This is our first trip to Universal. Me, kids 17, 14, 11.
Trip dates: Sat Aug 19 - depart on Aug 26. We have 3 park explorer tickets. Staying at Hard Rock, so we have UExp.
We are driving and will arrive somewhere between 10am - noon. I am assuming that the room will not be available.
The crowd level on this day is 7. With 5 1/2 days and UExp, I expect that doing everything we’d like to do will not be an issue. But having never been to Universal before, I’m having a hard time figuring out where to start. Since I won’t be there for rope drop, should I just skip the Harry Potter areas until the following day? Or hold off until the evening?
My daughter will want to go to Ollivanders --is that a good place to start?
Thanks for your help.
You’ll be fine! Now that they’ve added the Harry Potter rides to express pass, I would imaging you will be able to do whatever you want whenever you want. If the lines aren’t reasonable, then waiting until the evening is a good strategy. Ollivander’s is a great place to start. In Diagon Alley, the entrance to the “wand chooses the wizard” has a separate entrance to the side of the shop. It’s well worth doing.
1 Like
I would do olivanders at ropedrop the next morning. Avoid any queue. We were the only family in there last week and it was like a VIP experience all to ourselves.
On th first day I would do all the non Harry Potter to start with then go to one of them in the evening and do it well
Then whichever one you miss on first day go to that Harry Potter the next morning then train it to the other one and repeat all your favourite rides
Express past and the early entry makes universal and IOA so easy
Reason for olivanders first is everybody else heads for the rides and then does olivanders
And in olivanders they pick kids to take part an the less kids in there the more chance you kids will get picked
At the very least you miss the queues for it later in the morning. You can’t use express pass for olivanders as far as I know?
Whereas you can for the HP rides