We are at Universal Dec 27-29 with 3 day park to park passes. The forecast is for Highs in the mid 70s and partly cloudy. I know we will get soaked on water rides. Plan to do EE and our TP shows Forbidden Journey, Hippogriff, skull island, hulk, spiderman, 3 water rides, all done by 9:15 am. With the crowd levels at 10 is this TP really realistic? If so, the plan shows we have time to return to hotel (Royal Pacific) to change after water rides. This is our first time at Universal and we have used TP successfully at WDW with high crowds. Just wanted to seek your thoughts. Any advice on water rides, time of day, going back to hotel, etc considering crowd levels is appreciated.
Even with EP, fitting all of that in by 9:15 seems quite ambitious, especially with those crowd levels. Just putting your things in the lockers at FJ and Hulk could kill 15 minutes.
When we do the water rides, we bring clothes and flip flops to change into to avoid having to go back to the hotel. There are lockers close to all three rides, and it’s only a couple of dollars. To me, it’s worth saving an hour, but YMMV.
The water rides - you will get wet, not just a little wet, you will get WET. The Dudly Do Right Falls and Popeye are wonderful rides - but you will get soaked. We planned all the rides together and then went back to the hotel for the day.
So the thought of changing etc is a GREAT idea.
The only thing is - the rides are at the back of the park - so you have to walk all the way to the front for the boat.
Regardless of what it does to you plan - GO BACK AND CHANGE. Unless you don’t mind having soggy underwear and wet shoes.
During a 7:00 AM EE at DL I once rede everything in FL and half of TL in slightly over an hour, so I suppose anything’s possible - but that was on a CL3 day. If you have the Express Pass you might be able to do it, but it sounds pretty ambitious to me.
On Dudley, I’ve ridden it and sometimes escaped with “heavily splashed” viced soaked. Bluto’s Barges however… You might get less wet jumping in the river for a swim…
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Thank you all for the replies. I agree that those rides in that amount of time is ambitious. Did I do something incorrect with my touring plan? I copied the 2 day 2 park plan, entered our start time and end time, indicated express pass, chose the date (which I know is CL 10), then I clicked EVALUATE. The times given were for those rides in those 2 hours.
Post a link to your plan and we’ll take a look!
With a 7:00 EE, my guess is that the plan is counting on the vast majority of guests not showing up that early, and those that show up at rope drop will run to Hogsmeade, which you will have already covered. I still think it’s ambitious, but it could be doable if you high-tail it from one attraction to the next.
If it’s a 7:00 AM EE at Universal, then getting what you listed done in 2 hours, 15 minutes is somewhat reasonable. If it’s an 8:00 EE (which what I had been assuming when I made my first post), it would be very difficult.
We are going to try it. Will try to let everyone know how it goes when we return!
Just wanted to update you all on how the water rides/return to hotel thing worked. We did have EE at IOA 7:00 am opening for that. We arrived by 6:30. We experienced HP Forbidden Journey 2 times, got some butterbeer, then Reign of Kong, Hulk (only one of us rode but he waited to be in front row), and Spiderman. It was about 70 degrees and cloudy. I had a poncho and flip flops in my bag, the kids just wore their swim trunks and changed to flip flops. My DH held onto the bag, extra shoes and hoodies while myself and the 2 boys rode JP River Adventure, Ripsaw Falls (kids rode twice) and Bilge Rat Barges. We dried off enough to put tennis shoes back on and got water taxi back to hotel for a couple hours rest and showers. We were back at hotel by 10:30 I think. It worked out well. The kids were cold since they did get soaked. I remained pretty dry but I had a heavy duty poncho. This would not have worked without EE and Express Passes. We definitely needed to go back and change/shower. The water on one of these rides really did smell!
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Thanks for the update! I believe it’s the JP River Adventure that has the funky water. 