Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure vs Early Park Admission

So, just weighing in to say that I personally would plan to ride Hagrid’s once, consider twice a bonus, and not plan to rope drop it every day of a Universal stay, especially not with kids.

Best case scenario, between getting at the gates at least an hour (more like 90 minutes) before park opening, you’ve just spent 60-90 minutes standing in line. For a 9 am opening, you’d want to be at the gates at something closer to 7:30, not 8, and would need to account for walking or transportation and security to do that, so every bit of being up by 7 am.

Some people have been on and off the ride in something like 30-45 minutes after getting to the official queue, some have spent many additional hours in line after park opening. It’s unpredictable based upon weather and maintenance needs. I would not expect to have the same results each day of your vacation in terms of wait times.

It’s one of those things that you might have the stamina and excitement to do once, but there’s just no way I could rope my kiddo into that much line-standing several days in a row. Ymmv.

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Also at the moment, Hagrids doesn’t always open at park opening.

When it is open, they are only riding at half capacity… if the kinks of this ride get worked out, wait times are going to be low. I’ll be checking it out in feb. 2020

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Thanks manateesmom, I really appreciated you taking time to share your two cents on the subject, you come across as practical when it comes to sacrifices vs rewards and very caring about the comfortably of the kids.

We are always aware of how much we can push the kids to make sure that they are always enjoying themselves, for example at Disney World last Christmas, we were waking them up with my crazy strategy at 6 am, twice for magic kingdom and once for animal kingdom, we were taking an Uber and showing up at the gates of the parks before the extra magic hour busses got three, pretty much before everyone else, for Epcot we had another two days so we took it easy, but we were going to bed at 7:30pm and by 10am we took it super easy, did our fast passes and before 12pm, we were pretty much done all of the best rides and repeated our favourites 2 or 3 times over, with virtually no lines. When it comes to rides there was nothing else to do but to look around and wait to see the night shows, almost everyday we just took an Uber back to the hotel by 2 or 3 pm, even though there was free transportation, but we wanted to compensate for the early rise.

So on these Universal parks we are going to take it easy and even if we rope drop a few times, we will be waking up at 7 am which is normal time for our kids not matter the day of the week, we wish they didn’t wake up so early on the weekends but it is what it is. We will be coming back to the hotel, take naps and relax before coming back again, thanks to unlimited fast passes there is not rush :slight_smile:

We were there 3 days, ropedropped it on our first morning arriving at 7.39 and back at the locker to get our bags at 9.59. The other 2 mornings we did early entry at VB and US. I wanted to ride it again but we never saw the wait drop below 180 and we just weren’t willing to risk it, especially as we had loads of rain.

I agree with you that I would aim for once - probably twice with 5 days. And getting up at 7 isn’t early enough to rope drop it with a short wait, even assuming that it actually opens with the park.

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Thanks for the reply missoverexcited,

We are staying at the Royal Pacific so is a very short walk to IOA, my wife and I always prepared everything the night before, we get up at 6:30am get ready and just before 7 wake the kids up, get them ready and out the door, we should be at the gates by 7:30 am not problem.

Oh if you’re already up and ready that does make it easier.

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The day we’ll arrive we are not entering the parks, so I’m going to check with security at what time do the first people show up at the gates and wherever that is we will be there first. I just want to do the ride the first day to see if we want to keep rope dropping for it. Knowing my kids love for fast rollercoasters, I think we will.

But people in this forum have tested that it doesn’t make any difference to show up earlier than 7:30am, this is why I keep saying 7:30am.

Yes 7.30 is about right. There were about 50 people there when we arrived (7th Aug) just before 7.40 but after us people were constantly arriving, the crowd built up very fast.

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