Yesterday, we succeeded at rope dropping Epic yesterday. We arrived at the parking garage at 7:44am. We were deciding which lane to pick, when they started turning on the green arrows and a green arrow lit on an empty lane. We were the first through the parking gate. The prepaid parking helped even though DH needed to search for his driver’s license. We got the best of regular parking. I had been wrong about them always parking far first in a row. The farther away side parks near first. In front of us was a priority parking group and a bus. DH needed to use the restroom so we got separated. On the escorted walk through the park some kids made a run for it. About 50 people shouted “Nooooooo!”. That brought them up quick. In the BatM queue we stopped at the far side of the room with the park benches being cleaned. At 9:30 they announced ride wouldn’t open until 11:00 am, so we bailed. Most people stayed.
We were deciding what to ride and we saw that Starracers had a short wait so went there. DD wanted to bail because “the line didn’t look that short.” I mandated that we go on that ride. She had really wanted to ride it she just wasn’t sure about the line. Turns out the people we saw were nonEA people like us and it was 10am as we got in line. We all loved that ride. I see many repeats in our future. We were off the ride a half hour after getting in.
The sun came out so we went to VB. It was jacket weather but predicted to be high 70’s.
That was so amazing! The person at the entry recommended we wait about an hour for the water coaster to let the sun heat the water. So we did the Fearless River, DD’s favorite. Then the water coaster. It was better than I remembered. And, get this, when we got off there was only three groups in line so we didn’t even go down the stairs we just in line behind them! My goal was 10 rides on the water coaster that day. We only did 9 but only because we all got hungry. Every ride was walk-on. We also did several rides on Moana and the one next to it. We left as they were closing and were exhausted. I forgot to mention. After our first three rides on the water coaster we went to the photo place to see our photos. That was a good thing since they took our photos for photo recognition. If you do that first photos pop up in your account. They said the system scans every half hour for matches.
That was daughter in the monster makeup experience. Well worth the price. DD missed out on the Disney Princess experience due to the lockdown. She was too old to be interested by when we went. She doesn’t feel she missed out since she could have done it. But this replacement was good for this mommy.
Overall description of our day. Plan was to do every ride at Epic we hadn’t done already, which was BotM and Frankenstein. Daughter had really wanted to do the Monster Makeup. We agreed to do that first so it would be in the photos. Of course this liner mommy was itching to rope drop a ride.
When we got there, other people already had reservations for the morning, but we got a 12:10pm reservation. So we rode werewolf and putzed around the area. I spend a lot of time at Epic looking like a Yokel on their first trip to NYC.
Werewolf looked a lot like Pandemium, which the family loves and I tolerate. But once we got on, it was more coaster and less spinny which made me happy.
After that we followed the touring plan. I optimized often and marked steps as complete as we went so it would know where we were.
As we entered Nintendo the newly optimized plan had Mine Cart Madness at the top with a 30-ish minute wait. I told the family we needed to hurry to that, which the family thought meant stop to get the bands out of the backpack but do it quickly. Our final wait was more than 60 but less than 100. Forget. Family was grumpy about the wait but I told them it had been 240 minutes everytime I looked. They couldn’t believe anyone would wait that long.
We all loved that ride. I spent half of it Whooping and the other half laughing.
Then we did Yoshi. There was a snot kid behind us who was out of control. At one point he stomped on my big toe which was already sore, and the Mom was mad at me because I screamed and scared her precious angel. Ride was beautiful. Somehow daughter and I missed the blue egg.
Then we ride the coaster in Berk. I don’t remember much about that. We decided to go back to the condo and rest. Went to Walmart on the way.
We wanted to ride Velicoaster and Hulk. We got there at 6:30pm. They wouldn’t let DD in! Because of the monster makeup. I told them it was done in a Universal park. They asked for a receipt but ended up being fine with a photo of her in the chair at the Monster Makeup place. The manager of the security said that they would let her in if she took off the makeup. He said it as if he was being gracious. Then he said “there might be some baby wipes in a vending machine”. He said that happened all the time. He wanted to give me the phone number for customer service. I knew that would just get a brushoff apology. So I went to guest services. DD, of course couldn’t go in, and DH stayed with her. They were very nice. They’d never had that problem come up but they realized it will start to happen a lot. I saw lots of conversing in groups and phone calls. They offered us each two express plus passes good on any ride. One for Epic and one for the other two parks. That seemed they something that would make DD happy. She hates lines. When I got back to them at security the security lady (not the manager) was talking to them. They’d heard from upper management to let us in.
So we walk in and learned that the park is closing in 10 minutes. So we decided to race to one of the rides, I didn’t even know which. DH went clockwise to the Velicoaster. He said he thought we would have to go through the HP area otherwise. We speed walked all the way around. We were on the second to last group sent out. We loved it. DH gave it a 9.5 on a 10 scale. Texas Giant at SFOT is a 8 for him. That place where you pause army the top and you can’t see the tracks. So cool.
@len tomorrow is our first 3-park one-use express passes. Do you have advice on which park to start at? I was thinking Epic, but data might say otherwise.
We’ve been undrepredicting Epic this week, so be prepared for higher than average crowds.
Over the holidays* Universal started switching over to an AI-based camera system that estimates the posted waits by looking at the standby line length and density. They also, I suspect, increased the number of Express Pass guests taken for each Standby guest in Epic’s lines.
*It’s mildly surprising that new projects like that started over Christmas.
We’ll probably need another week or so of data to see how this affects wait times, since this was Epic’s first Christmas and we don’t have anything to compare it to and thus gauge the difference.
I would suggest getting there as early as possible either way, and try to knock off some of the headliners first thing. And then wait out until evening for the others.
Ah, missed that part. Sorry. Ignore the “wait it out” part.
I think there’s still an advantage to using Express Pass early. I’m assuming that the Express Pass is like a “Get 80% off discount”, where you wait 20% of whatever the standby wait is. So if the SB wait is 20 minutes, you’ll wait 4; and if the SB wait is 100 you’ll wait 20.
I mention this because there was a thread on another site that argued the opposite, saying “But you’re saving 80 minutes versus 16.” There isn’t enough Pepcid on this ship, I’m telling you.
I just added a 2nd day of express to my AP Epic tickets. The price increased over the last two weeks and I expect it will continue to increase (April e press pass).
We are back in our room. DD feels a little miserable in the way of teen girls. Might go back to Epic later. Tomorrow is our first EP day.
We hit all our favorites in IOA. DD still loves Seussland atmosphere. Berk and Seussland are her top two.
Our TP said to start at Hulk. But it had just gone down. So we meandered to Spiderman. Still great.
Kong was next. Have they made improvements to the visuals in the last couple of years? It might be that I am just so happy everything has sparkles on it. Do you remember the Big Bang Theory episode where James Earl Jones played himself and totally geeked out on a ride with his legs swinging? I totally get him.
Then I think Velicoaster was next. Next time I need to watch for the raptors. Didn’t see a one.
I thought about saying Hi to Blue but line was longish.
Then we went to HP land and rode Forbidden Journey. DD thinks that is equal to BotM. We were going to use our EP’s at Hagrids but it had just gone down. So we ate at Green Eggs and Ham. We each got a different tator tot meal.
Then back to Hagrids. I asked the guy at Hagrids if there was a posted EP wait. He said it wouldn’t ever be more than a half hour
All our waits have were equal or less than predicted.
