re: Harry Potter world questions

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So basically get a 2-day park hopper pass + express pass and that will give you completely flexibility to do all HP stuff in those 2 days? Is there time left to do other stuff (and is there other stuff even worth doing)?

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I’d think if you have a 2 day pass + express pass you can easily do it all and have time for the rest. We did without the express pass.

Agree with previous poster that this can be done in a single day with express pass +park hopper. It makes for a long day but if you hit it hard it’s not that big of a deal. If you’re one of those food/rest break between every ride kinda people it would prob be a stretch. Wife and I did it all in one day a couple years ago and we didn’t leave feeling like we missed out on anything. If I had two days to do it I would prob slow my roll some and possibly not stay open to close/close to close so you’d actually feel like doing it that second day. Just my .02

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late October.

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Yes everything holds true. You may see a larger crowd only because of Halloween Horror Nights at the parks. I'm not sure of the dates you're going but I think it's most of October.

Halloween Horror Nights

Here is the link with more information. I would check on the dates just to make sure you can still get tickets. I've never been during this time so I'm not sure of what to expect. I did see that they will have death eaters roaming in Harry Potter world during this time so that should be something really cool you'll get to experience that you couldn't in the summer.

Stay at a premiere resort and get the unlimited express pass as your room key. Also the boat takes you from the resort to City Walk. Well worth the money. I would not do Universal any other way.

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Stay at a premiere resort and get the unlimited express pass as your room key. Also the boat takes you from the resort to City Walk. Well worth the money. I would not do Universal any other way.

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Can you say a bit more, please?

Today, I went to buy the 2-park back and forth pass, and they offered to take some money off if you booked one of the hotels. These were the choices:

Dockside Inn and Suites

Surfside Inn and Suites

Universal's Cabana Bay Beach Resort

Loews Sapphire Falls Resort

Loews Portofino Bay Hotel

That last one is the only one listed as "premiere". Are you saying the unlimited express pass comes as a perk of staying there, or literally just make sure they code my room key with my separate purchase of that?

Also, what's the relevance of the boat taking me to the City Walk?

TIA

(no message)

We prefer staying at Hard Rock. You still get the express pass and you can walk to both parks and City Walk without waiting for the water taxis

Just wanted to thank everyone in this thread as I got back from this trip late last night...and it was a huge success!

A few observations:

Velocicoaster is utterly badass - that section where you're on the straightaway going 40 and then they use linear induction to speed you up to 708 is awesome! In general, I find there to be a lot of linear induction at the parks.

A little bit bogus that Veloci and Hagrid's coaster aren't currently included in express pass. The lowest the app ever showed Hagrid going was 90 minutes - but I saw it as high as 180. That is preposterous. We only got to ride it once, but it was awesome! Veloci, on the other hand, seemed to consistently over-estimate the wait time (I wonder if this is on purpose?). If it said 55, we could ride it in like 25, even waiting for the front seat. VERY efficient.

I think I might spring for at least one day of VIP if I went again and Hagrid's was like that.

The Hulk - I think time has passed this one by. The ride itself is just too many inversions and not that enjoyable AND it was disabled several times sporadically.

The Gringott's "experience" is really, really good too.

Sneaky high quality ride is the Jurassic Park River Adventure. Not only does it really feel like the movie, but that final hill is one of the best in the park.

The one coaster over at Studios - Rip Rock Hollywood, or whatever - is very good also. I had literally never heard of this one prior.

The Halloween thing was OK - only went to one actual haunted house - The Weeknd's - and it was nothing special The overall atmosphere was cool though.

I was surprised at the assortment of adult beverages offered. Even so, I didn't see even a single instance of guest misbehavior over 3 days.

Is it my imagination or are these 2 Universal parks WAY LESS filled with fatties than Six Flags and the like? I actually saw A LOT of attractive females, which you almost never do at the other places.

Perhaps that was true because so many foreigners present? I would not be surprised if up to 30% of the guests were British - and very surprised if it were less than 10%. They were EVERYWHERE.

I guess since Universal is in-market with Disney, there is a lot of competitive pressure to have really clean parks? Because they were!

One of the best retail deals I partook in was the infinite refill water/soda collectible cups. $13.99 - I think I refilled it likely 20 times each day...which led to lots of bathroom visits and another observation: there are SHITLOADS of bathrooms!

I thought food was actually somewhat hard to come by, but the offerings weren't as junky as I would have assumed.

Again, thanks all!

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One tip I've had for many years and have passed down has been the 'single rider line'. MOST of the time it's open..unfortuenately for rides like Velocecoster, the single rider line sometimes can reach the wait times of the regular line. But for the not as popular rides like The Mummy, you can hop on and off pretty darn fast. I would even say 7/10 times I would get on the same coster as the wife and family...maybe not right next to them (on the same cart) but it made it super easy to keep everyone together after rides and easily hit all the rides multiple times.

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Yeah, the singles lines were a mixed bag (just my observation, I didn't actually use one). For the better rides, wasn't clear at all that there was a time gain.

I didn't do the Mummy or Transformers. The Mummy for some reason also wasn't allowing express.

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Did they have all the coasters operational during the night?

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Rip Rock (the only real coaster there) was open. However, I did not realize that my Halloween express pass only allowed ONE ride per attraction, so that was kind of a small print bummer also. But we rode Gringott's too during Halloween. Some stuff definitely was closed.

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I'm sure they at least did a decent job of decor and costumes?

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Yeah, great atmosphere. One other thing I'll say - they are REALLY committed to having shite dark when it's supposed to be dark. I was routinely surprised at how dark some of the indoor lines were - Kong, was a case in point. Outside during Halloween was dark too. They have like roving monsters and scary figures just walking around and they really do come up on you without you knowing it.