We’re looking at a bundle through undercover tourist - which we’ve not used before - that includes hotel, tickets, express pass for 3 days that’s cheaper than through universal direct (by about $400). We haven’t bought or used express passes before and it seems like for 2026 they will be only one time use if you get the 3 park. So I suppose that’s good for epic crowd control. Are we better off getting unlimited at UO and IOA and separate for Epic? It makes me nervous to commit to an express pass for epic beforehand given weather effects. I think you can buy day of but it’s more expensive? Lastly, for 2026 do we yet know if we can go park-to-park and use express pass at all three parks in one day? I know there’s no repeating rides in a day but one could go to epic all 3 evenings and use EP each time, correct? Lastly, I find the universal site a bit confusing about EP. Essentially as long as I buy a 3 day ticket and a 3 day EP and assign starting dates the same I should be fine, right? Thanks!
I faced this same choice and ultimately went with the 3-park one-time-per-ride. My thought process was that since I have park-to-park tickets, I could always hop to another park to use more once-per-ride EPs elsewhere, so it’s not like I would ever have to wait standby if I didn’t want to. If there’s a ride I want to ride more than once, I can make sure it hit it on successive days. For me this was cheaper than getting unlimited USF and IoA + Epic.
The Epic piece was the most important aspect for me – there’s not much benefit of unlimited rides at USF / IoA (other than Hagrid’s, and the EP line there is too long to do multiple times anyway).
If the option existed for unlimited everything, I might have done that for this first visit to Epic, but alas that was not the case.
Thanks! That all makes sense and happy to see a veteran is thinking the same about this.
How long is the Hagrid EP line averaging?
I don’t know, but I would assume at least 30 min. The regular line is getting up to 2+ hours.
It could be a lot more expensive if you wait until day of and it could be sold out. They are fairly reasonable right now for 26, but I watched EP for 25 rise quite a bit from the first time I priced it.
That seems to be the consensus. It helps that the few days we can make work next year seem to be a lower cost day. Hopefully that tracks with a low crowd day.
I got the same EP tickets from attractiontickets (another 3rd party seller) and I asked them that via email. They said that they can be used in all three parks on the same day.