Touring Universal Orlando

This will be my last post about the parks and will focus on strategies for touring Universal Orlando, including buying tickets, Early Entry, Universal Express, Single Rider lines, crowd levels, touring plans and navigating the parks. I will still have a few more blog posts about my trip after this one, looking at hotel, flights, and so on.

Tickets
Universal Orlando offers packages that include a hotel room and tickets, but they don't necessarily save you any money; after pricing it out I decided to book the hotel room and tickets separately. I bought the tickets online and then collected them at the self service booths outside the entrance to the parks; it was a pretty quick and straightforward process. Tickets bought online are a little cheaper than those bought at the gate.

Universal offer tickets up to 4 days; I got a 3 day ticket and found that was plenty of time to do everything I wanted. Unlike at Disney where the decision of whether to get a park-hopper ticket is somewhat a matter of personal preference, Universal Orlando's Park to Park ticket is pretty much a necessity, since it is required to ride the Hogwarts Express.

Early Entry
Guests staying at any of the official Universal hotels get early entry to the parks. Except in really busy times, only one park is open for early entry each day, and it's not well advertised which park it will be. When we checked in we were told early entry would be at Islands of Adventure for our stay. But on our last morning I woke up and checked Lines to discover that early entry would be at Universal Studios Florida instead (it was a Halloween Horror Nights day, so I think early entry was at USF to make up for the shortened hours).

Compared to Extra Magic Hours at Disney World, there is a very small number of attractions open for Early Entry. At Islands of Adventure, just Hogsmeade was open. At Universal Studios Florida, Diagon Alley was open as well as Despicable Me.

I didn't find early entry at Islands of Adventure to be particularly useful - since pretty much everyone staying at a Universal hotel was there and trying to go on the same 3 rides (and mostly on Forbidden Journey), lines weren't actually any shorter than they were later in the day.

Early entry at Universal Studios Florida was more successful. I was able to walk on both Despicable Me and Gringotts. I'm not sure whether this was because the crowds were more evenly split between Despicable Me and Gringotts, because early entry started at 7 (regular opening was at 8 because of Halloween Horror nights), or because most hotel guests were not aware that early entry had changed from IOA to USF that day.

Universal Express
Universal Express is somewhat similar to Disney's FastPass system, but is paid for. There are two versions of the pass - the regular Express Pass lets you ride in the express line once per ride per day; the unlimited Express Pass lets you ride as many times as you like. Either version is not eligible on the major Harry Potter rides. If you are staying at one of the more expensive Universal hotels, the unlimited Express Pass is included. Since we were staying at Cabana Bay, it wasn't included for us and we decided not to buy one because crowd levels were low.

On my previous visit we did buy Express Passes and they saved us heaps of time (some rides had posted waits of an hour but we walked on in 5 minutes). However, on this occasion crowds were so low that most wait times were under 10 minutes anyway. The only rides that I saw longer waits for were the Harry Potter rides that were not eligible for Express Pass anyway, Despicable Me (which had no wait during early entry) and Dr Doom's Fearfall (which had no wait in the single rider line).

In short, whether it is worthwhile to buy the Express Pass depends on how busy the park is. If you are planning on staying at a Universal hotel anyway (especially if you have more than one person in the room), it probably makes more sense to stay at one of the hotels that includes the unlimited Express Pass than to stay at a cheaper hotel and buy the pass separately.

Single Rider
Universal offers a lot more single rider lines than Disney World - in this way it is more similar to Disneyland. Using the single rider lines has the potential to save a lot of time in line, although most of the time I was there the regular lines were so short that it wasn't worth it. Some rides which advertise a single rider line did not have them open at all when I rode because the wait was so short. But I did save a lot of time riding Dr Doom's Fearfall and Forbidden Journey in the single rider line. Note that the since the single rider lines skip most of the queue, you skip most of the backstory and any theming in the queue. This is particularly relevant for Forbidden Journey and Gringotts - I would recommend riding in the regular queue at least once for those rides.

Crowd Levels
Like Disney World, Universal Orlando was predicted to have low crowd levels while we were there. However, unlike at Disney World, the predictions at Universal Orlando were pretty accurate. A few individual rides (such as Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit) had wait times much longer than predicted. Like at Disney World, though, my touring plans still worked because I had generally planned to go on  the more popular rides first thing in the morning and save the busier parts of the day for shows and rides with consistent short waits.

I think that crowd level is a little more important at Universal Orlando than it is at Disney World because of the difference between FastPass and the Express Pass. At Disney World, a good touring plan using FastPass will avoid most long waits no matter what the crowd level is. At Universal Orlando, having an Express Pass will also avoid most long waits no matter what the crowd level is; but if the crowd level is low then the Express Pass is not necessary. However, it is possible to buy an Express Pass on the day if the crowd level does turn out to be higher than expected.

Touring Plans
Making a touring plan for Universal Orlando is more difficult than making one for Disney World because the opening hours change fairly last minute (in addition to the extremely last minute change to the early entry parks, the opening hours for my dates were shortened a month before my trip). In addition, show times are only released a week in advance, if at all.

Although I did make touring plans in advance on touringplans.com for Universal, I didn't put as much time into them as I did my plans for Disneyland and Disney World, and I made much more use of re-optimising my plans while in the parks.

Since for the most part wait times were low, my touring plans for Universal were more about avoiding waits at a few key attractions, minimising walking, and fitting in shows. With an Express Pass (especially in combination with Early Entry) there would have been even less need for a touring plan, although fitting in shows could still be a challenge.

Navigating the Parks
Finding my way around the Universal parks was generally quite simple, even though I wasn't nearly as familiar with them as with Disney World. Both parks are arranged around a lake, so for the most part there is one circular path around the park which takes you to most attractions. I never came across any paths that were blocked off and there was generally good signposting. It is also easy to walk between the two parks, as well as being able to take the Hogwarts Express between them.