A friend is honeymooning at the end of July, 1 day Universal and 1 day DHS, staying off-site before a non-Disney cruise. Park days will be 7/24 and 7/25 and I’d like to help her as much as possible. Main reason for visiting DHS is that fiancé is a SW fan, so RotR, MFSR, and ST (and possibly a visit to Oga’s) are priorities. But will likely also want to do SDD, ToT, RnRC, TSMM, and IJ.
I realize so much is up in the air with the LL changes but would love any help/insight I can get to help them have a great, successful day.
Some of my initial questions:
Which order would you suggest they do the parks, Universal on the 24th and DHS on the 25th or vice-versa?
Am I correct that they won’t have the opportunity to pre-book LL selections?
Are RotR ILLs readily available at park open for off-site guests? If they are available, how likely would a morning time be? I have no experience off-site.
With July 24 being the first day of the new Lightning Lane regime, there could be chaos, so maybe you want to avoid WDW that day? Plus, you could buy Multi Pass on the 24th (for the 25th) and pre-book some LLs for the 25th, and you’ll be at the head of the pre-booking pack along with everyone else?
Both of those sentences end with a question mark because I’m not 100 percent sure I’ve got that right.
They can look for an Oga’s ADR now. There’s tons of times. Even after park close ones which are the best. I see a 9:40PM ADR and the park closes at 9:00.
Rise is easy to do at the end of the night during Fantasmic with very little wait. I’d get in line for Rise around 8:50, walk around GE and then head to the 9:40ADR. There will be tons of people out with their light sabers at that time. It was cool to watch.
In that case on the 24th they could book Rise as a single LL at the same time as the multipass ones. And since you can choose your times now they can plan things around Ogas.
If Star Wars is the focus then I would suggest they book MFSR as their Tier 1 and Star Tours and one of the others as Tier 2., Also allow some time to explore Galaxy’s Edge, at least an hour.,
(1) I highly suspect that MFSR will be available as a second Tier 1 day-of LL as the MFSR LLs generally run out hours after SDD and RnRC under the current system. No guarantees, but I think it is worth the risk. If I could get SDD as the pre-booked Tier 1, I would do it. And if for some reason the LL wasn’t available day-of for MFSR, I’d feel much better about waiting stand-by for MFSR than SDD since the lines are generally shorter for MFSR.
(2) Same as above for Star Tours … I highly suspect plenty of LLs will be available day-of for this one. LLs are usually available all day for Star Tours (which give an indication of demand even though the current LL system is different). I would choose TSM and ToT as my Tier 2s.
But @CitrusSwirlGirl said that Star Wars is their main focus. So I was thinking that they should plan everything SW around Ogas, and then see about anything else in the park.
Was just there last week. We did RotR and MFSR without LL’s just fine. Once at rope-drop and once late afternoon/early evening. We had a 9:35 pm Oga’s and it was great, both because it didn’t take away from other activities and mostly because when you finally leave you walk through an empty but lit park. Star Tours lines are never very long, so no need to spend an LL on that.
The only way we rode SDD was with a LL. So even if it isn’t a top priority, it is hard to ride without an LL.
This is good intel, thanks. Did you do Fantasmic! before Oga’s? It’s listed at 9pm so wondering if that’s an option? I think they’d love going to Oga’s at the end of the night.
Here are Universal walt times for 7/1 (which is the most recent day with the same CL as predicted on the 24th/25th)… this could help them decide whether to buy Express or not. The predicted CL for either day is 7 at IoA and 9 at US.
If they’re looking at Express passes (which I would definitely do in a day that busy, if that was my only day) then if they have a Sam’s Club membership there’s a small discount when you buy them through Sam’s Club travel.
Also, the 24th is a slightly cheaper day for Express passes, so that works well with the plan to do DHS on the 25th.
Doing both parks in 1 day on a busy day I would not recommend unlimited Express passes… it will be a waste of the extra money unless they really only care to ride a few different things several times… the one time per ride will be plenty to get through in one day. Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure coaster DOES NOT have Express… all other major attractions do.
A few more Universal know-before-you-gos (copied from other things I’ve made, so using the Royal “You”):
a number of rides (Mummy, Hagrid, Velocicoaster, HP Forbidden Journey, Men In Black, Gringotts) do not allow anything that will not fit into a pocket or fanny pack (with plastic clip) into the line but have free lockers to store your things while you wait… 2 rides (Hulk and Rip Ride Rockit) make you store all loose articles before going through metal detection to enter the line… Velocicoaster has metal detectors, but their lockers are actually in the queue like at Tron.
if you want to ride the Hogwarts Express then you must have a park to park ticket
if you plan on using Uber to get to and from Universal, have them take you to Hard Rock or Royal Pacific hotel, and you can walk or take a boat from there, avoiding the long walk through the parking garages and big main security hub… it’s also much easier to get an Uber from one of the hotels than it is to deal with the crowd at the main hub
You can take your own water bottle and use the Coke Freestyle machines for free ice and filtered water
Just wanted to pop in here and update on how this went for my friend. It was a successful late arrival day with LLMP and LLSP. Just to note that because ALL LLMP/LLSP bookings opened the day before, there was an advantage in this instance of being off site which most won’t be able to take advantage of BUT while I was booking/modifying throughout the day, I did see a lot of availability pop up for everything, including SDD (I did not note any perceived drops or try to utilize drop times, I just did a lot of refreshing when I needed to find a specific ride or to move a time).
MPLL and SPLL (as well as handling all the LL booking/modifying was part of my wedding gift to them) so on Wed. at 7am I was able to book:
SPLL RotR 1:30p
MPLL TSMM 1:45p
MPLL SDD 2:30p
MPLL ToT 4:10p
They planned to arrive for a 1:10p Savi’s, had a 6:15 Oga’s and planned to leave after that (which stressed me out a bit).
They arrived a little early, around noon, stopped to rent a scooter, then popped into Muppets, grabbed a Bacardi Coke slushy and then headed to Savi’s. From there, they went to RotR at 1:50 and unfortunately it went down right before the got on (they got an MEP). So I sent them to TSL so I could book more MPLLs as soon as possible.
They tapped into TSMM at 2:30p and I was able to get them a MFSR @ 6:40p which I was able to modify to 5:10 (with a plan to return to Batuu and ride both rides before Oga’s.
Then they tapped into SDD at 2:45pm. I wanted RnRC for them but there was no availabilty (and it looked like the ride kept going down all day?) so I grabbed a ST with an immediate 3p RT.
They wanted to break for food so I modified that to 4p.
They also decided they were going to skip ToT so I modified that to a 5:15p MMRR (again unable to find RnRC) as a sort of placeholder/maybe ride (because they had limited time and were 2 adults, I didn’t include it in my plan).
They squeezed in RotR using the MEP and then tapped into ST @ 4:20p. I ferociously started refreshing to try to get them a RnRC because they wanted to ride. I’m not sure how long it took me to find it (an hour maybe?) but I finally found a 9:10p RnRC that I was able to modify down to 7:20p that they could use on their way out of the park after Oga’s.
They opted not to use MMRR and returned to Batuu and walked around a bit and took pictures. Then tapped into MFSR @ 5:30p before heading to Oga’s.
I had gotten them everything they needed and had to go to bed (I work overnights) so I sent a goodnight text at this point. I woke up and could see that they didn’t end up using RnRC MPLL. Ugh.
I feel like, overall this was a success and gives hope to off-siters and late arrivers to still get good LL availability and get a good amount accomplished.
