Any good sources of info for Universal Studios?

[Ayeegit]

Searched around a bit for some active forums, but not having any luck. We'll be there next week, so was hoping for some "tips & tricks" types of reading I might find in the meantime, to prepare for trying to do as much as we can in a single day...

 

[Ross Kratter]

It’s actually fairly easy to get everything done in that park in one day. There’s not nearly as much to it as Universal Orlando. If you’re going on a weekday, you most likely won’t need Express.

 

[Steven G]

The general plan is to do the lower lot first, then the studio tour, then the rest of the park. if Harry Potter is a priority, then do that first instead. Harry Potter at night is pretty cool though.

don’t forget to see waterworld.

unless It’s a really busy day, you should be able to do everything.

 

[Tinkaboo]

We just came back from three days there. Stayed at the Hilton which was fabulous. If crowd is under 10,000, you don’t need to show your vaccine card. Two of the days were awesome, only about 4,000 people. Did all rides multiple times, at least the ones we wanted. Jurassic World is great, vastly improved from the one version. Didn’t care for Mummy ride, was sorta dumb.

Hogsmeade is amazing, if you’re a HP fan. There seemed to be two types of people there: those who were totally immersed in the world and people who just see it as a ride. Ollivanders is fun, some wizards will be better than others at the presentation. If you are a fan, the interactive wand is a must. I spent a couple of hours each day just playing around there! (Yep, I’m a geek.)

Food. Well, that’s another subject. If you go to Cletus Chicken Shack, get the regular fried chicken, The chicken sandwich was like rubber! Avoid the shepherds pie at Three Broomsticks, especially if you’ve ever had it. This tastes like Campbell vegetable beef soup with mashed potatoes on top. However, they offered a Holiday special which was not on the menu, with turkey, dressing, candied carrots and other veggies that was quite good.

Third day, we gave up on park food and went for burgers at Johnny Rockets, which was good, mostly because it was fresh cooked and not off a steam table.

Bought treats from Honeydukes which were very expensive. Cotton candy was $9 which I refused to pay for three spoons of sugar…lol.

All in all, I’m happy that we chose to go there rather than Disneyland. I felt safe, not crowded, the price was right, and it was just as Christmas-y as DL.

Hope this helps…have fun!

 

[Tinkaboo]

Oh..I forgot. Make sure to stop and watch Donkey interact with the crowd…that guy was a hoot!

 

[Tinkaboo]

Oh, one more thing. I was really disappointed that there were no paper maps. The only source of info is the app, which I thought was lacking in detail. But they broadcast stuff everywhere about using the app. Thank goodness it’s small but many times I was really jus5 guessing as to where something was located.

 

[colormegreen]

It’s very small and if you don’t mind single rider it can be done in a day. We went on Dec. 11th a Saturday and rode everything plus interacted with grinch. We did the studio stout first, but did not know it was a 40 minute tour. My recommendation is do the lower lot first and then the Simpson and tour.
If Harry Potter is priority you can go there first, but we did single rider for one and it was worth it. It was about 10 minutes at 4pm but standby line was about 90 minutes. We didn’t pay for their version of fast pass and it wouldn’t have been worth it.

Get the app because the pets ride I believe has a virtual queue. food was bad worse then others I’d say, but we didn’t want to lose time exiting the park to eat at city walk as we only had a day.
By the way, we were asked to have our vaccine or negative test with ID.