I just invited you to the planning thread.
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It’s that Saturday time again! Here’s the update:
As usual, all the data is taken from the hard-working folks at Touring Plans. Left axis is Universal’s average posted wait time at that time of day, while the right axis is the percent of days on which the ride was open and operating at that time.
This was a rougher week for Hagrid’s in terms of opening with the park. The ride was only up right at park opening on one day, Monday the 4th. Yesterday, it didn’t open until almost 2:30pm! The other days saw the ride open between roughly 9:30 & 10am. Saturdays & days when IOA closes at 6pm continued to see Hagrid’s open later than the posted 3pm cut-off time.
Because of the fall-off in morning reliability, while I’d still say that rope drop and ~1pm are the best slots to ride in, I’d recommend the later time more than rope drop right now. To rope drop you are probably going to be arriving at the IOA gates around 8am. If Hagrid’s doesn’t open until 10am (as on 3 out of 7 days this week), that’s a two hour wait (plus however long it takes you to get on the ride after it opens). And that two+ hour wait includes one hour of park time right at rope drop, when lines are short everywhere else. On the other hand, Hagrid’s posted wait reliably drops to 120 minutes or less in early afternoon. If you jump in line with a 120 minute posted wait, most liners have been reporting actual waits of 60-90 minutes. So you’re spending roughly the same total amount of park time in line, but at a time of day when you’re not forgoing your chance for short waits (or uncrowded spell-casting) elsewhere in the park.
Based on the trend the last few weeks, I would probably use my early morning time for something more reliable (especially if you don’t have express passes!), and keep on eye on the posted wait for Hagrid’s. When it drops to 120 minutes, head over and get in line.
Good luck to anyone riding this week!
Also – I am out of town to attend a friend’s wedding next weekend, so the next update will be the 23rd. 
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2.30?! It as just not getting more reliable is it?
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No, it’s really not. Overall daily uptime percentage has been pretty flat over the past month/6 weeks too — not getting worse but not getting better really either. The only thing that has (almost entirely) ended is multi-hour shutdowns during the operating day. So once it’s open these days it mostly steadily stays open until it shuts for the night. Not so much up-and-down.
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That’s something!
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We don’t like doing early mornings (the time change is hard on us), so I’m almost relieved to see that I’m not missing out on anything special by missing Rope Drop! LOL
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Somehow we lucked out this past Saturday and it did open with the park. But despite being only 8 back from the tapstiles (is that what they are called at Universal? It was our first time!), we ended up with a 45 minute wait. The number of folks who passed us, many all out sprinting, was HUGE! My poor legs just couldn’t keep up. And then the locker debacle was another delay. In the end, I was grateful it was only 45 minutes but it was not a pleasant way to start a vacation (the process of getting there, not the ride…the ride was absolutely AMAZING and is our new favorite ride).
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It’s fab isn’t it!
Had to think about what you meant, then realised I’d blocked out that memory for a reason! What a tiny crowded little building that was…and basically impossible to complete the trip without either hitting someone or being hit by someone with an errant locker door or elbow - especially if on a corner. All while everyone is rushing to get into the line!
At least they are the fingerprint lockers, IIRC? We didn’t like the barcode scanning ones as our increasingly wet tickets started falling apart after a few locker trips. Especially didn’t like that DDRRF has no free ones at all!
But anyway, back to Hagrid’s 
Glad you had fun!
Do you know if all of the lockers are back to fingerprint, or are some still barcode?
At Hagrid’s or in general? Certainly there are barcode-based ones at RRR, EfG and TM at USF, plus DDRRF at IoA, and fingerprint ones at TFJ and I think Hagrid, but I can’t remember for certain what the remaining rides used, sorry! But I’m sure both types are in use if that helps at all?
Yeah, I was asking for in general, not just Hagrid. It was just confusing to me why we have everything put in a locker, but we have to make sure to have our ticket out so you can get everything out of the locker. What if your ticket falls out or something when your riding, lol?
It’s definitely a mix of fingerprints and barcodes. My favorite (sarcasm) was at Gringotts where we used the fingerprint, it popped the locker and the person next to us accidentally elbowed it closed while emptying their locker and we couldn’t reopen. Had to find 2 different locker attendants to open it. 
I used a running belt for bypassing the lockers at Hagrid’s (and all universal rides, since I didn’t go on Hulk or RRR), it was totally worth it! Specially when we caught Hagrid reopening during the day, we were able to skip 90% of the people who were waiting.
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Yeah…we locked ours in on RRR, was inevitably going to happen as I was keeping it in my wallet. We had to describe what was in the locker before the CM opened it, she then verified and then had us scan the retrieved ticket to double-check. I’m amazed we managed to do this only once 
Edit: sorry for my part in turning this into “Tracking Hagrid’s Locker opening problems”…
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Thought this article was very interesting:
The Disney v Universal framing annoys me somewhat, but the numbers on monthly downtime for Hagrid’s are great to see. 41% downtime in October! Yikes!
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Disappointing that they are still having so much downtime and problems. I thought for sure they’d have it all worked out long before our Spring Break trip…now I’m wondering if this ride will always be “flaky” and impossible to plan around.
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I would just like to say that this darn ride has taken over my subconscious. I actually had a dream the other night that I was in the line for this ride. But not the real line. In my dream the line was in a covered plaza, with a bathroom and snack vendors and trees and it was beautiful. The line was fairly empty, but I kept walking and walking and never seemed to get to the ride. Then my alarm went off. I never got on it! 
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You are going to get on it during your trip though!!
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