Hello all, if I have UEP for IOA is early entry worth it to ride Hagrids? Looking at a customised plan it suggests I can ride Hagrids with a 10 mins wait with express pass? Can this be believed or should I consider lining up for early park entry to make sure? Ideally I would like the time back to chill and have a steady start to a busy day!
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I haven’t been since Hagrids became LL but I am planning on showing up at noon (parks close at 10pm when I’m there) cuz I prefer late nights and nighttime rides on rollercoasters to early mornings and I cannot burn it on both ends three days in a row! We also have Express Pass all three days so I’m betting it won’t be more than 30 minutes in the EP line. 
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Also, I’m going in Dec in the most crowded week of the year, so I’ll try and report back and let you know how that goes…it looks like from another chat you’re going next year. I will be riding Hagrids twice on two separate days both with XP. The only park I’m doing early entry is Epic which we’re going 9am to 10pm on Christmas day followed by two sleep in days from noon to 10pm at the old parks starting in IOA on 12/26 (daytime ride of Hagrids) and USF on 12/27 (so this will be a nighttime ride of Hagrids). Therefore, I should be able to give you two different times of day answers to this question.
With express? Totally believable wait time if you rope drop it during EPA.
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Not the question you asked…but, I personally find Hagrid’s to be the best coaster attraction in all of Orlando. I mean, sure, GOTG is amazing, as is Velocicoaster (and I haven’t yet tried Stardust), but Hagrid’s has so many unique elements, and is accessible to a variety of folks, even those more scared of more intense coasters. It is a blast every time I ride it…so…riding it more than once in a day is an admirable goal.
So, have you considered forgoing additional sleep/rest in the morning, rope-dropping, and then using your UEP to ride it a SECOND time in the same day? 
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Sounds awesome. I’m very much looking forward to your real world field report. I’m debating if to do more than 1 early entry at Epic but I don’t want the stress of park hopping when they are not next door to each other. Not quite worked out how to approach Epic yet. Will you be having EP for there?
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Yes, I bought the 3 day XP good for one ride each at all three parks (so yes technically with this you could do a morning in Epic and then PM in the old parks and use it again on your full Epic day). But I had to move my trip last minute from 12/15-12/19 to 12/24-12/28 for a positive reason (my hubby got a new job and doesn’t want to take this much time off since he’s just starting in Nov since they also give the full week of Christmas to New Year’s off). I had two days in Epic but lost it when I had to make changes to our package because there are no single day Epic tickets left or even the 1-1 (1 day in old parks, 1 in Epic) the week of Christmas to New Years. So now we only get one day in Epic hence the rope drop to close.
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Joe, I went to look for past submitted wait times for Hagrid’s. Hoping to find not just standby waits, but express waits.
But as I scroll back to previous days, the submitted waits do not change. They are stuck on the first date I looked at.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong. You mind taking a peak sometime?
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let me shoot this to the web guys & gals
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I do not think we intend to share submitted wait times there from previous days, but I can see why you’d expect that based on the user interface. We’ll either fix that or make clear that we’re only showing same-day submissions in that part of the screen.
We do not have any recent submitted Universal Express queue waits; there’s not actually a way to time that right now in the app, so that’s not surprising.
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Thanks for your reply.
That’s interesting, I could have sworn that I backtracked in the past and could view daily submitted waits. (On the new website)
I just wonder what changed. On the old website, all waits were shared to the community. (I really miss those green dots on the graph) 
I was actually wondering that. I guess that changed with the new version of Lines.
Thanks for your time David.
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I will look to see what’s going with those submitted times. Sometimes individual data points are misleading, and there’s some benefit to us in keeping most of our submitted wait times private, but I honestly don’t recall what our original intent was with that page
We’re working on the app store review processes for an app update that (among other things) will let people time Universal Express queue waits again.
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I made an adjustment to the attraction pages so that it’s clear that today’s submitted wait times are what are displayed. You can change the date for the chart to see hourly averages , but changing the chart date does not impact the submitted wait times list.
It’s possible we’ll offer more data visualizations of wait times and forecasts in the future, and you might get something akin to the “green dots” of the past. We’ll likely ask for feedback on the forums about what people might want to see. The fact that you’re interested in seeing actual waits from past dates has been noted.
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…indicates I’m a data nerd 
Seriously though, I think there is more benefit to viewing Universal waits because they are sometimes far and few between.
I appreciate this!
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I am just looking at XP for Epic, we are coming over from the UK so difficult to gauge how to purchase and when. I am more than happy to have a look around the park for an afternoon to get a gauge of crowds before “pulling the trigger” for the XP for the final day of our Universal stay, but at the same time am not sure what to budget for. On our side the cost for our day currently is $411 per ticket for one day, is this high compared to what you guys in the States can get? Or is that what we should be budgeting for whenever and wherever we purchase?
Is this ticket plus XP or just XP? It would have been $250 for the Express Pass the day we went, but if you include the ticket $411 sounds exactly the same price.
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I booked the three day express that’s good for all parks cuz it was cheaper than the 1 day at epic plus ones for the old parks. I’ll have to go see if I can break it down because I booked a package. Our package for 4 nights 12/24-12/28 so a more expensive week at cabana Bay in the 2 bedroom volcano bay view suite with two days park to park tickets for old parks plus 1 day epic ticket plus the three day express pass for all three parks plus the 3 day photo package was $9450.30 for four adults. So $2362+ per person. Or $590/night per person.
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Epic XP has been increasing significantly as the visit day aporoaches. I would expect it to be at least double what you see currently if you wait until the week of. It can also sell out, especially day of.
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For my trip next week, Epic-only XP was something like $179 when I looked many months ago (more than 6 months) and was $300 when I looked a few days ago. (I didn’t buy it.)
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This is just for the XP (not unlimited, so only valid for one ride of each attraction). What month were you there?
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