Help! 2 Day / 2 Park Ideas

The more I read, the more confused I get. We will be at USF/IOA for two days - March 2 and 3, our first time. Staying offsite, so no EE, but have EP. Have two teens, but no one is a HP freak, although we want to hit the highlights. We’ll skip Dr. Seuss, Simpsons, and the shows, but want to do most of the rides.

Although the book suggests that going back and forth between the parks is a good strategy, I’m afraid that I need more experience to pull that off since the multi park touring plans don’t work like the single park plans and I have no idea how to group the rides.

Some questions:

Does the basic 2 day / 2 park plan work ok? My other thought was to do two single day single park plans, optimize them, and then just do half each day.

Without EE, should we still go directly to HP at opening, or is that already too late?

We want to lunch at Mythos one day, and CityWalk the other. How long should we plan for that?

Other suggestions?

For us the only REAL reason to have park hopper was to do Hogwarts express - but it is NICE to have. Unlike WDW the parks are right next to each other so there isn’t the travel time.

YES - hit HP first. Even if you aren’t a fan - you will be blown away by the detail and theaming and the rides are pretty good.

I do have to say Simpsons is fun and Seuss landings is fun to at least walk through - although no must do rides for sure

IMHO - I wouldn’t worry about a plan. With EE you can be lead by your nose a bit. We ended up doing MIB 3 times in a row as we had EE and we liked it - we then moved onto the next thing.

Only suggestion is - if you are doing the Water rides (which are all grouped together on the one side) save them for the end of the day when you are ready to leave so you don’t go around wet all day - you WILL be wet for sure

Mythos is nice - nothing fancy but certainly a set up from regular park faire and no more expensive in our experience. I would however go there before or after the lunch crowd. We went around 11:30 and walked right in - when we left there was a long wait. The service was good but a bit slow but well worth it so we could sit and relax for a few minutes

Download the LINES app for Universal - it is a great help.

We did NO planning while at Universal and things couldn’t have worked out better. We did hit HP at EE. What you MIGHT want to do is find out what side has EE and then go to the OTHER one and hit the HP on the side that doesn’t open early

Thanks for the tips, especially the one about going to the park opposite EE. Since we won’t have EE, that sounds like a great way to see the HP things. I’ve also added the Simpsons ride back in.

I’m really happy to hear that a plan isn’t absolutely necessary. I’ll just use the TP basic one just as a guide, and won’t stress.

Mythos was a nice break for us. Suggest getting reservation ahead. We didn’t back in June and only got to eat there due to a cancellation. We are traveling in mid Feb and I booked our reservation last night. Next week was already filling up with low crowds expected early in week.

Parks are Very easy to walk between. We were there with level 9 crowds and no EP. Just a little attention to the lines app did the trick for us. Our longest line was 45 min. We did 4 days, but we also took a four to five hour swim/nap break every day.

Have a great weekend !

The Simpson’s ride was fun. Kang & Kodos’ Twirl n Hurl was actually a lot of fun and got some great pictures of the family on it. YES it is a simple “Dumbo” ride - but we loved it due to the silly theaming. I am militant about following a plan in WDW - and with Universal - the thing I liked about it was that with the EE you didn’t need to follow a plan at ALL. We made some missteps for sure - but we are still alive. Don’t waste time with Shrek 4D as you enter in the morning. EE it later in the day.

My Universal experience is somewhat dated so I’ll leave most of your questions for others to answer, but with regards to dining time it’s pretty much like any sit-down restaurant. If you’re just going to sit down, order and entree and leave, you might be done in as little as 45 min. If you have a drink, app, entree, and dessert it might take 90 min. This doesn’t take into account time spent waiting for a table. As a general rule of thumb, I typically plan 60 min for lunch and 90 min for dinner. I give “signature” dining at least 2 hours.