the first day, then US the second day, and then IOA the third day. IOA always takes us longer than US - both when we were thrill ride junkies and when the young kids kept us from doing a lot of them. That way, you'll have a full US day and 1.5 IOA days.

But if there's a chance of higher crowds during that last day when you don't have Express, then I'd suggest doing US the first partial day, then IOA on the second day. You can do early entry that day too. Then the third day, you can do both/either parks depending on what you're interested in. If park-to-park increases the cost too much, then look up the attractions and discuss it with your family as to which park you'll want to spend more time in.

We love having park-to-park. It is easy to walk from park to park, but I also understand trying to save some money. If there isn't much difference in price, then I'd definitely do park-to-park. If there is a big difference, then it's not really a necessity and you can manage without it.

 

[vacation_junkie]

Pre-kids, we took longer in IOA since hubby and I love the thrill rides and would do some over and over and over. Post-kids, IOA is still the favorite but for totally different reasons! It sounds like the third day is actually almost a full day? Crowds definitely make a difference in my advice. If you're going in Jan and not the very start of Jan nor MLK weekend, then my advice would be to do IOA the first day, then US the second day, and then IOA the third day. IOA always takes us longer than US - both when we were thrill ride junkies and when the young kids kept us from doing a lot of them. That way, you'll have a full US day and 1.5 IOA days.

But if there's a chance of higher crowds during that last day when you don't have Express, then I'd suggest doing US the first partial day, then IOA on the second day. You can do early entry that day too. Then the third day, you can do both/either parks depending on what you're interested in. If park-to-park increases the cost too much, then look up the attractions and discuss it with your family as to which park you'll want to spend more time in.

We love having park-to-park. It is easy to walk from park to park, but I also understand trying to save some money. If there isn't much difference in price, then I'd definitely do park-to-park. If there is a big difference, then it's not really a necessity and you can manage without it.

It works out to 50 more total for the P2P tickets. Very minimal difference on a certain website.
I am thinking that may be the best way to go. then the 3rd day we can do the 1st park and then the do-overs in either!

Thanks so much for the input.

 

[vacation_junkie]

Since it looks like you are going in January- is that right?- it should not be too crowded. You will be able to go back and forth between the parks easily since they are so close together, so I would do the park to park tix.

There will be plenty of things for you to enjoy even if you do not do thrill rides. Just looking at all the detail in the parks will keep you busy, and if you find the thread on the DIS about secrets at UO you will definitely not be bored.

And you can always explore the resorts as well if you wanted to. Everything is quite close together.

!Hope you have fun!

The first 2 days are over the Harry Potter weekend. It may be a bit busier then a normal January day!