Plans for 2 & 1/2 days in US/IoA?

Hi. We transfer from Disney to Cabana Bay Beach on Fri 4th Aug then planning on 1 day at US and 1 at IoA over the weekend before DC & SeaWorld. Any suggestions as to what to do on the transfer day please, given it will probably be mid-afternoon before we get there?

Was thinking of checking our bags and hitting US to do Diagon Alley, Ollivanders, Hogwarts Express, Gringotts before dinners in Leaky Cauldron then Cinematic Spectacular. This then frees up more time on the full day in US. What do people think? Will the crowds have died down a bit by then to do this?

As a huge Harry Potter fan, I like to dedicate a large chunk of time to just Harry Potter things. If you have only single park tickets, I think your plan to spend your half day doing everything in Diagon Alley is a good one. If you have park to park tickets, depending on how much time you have, you could do Diagon Alley and then head over to Hogsmeade.

Thanks. We do have park to park tickets and early entry whilst we’re in Cabana Bay. If we go to Hogsmeade it might be a quick visit that afternoon as we can do it again and spend more time when we’re in IoA.

You may also want to consider doing Volcano Bay as it is right by Cabana Bay. If you are buying wands getting them on your half day and then using the extra time the next day just to use them in Hogsmead is a good use of time, too.

we have 2.5 days at Christmas and can’t decide to include Volcano Bay. Will depend on the weather but December 2015 at DW the weather was 80+ and sunny daily! So thinking the water park would be great. Just not sure if enough time.

Are you staying onsite ? If so, where? My thought is if you have express pass and don’t care to do repeats, you might want to check out Volcano Bay. If you don’t have express pass, or want to be able to enjoy the rides and shows multiple times, I would personally skip volcano Bay with only 2.5 days around Christmas.

We just finished our Universal trip and stayed at the Hard Rock. It is the busiest season and even with the hour early opening, we were frustrated at Volcano Bay as we did not get many rides in. They were not accepting Express pass yet and we had a lot of issues with our Tapu Tapu. We arrived at 8:15 and then spent 20 minutes trying to find a locker and a place to claim as ours for the day, We then went on the family tube ride only to stand in line for 25 minutes as they were having issues and then another 25 minutes of wait time in line. ,
Most rides had 90-230 minutes wait after that.

I know it is early in the park operation so I would hope that by December they would have a lot of the glitches worked out but if I had 2.5 days, I might follow the previous suggestion and just use it for US/IoA

We are staying at portofino but arrive around 10 the first day after getting off a cruise. Will try to walk off ASAP but have other family with us.

I had a day planned for us at volcano bay for our recent trip but the terrible reviews for all the queueing put us off entirely and we gave it a miss

They seriously need to improve things there based on the reviews

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