4 year old in Universal

[Parkscope Joe]

Well the trip for Abby went well. She was scared the most on Gringotts, but said she liked how the dragon saved the day and she would ride it again. Transformers she was not scared at all. We never got to do Spiderman or Jurassic Park. The lines were insanely long, which shocked me being off season on a Tuesday.

I do question how everyone is against FP+ for inflating ride lines when Express does the same thing. Lines ranged from 45 minutes to 100 minutes. We mainly were in lines around the 45 minutes mark and while some were right on, some were a little less. Towards the end of the evening (after 5 PM) lines dropped to 25 minutes to 65 minutes. But outside of a couple rides my family didn't want to ride (Twister and Mummy) nothing was under 20 minutes even at the end of the evening. HE was even 25 to 60 minutes all day long. The 25 was around 5:30/6PM. I couldn't imagine going to Uni during the summer, spring break, or Christmas.

Issue with FP+ is with scheduling and keeping the line down. When you have schedules you can lose capacity. Both still artificially inflate wait times.

 

[IzzyB]

Issue with FP+ is with scheduling and keeping the line down. When you have schedules you can lose capacity. Both still artificially inflate wait times.

I realize with free and scheduling that there is a more consistent FP line vs there is less people and less consistent line with Uni's system. My point was why does no one ever get on Uni's case about their express system, because it does also inflate wait times. Neither system is ideal, but at least with Disney's system everyone can use it and you can ride more rides on a busy day than you can at Uni if you don't pay for express.

 

[Parkscope Joe]

I realize with free and scheduling that there is a more consistent FP line vs there is less people and less consistent line with Uni's system. My point was why does no one ever get on Uni's case about their express system, because it does also inflate wait times. Neither system is ideal, but at least with Disney's system everyone can use it and you can ride more rides on a busy day than you can at Uni if you don't pay for express.

I don't know if I agree with you can ride on more with free FP than Express. FP by design is not to get people on more rides, it's to get people in shops and restaurants. A big issue is the booking and availability.

 

[IzzyB]

I don't know if I agree with you can ride on more with free FP than Express. FP by design is not to get people on more rides, it's to get people in shops and restaurants. A big issue is the booking and availability.

You can get on more rides if you BUY express. But for the same money ($0 since FP+ is free), which means no express, on a busy day you can get on more rides at Disney. I can go into MK on a busy day and use FP+ to get on some key rides (Thunder Mountain, Peter Pan, and Splash Mountain) that have higher lines. Then fill this in with lower lines (under 3o minutes) all day like Haunted Mansion, tea cups, carousel, etc. Then use the last 2 hours of the park opening when lines in all parks go down to get in other things like Pooh, little mermaid, POTC, etc. So first 5 hours is FP+ and filler rides and then in the last 2 hours you can easily get in 4 or more rides. I am not joking when I say we were at Uni for 8+ hours and got to ride 5 things (2 of them are the train). We could have done a 5th at the end but my sister was tired. We did stop and eat once and got a quick snack (chips & butterbeer) along with a couple bathroom breaks. We could have probably got 2 (plus the 1 at the end) if they wanted to do a couple shorter lines like Mummy and Twister. But even at that we are talking 8 rides and 2 of those was the train each way so really 7 unique things.

The issue is Universal has less filler rides (c and d ticket) that have lower lines. Many of the rides never went below 45 minutes even at the end of the evening. So I think this is a product of lines being inflated by express, not being able to utilize express if you are going the free route, and not having smaller interesting filler rides.

 

[darkridelover]

You can get on more rides if you BUY express. But for the same money ($0 since FP+ is free), which means no express, on a busy day you can get on more rides at Disney. I can go into MK on a busy day and use FP+ to get on some key rides (Thunder Mountain, Peter Pan, and Splash Mountain) that have higher lines. Then fill this in with lower lines (under 3o minutes) all day like Haunted Mansion, tea cups, carousel, etc. Then use the last 2 hours of the park opening when lines in all parks go down to get in other things like Pooh, little mermaid, POTC, etc. So first 5 hours is FP+ and filler rides and then in the last 2 hours you can easily get in 4 or more rides. I am not joking when I say we were at Uni for 8+ hours and got to ride 5 things (2 of them are the train). We could have done a 5th at the end but my sister was tired. We did stop and eat once and got a quick snack (chips & butterbeer) along with a couple bathroom breaks. We could have probably got 2 (plus the 1 at the end) if they wanted to do a couple shorter lines like Mummy and Twister. But even at that we are talking 8 rides and 2 of those was the train each way so really 7 unique things.

The issue is Universal has less filler rides (c and d ticket) that have lower lines. Many of the rides never went below 45 minutes even at the end of the evening. So I think this is a product of lines being inflated by express, not being able to utilize express if you are going the free route, and not having smaller interesting filler rides.

You can't do that in Epcot or Hollywood Studios because you can only pick 1 fastpass for a major ride and 2 for minor rides. And if you don't reserve weeks ahead of time, good luck getting Soarin', Test Track or Toy story. FP+ works at the Magic Kingdom because they have a huge capacity. It doesn't work anywhere else unless you feel the need to plan every detail of your vacation down to the minute which I HATE to do!!!

 

[IzzyB]

You can't do that in Epcot or Hollywood Studios because you can only pick 1 fastpass for a major ride and 2 for minor rides. And if you don't reserve weeks ahead of time, good luck getting Soarin', Test Track or Toy story. FP+ works at the Magic Kingdom because they have a huge capacity. It doesn't work anywhere else unless you feel the need to plan every detail of your vacation down to the minute which I HATE to do!!!

Every time I reserve Fast Passes the night before I am going I am able to get what I want other than that stupid mine ride (and other stuff I would never do like the Anna and Elsa crap). Maybe I am lucky.

For HS you can get Toy Story, Star Tours, and ToT which are pretty big attractions for that park. You can't get the roller coaster, which for me isn't a big deal since my kid can't ride it yet. You can't do Belle or Fantasmic if you do Toy Story, but both of those shows are not impossible to get into as long as you show up in advance. But it isn't an hour wait or even 45 minutes. Belle you can get into normally 20 minutes in advance with no issues. And wow the great movie ride is in that category which seriously? That is a filler ride that you can easily walk on to at the end of the night or maybe a 10 minute wait.

For Epcot I will admit the Test Track and Soarin is a pain. However, I have noticed that Soarin goes down to 20 minutes or less at the end of the evening if you skip the fireworks. So I normally do Test track. Actually, I take advantage of child swap and we do both with FPs, but I realize not everyone has a child under 40 inches so you can't do that and one person get one and the other get the other one. Living with the land is a walk on or under 20 minutes so why that is even in that category amazes me Illuminations is silly too.

But with all of these I can at least get rid of one long wait ride in each park. For HS I would say you can get rid of 3 (Star Tours, Toy Story, ToT), MK 3 for sure, and Epcot 1. Animal Kingdom has no restrictions, but only has about 3 long wait lines (Safari, Rapids, and Everest) so that park you knock them all out. All you have to do is the night before pick your passes. I have even changed the day of for many of these and other than really high demand ones (Peter Pan, Toy Story, etc.) you can change the day of.