We will be In Orlando Thanksgiving week. Our first Universal day is Thanksgiving day and we will be there 4 days, one of which will be at Epic Universe.
We cannot decide which day to do Epic. We will have Unlimited Express from our stay at Royal Pacific for the other days, but are not springing for the super expensive Epic Express pass. Crowd Calendars say a 5 for Thursday, then 7-8 Fri & Sat, then a 3 on Sunday. I’m torn on what day to do Epic. Thursday we will have gotten in very late and won’t likely be up for park opening schenanigans- more like 10:30 arrival, but if we want to capitalized on the lower crowd calendar predictions we could wait until our last day, Sunday, when it is predicted to be a 3, but then we will be most tired and have to be packed for an early departure the next day.
I can’t stop overthinking this! What would you do in this scenario?
This wasn’t precisely what you asked, but throwing out this idea.
You can get a 5-day one-use express pass good for all parks. Thanksgiving is of course super expensive, $698/pp at the US version of AttractionTickets. If you did that, you’d want to downgrade to a cheaper onsite hotel. But, you’d have express at Epic.
I would go on Sunday–I think many folks would leave to return to school/work after the break. I would think Friday/Saturday would be a mad house because they are most convenient.
Thursday would be my 2nd choice, even with the 10:30 arrival.
Epic wait times have been really good on Sundays. Since there is no AP yet, it is generally more out of town travelers and as mentioned above, people are usually either coming or going on Sunday.
The Express Pass you get by staying at Royal Pacific is unlimited but only for two parks. By unlimited it means that you can use it an unlimited amount of times on each ride that allows it. So, theoretically, you could spend an entire day riding Hagrid’s in the Express Pass line.
The one-use, multi-park, multi-day express pass gets you into the express pass line for each ride no more than once each day, but all three dry parks are included.
If your kids are the type to fall in love with a ride and then ride it about 10x, and if the type of ride they are likely to love is one with at least a long-ish line, then the Unlimited EP that comes with RP is probably best. I know my daughter circled through Spiderman about 10x one day. From what I’ve read about Epic, you can have a really awesome day at Epic even skipping the rides with super-long lines.
It sounds like I’m trying to talk you into staying with the RP plan. But, really, either plan would be awesome. We are going for the multi-day one-use EP’s for our trip. Except for Spiderman (DD) and Gringott’s (Me), we generally want to move onto the next thing.
I hemmed and hawed about which day to do Epic and we ended up choosing a Sunday because of the low crowds. I think it was worth it! I don’t know what the fall will bring though. If low crowds are you biggest goal, then I would do the Sunday. But I think you’ll have to make a judgement call about how hard it will be for your family to rest up ahead of Sunday and/or power through if needed.
We’re going to universal in the week of 11th to 18th October, and like you can’t decide which day to visit Epic. Thrill-data suggests that, consistently, Sundays are the quietest day; but the Touring Plans crowd calendar predicts that Sunday 12th is a 9, while Wednesday 15th is a 6 - the lowest crowd of the week. Does anyone know why that might be? I’m completely thrown!
Right now, TP’s prediction CL’s for EU are not great. They are sharing no data on past waits and current/past crowd levels. I guess they need many months of data to asign a past day with a CL.
And it’s most likely that TP is not adjusting the CC as the months go on.
I am still thinking Wednesday or Thursday of that week would be what I would choose. Hope that some people who maybe added a day to the long weekend are gone.
This weekend is also a 3 day weekend holiday here. I would watch to see what happens at Epic. I still believe that a Friday, Saturday or Sunday at Epic has the lower crowds because there are no Annual Passes right now and visits are limited to one day for most people with a package. Everyone here is not off for the October holiday. It is not as impactful as other holidays in my opinion. Thrill Data will provide a good idea of what it was like. Lots of unknowns.
Even Americans forget it. It is a minor holiday that only schools, banks and the government take off.
The Texas State Fair is a big deal for the Dallas area. Only way I can explain it as a Agricultural Theme Park that happens for 3 weeks a year. We like to go non-weekend when the crowds aren’t so much. I picked Columbus Day one year on accident. It was worse than weekend crowds and where DH parked the car (he’d dropped us at the gate), the parking tram drivers not only didn’t go to, they didn’t know existed.
I am not sure what that will do to Sunday.