11/11/2022
(Part 1) As promised, I wanted to share some things I learned from our recent trip to Florida!
I had such a great time with my mom and my 11 year old son. It was our second time visiting so we were a lot more aware of how things worked this time.
So, I wanted to share a few pointers from our trip in hopes of helping out anyone who plans to travel to Universal Studios in the future!
1. If you can, stay in a Universal Hotel. By staying at one of their hotels, you get one hour early access to the parks. This is huge for getting in line to the really big rides such as Hagrid and Velocicoaster (which can get up to 3 hour waits). The parks opened at 9 am, we were in line by 7:30 to get in to the parks and we headed straight for Hagrid.
2. If you can afford it, stay at one of the three main Universal hotels - Loews Portofino, Loews Royal Pacific, or Hard Rock. We stayed at the Royal Pacific and it was amazing! The reason I recommend this is because if you stay at one of these three resorts, each guest receives an express pass. This is basically a “get to the front of the line” pass. It works on almost every ride in the parks (except Hagrid and Velocicoaster, sadly). Besides these two rides, we never waited more than 15 minutes to get on a ride! We were able to get on a ride and immediately get back in line quickly. Because the express passes cost $129 each, it adds up quickly, however for the 3 of us staying at a Universal hotel, the cost of the room after factoring in our express passes was only about $60/night! SO worth it!
3. Get the park hopper. This allows you to go back and forth from the two parks as many times as you’d like and you get to ride the Hogwarts Express to get there. Going between the two parks otherwise is not easy as they have two totally separate entrances that are not close together. Getting the park hopper will save you so much time and so much walking!
4. Use the single riders line if at all possible. These lines move so fast! We didn’t use these lines too much because we wanted to ride together but a few times we decided to try the single riders and we got onto the rides literally within minutes.
