Universal for Spring Break: Tips? Tricks? Secrets? Life Hacks? Cheat Codes?

metallik said:

Are we missing out on any other perks by skipping Universal Resort hotels? The Doubletree is ~100/night cheaper and the walk doesn't look much longer than from Universal's garages. Figure if it's raining we could uber or something.

Just a general easier time of things, more vacationy.

metallik said:
is it common to switch from one to the other midday, especially if seeking lower crowds?

Very common and essential if you want to experience the Hogwarts Express. Depending on how much it costs I'm not really sure Express is even worth it if you're only going to do a park per day. Just get there when they open and start with something other than Hagrid's and Velocicoaster. Do Dr Doom's Freefall, Spiderman, Kong, etc, first.

Interesting. Why wouldn’t you rope drop Velocicoaster or Hagrids?

Because there are 6 resort hotels worth of guests already there. After Xmas into New Years VC was 45 minutes mid-day, and Hagrid’s* night rides were 60. You can walk on the rides I mentioned in the time it would take you to get through Hagrid’s in the morning.

Express obviously changes things.

*Hagrid’s still doubles the actual wait time to account for delays so it was posted at 120

Not really related, but when WDW changed to offering all resort guests a 30 minute head start into all four parks each day, it absolutely ended the benefit to wake up and rope drop a Disney park. It's a much better deal for resort guests compared to just having one park a day for early entry that would always get overcrowded, but the days of being able to have a solid 60-90 minutes to get stuff done at Magic Kingdom right at 9am as a local are gone.

ApolloAndy said:

Interesting. Why wouldn’t you rope drop Velocicoaster or Hagrids?

Because I'm an adult visiting with a family that includes young children and there are already 40,000 other people there.

eightdotthree said:

Just get there when they open and start with something other than Hagrid's and Velocicoaster. Do Dr Doom's Freefall, Spiderman, Kong, etc, first.

Same advice if you are a resort guest, or is it worth the early entry time to grab a ride on Hagrid's or Velocicoaster?

I think it’s worth the early entry time. You can usually walk on Forbidden Journey and/ or Flight of the Hippogriff within that time as well. I don’t know if Velocicoaster is open for early entry now. One morning over Xmas it was and I got 2 rides in before the park officially opened and that was after walking into the park 10-15 minutes after early entry.

I usually stay on Major when I’m in Orlando whether I have Uni planned or not. A lot of people walk from that neighborhood of hotels, especially those close to the intersection. My hotel (the Clarion near Fridays) tells me that the walk is about 20 minutes. Hotels often offer shuttle service to the parks and drop off near the parking hub.
Once I ubered and it was a good way to get there but not so great going back. The car service pick up area was a cluster. There were a zillion people trying to find their car and it took forever.

After checking park hours (IOA get an extra hour Monday), we decided to get single-park tickets for IOA Monday with unlimited express passes, then got 2-park passes without express for Tues. IOA has more attractions that we're interested in, so we'll wear out the express on day 1, maybe grabbing rides on VC and Hagrids later in the day as discussion here indicates their queues shorten up towards closing. Tues we'll start with Studios, then take Hogwart's back to IOA once finished there to get some parting rides on VC and Hagrids (or anything we didn't get sick of Monday).

Can anyone confirm if Hagrids is truly exempt from express unlimited? The express pass purchase page lists Hagrids, Velocicoaster and Pteranodon as exempt, but if you go to the IOA rides and attractions page and toggle the express pass slider to "on" only VC and Pteranodon are removed from the list, Hagrids remains. I'm thinking the ride/attraction page is a mistake.

Thanks for the tips!

Ride the train the other direction as well.

Velocicoaster single rider line cycles open/closed as it has limited capacity/routing. Often times, you just wait around the entrance for 10 minutes, it opens (for a limited time until full) and you are on your way.

Same with the Hagrid's singles line. And even if the Hagrid's singles line stretches outside, it can still be 20 minutes or so.

We took a trip to Universal Orlando almost exactly 1 year ago. We went on Spring Break in 2021. I had most of the trip planned and changed hotels at the last minute to one of the resorts with the free express passes.

It is 100% worth the extra money per night to get the included express passes. Having those made the trip so much better, we rode everything that we wanted to ride multiple times in some cases, we just used rope drop to ride Hagrid's ride for 2 days since it wasn't included in the passes.

I was looking at purchasing the express pass for the 4 of us for a day or 2 and it would have cost more than the upgraded hotel plus we got the passes for the whole 4 days of the park admission!

That's partially why my visit last weekend wasn't great. When I lived elsewhere, I always stayed in a hotel with Express. When I had an AP, it was superdeluxe version that had the pass after 4. I literally saw some standby queues for the first time. I still can't stand the whole parking garage procession, the security cluster and crossing City Walk. It just feels like an ordeal before you even get into the park.