FWIW, on my recent trip, I was able to take a bus from PBH, got dropped off at the main VB entrance, and went through security without waiting, then walked up to the taps with again no wait. We were inside before early entry officially started. Much easier than the last time, when there were multiple buses arriving at the same time and a huge backup, plus lines at the taps and concierge.
2 Likes
IME - It all depends on how prepared the security is at EPA. Some days they can get it open a couple minutes early / right on time before a pack of buses drop off the next rush of people!
Sometimes this queue stretches down a sidewalk that goes for soooo long! (also with no shade!)
Iâm gonna try the Aventura entrance on the first day as we arenât going to be rushing to get there. DD doesnât arrive to the hotel until midnight the evening before!
I love VB!!! If I could only fix one thing about it, it would be the main entrance. That area should be covered and have fans!!
2 Likes
I found posts from another board talking about one of the small structures with good detail, the one discussed here is at this purple circle.
You can see the concrete from this pic:
2 Likes
My spot, at the front of the park, maybe inconvenient if Iâm around the back. However, itâs close to food, drinks, toilets and even though there are a bunch of other chairs in the area itâs tucked away. It doesnât get direct sun at any time, so itâs nice for napping. I rarely encounter others, as most people are playing. When I do everyone is always friendly and polite!
2 Likes
I agree with her about the value of the preferred seating. It was cool to have it that one time, but I wouldnât pay what theyâre charging now (which is at least double what I paid in 2021).
2 Likes
Thanks to everyoneâs helpful maps we snagged this spot this morning. I thought it was great, not too far from anywhere we wanted to be, and my daughter loved that it was right next to an Icee refill spot 
I didnât use @darkmite2 âs tip about going through the VB hotel guest entrance. That seemed too complicated for us to deal with 
Getting up at 7 am today felt hard - this was our second morning here, and our body clocks havenât quite adapted so it still felt like 5 am for us since we came from Mountain time zone (plus we had a 3:30 am wake-up on Saturday to catch our flight here, and still working off that sleep deficit!). But getting the bus directly from the Hard Rock turned out really well. We caught the bus at 7:30, were dropped off and through security by 7:40, then waited a few minutes at the top of a ramp, then at 7:45 they let us past that point so we could go through the tunnel and up to the main entrance area. That was nice and shady, and we were there by 7:50, with just enough time to apply sunscreen before they started letting people in at 8 am. We were maybe 3 families back. And then a fairly easy stroll to that first purple circled shade structure, dumped our stuff, and a nice cast member directed us to get to Krakatau coaster by walking through the volcano. We had a walk on for our first ride on the coaster, then our second ride on it was a 15 minute wait, and then we moved on to other raft rides. Early entry was awesome, we had done so much by 10:30 am, by which point Krakatau had a 165 minute return time 
We had everything we wanted to do done by 3:30 pm, and that included a bunch of repeats on some favourite things.
Thanks for your tips everyone!
4 Likes
Sweet! FYI for others, this is what that spot looks like. Definitely a hidden gem!
3 Likes