IOA in February advice needed...

My family is planning to take a trip down to IOA in february. We've never been there and need some help. Right now, it looks like we'll be going down the weekend before President's weekend.

Here's what we need help with...

Where to stay?
What are some good hotels to stay at, prices, etc. We have 6 peeps in our family. I hear you get frontline passes if you stay at Universal hotels, but will we really need them in feb.? What kind of lines can we expect if we hit the park on a thursday in feb.?

What rides should I be sure to go on?
Obviously, Hulk, Spidey, DD, JPRiver Ride, what else?

We're also considering doing SeaWorld. Can you really spend an entire day at SeaWorld?

We stayed at Hard Rock Hotel in February, but the only ride we used our front of the line priveledges on was Spiderman. So you could stay somewhere cheaper w/o a problem. The rides that you do not have listed that you should ride are the drop ride in Marvel area (forget the name of it), Bilge Rat Barges, Ripsaw Falls, and make sure you see the Posideons Fury attraction. It is really, really cool.

About SeaWorld, if it was any other Seaworld I would say no. But since it is SeaWorld Florida, yes. You could ride Kraken all day if you wanted to! They have a lot of other shows and crap like that as well.

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The Pens will win the Stanley Cup in 2002!

The "front of the line access" is pretty dumb. Here is my tried-and-true(tm) IOA strategy:

Like always, get there before anyone else. You will have to wait but it will pay off in the long run. Run (and I mean RUN) to Hulk and get front seat. While front seat is not the best seat on the train, the line gets rather long for this during the day. Next, RUN to Spidey. This should also be a walk-on. After this, run part way and jog the rest of the way back to DD, but hit FU(nice accronymm) on the way. Reride untill you get sick of DD. Next, hit up the 3 water rides. This should take aboot 1-1.5 hours.

Here is how the strategy worked out for us:

We ran and Bigg Monsta Mott jumped over kids to get us first ride of the day in front row on Hulk. After this, we jogged it over to Spidey. No wait at all. Then we ran back to DD stopping at FU. This is where the greatness came into play: in an Alpie like fashion, we were the only 3 people in the station (myself, Chris, and Bigg Monsta). We first rode front in both coasters, then back of both coaster, then middle, then back. We were treated to the "secret door" reride line. We then walked to the water rides and were then againe treated to walk-ons.

Now for a few tips:

FIRE is much better than Ice, the best seat is either back right or back left.

Backseat is the best row for Hulk.

FU hurts if you are remotely tall (Chris and I are 6' and Bigg Mott is 6'5).

No matter what, they will NOT let you ride PF.

Lines for water rides are best at night and early on.

Take advantage of squirting morons w/ water: Camp Jurassic and that big ship both have water cannons (FREE!) We spent 2 hours at each.

Visit the talking fountain.

DDFF is a small and pretty crappy freefall. We had our longest wait of the day for it (35 min) and it was not worth it.

Carousseusel is the best merry-go-round. We rode it 8 times that day.

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100% born-and-raised-Yankee-Hater

Sorry for the long post, I just LOVE IOA!

How long are you planning on being in orlando?? We are leaving a week from tomorrow and found that for less than it costs to stay at one of the on-site hotels, we were able to rent a 3 br/2ba house less than 5 miles from disney that included a private swimming pool, family room with a pool table and a 2 car garage. With a large group, this is the only way to go. Feel free to email me if you would like more details, I'll be happy to help and tell you about the property we are staying in.

Jason