Universal Orlando sets 12-month attendance record

Add me to the list for this quarter starting Wednesday.

Despite this new found success, it's not impossible to visit in a slightly less busy time. Look for the lowest room rates in the hotels and the shortest park hours. We did this in January, and had walk-ons to Forbidden Journey later in the day. Not exaggerating.

I was there in mid-February and found really short waits if not walk-ons for everything. Forbidden Journey was down both evenings we were at the Islands park though, which was a pretty huge bummer. :(

Its really hit or miss at the parks. Now that I live here some days is extremely busy and others nothing at all. Forbidden Journey is still not 100% it goes down a ton and if its not down something is always not working 100%. Forbidden Journey is still really amazing but I still think Spiderman is a better ride.

I wonder if Disney World has benefited from this also or if it has hurt them. Meaning have more people come into the area and decided to go to Disney also while they were there or have people now shortened their stays at Disney and gone to Universal instead?

Jeff said:
Despite this new found success, it's not impossible to visit in a slightly less busy time. Look for the lowest room rates in the hotels and the shortest park hours. We did this in January, and had walk-ons to Forbidden Journey later in the day. Not exaggerating.

That was exactly our experience in the second week of February. I was able to ride Forbidden Journey four times throughout the day without waiting. Even when we did the "castle tour" option that is supposed to be queue-only they asked if we wanted to ride when we got the end of the line. Ollivander's was just about a one-show wait as well, so we did that twice.

It really is a matter of timing. We went mid-week and made sure to avoid President's Day week/weekend.

^^A recent earnings call had Iger essentially saying "rising tide lifts all boats". Tourism to Orlando is booming, and Disney believes they are getting enough of those visits.

I am curious to see how busy it will be next month when we go. We are staying on resort for FIVE days to kick back and relax. With fast passes for room keys we won't have to worry during the day, but at night for horror nights... We shall see.

^^ LOL, something tells me that Rowling and Potter have Universal's tide rising faster than anything happening at Disney (until the Fantasyland expansion is open for business).

"Rising tide" to me implies an economic recovery boosting tourism across-the-board...that's not what's happening here...