As the Express Passes give you “head of the line” priveleges at many of the UOR attractions, how important, REALLY, is a full day TP. I know you have to hit the HP attractions first thing, preferably during EE, but other than those attractions are lines really a problem with the ExPass? I will be coming off of 7 highly pre-planned WDW days, and would love to be able to have a more “unstructured” 2 days at UOR…
Hi @bswan. One of the greatest things about pairing an onsite Universal stay with a WDW vacation is the lack of planning at Uni compared to WDW. For our trip in April, I made TP’s for our 2 days, just to get an idea of times with the express pass. It does help for shows, as I wanted to see certain shows based on where I was in the park without back tracking. Other than for shows, and for plugging in Harry Potter first thing in the morning, they really are not necessary. I put so little time into the Uni planning, and way too much time into the WDW planning. We just work our way around each park, with no stressing about lines. Enjoy your lack of planning, you won’t need it 
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I was at UOR a couple weeks ago on a crowd level 10 with express passes and felt no need for a TP. Most everything had a very low wait time with the pass. DA needs to be first w EE plus arrival at the gates an hour before scheduled open time; suggest you return in the evening when the lines into DA should be non-existent and you can get the ‘nighttime feel’ of the land. And, Forbidden Journey has a single rider which was better later in the day. The trains- UOR doesn’t use the plural 
-wait fluctuated quite a bit (from no wait to 40min) so some thought should be given there. Everything else was gravy. PS The new-ish UOR app was helpful. I ‘liked’ the attractions/restaurants I wanted to see and ‘un-liked them’ as I experienced them: gave me a kind of Lines style check-list w/ show times, location-based and w/o the optimization.
I’ve done UOR with UX and without a plan. You don’t really need a plan. Our advice about when to visit the Potter attractions (afternoon) is useful.
Visit Potter in the afternoon???
Read our recently published touring plans on the blog but you don’t need to stick to them if you have express. Either do Diagon Alley 1st during early entry or save it for late afternoon, you can do just about everything else whenever you like.
Only issue with doing DA later is Escape will be long. Maybe single rider isn’t bad (assuming there is a single rider: didn’t notice myself as I walked onto Escape and- anyway- wanted to check out the lobby)? And, when I was there a couple weeks ago, DA itself wasn’t walk-on until some time in the early evening. Granted that was on a level 10 so guessing this will change when the kiddies go back to school. Didn’t see any wait times for DA on the UOR app. Is there something there? Unsure if TP has that info.
The wait for Gringotts peaks around opening time thanks to the rope drop rush, and slowly decreases during the day. There is a queue just to enter Diagon in the morning but you can now walk in by noon. Best time to go if you aren’t doing early entry is 4pm-7pm.
Totally makes sense. Think the line gets shut down some time in the evening before park close (depending on standby wait times). So, if the park closes at 10 and the wait is 2hrs at 8, they will cap the line at 8…or something like that. Although, if you’re with the rope and are first in line at the turnstiles, you can walk-on as I did.
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