More thoughts:
Overall, today was a good experience. The only issues were understandable and will obviously be improved upon in a few days: more hand sanitizer, working out bugs with Virtual Queue, and more structure with temperature checking.
The locker procedures are great and should be kept once the pandemic is over. Having a queue for lockers at Hulk and Rockit makes it so much easier and quicker to access, and team members are doing a great job of sanitizing areas.
Hagrid might be the highest capacity ride in the resort at the moment. My train left the front and last row unseated (probably for sanitation), but the other 5 rows were in use. Of course, demand is still high for the ride, but it only took 10-15 minutes to get through the check-in and queue. It's the first time riding Hagrid hasn't been stressful!
I don't expect many changes to Virtual Queue. Keeping a handful of rides on the system is good for capacity as long as visitors can actually reserve times, which was a massive issue today that will hopefully be fixed soon. I'm predicting MIB to be added (see below), Kong to be removed (capacity is high enough in both the ride and queue), and FJ to switch between standby and VQ when needed like Mummy and Gringotts are. Mummy seems to be switching to VQ when standby hits 25-30 minutes. There isn't much space in the queue due to its layout and darkness, and the extended queue isn't that big either. Gringotts was inconsistent in when it switched, but outside of lines for lockers, there's still lots of queue space. FJ's biggest hurdle is the small lockers, but doing a variable approach could make it easier to get on the ride.
MIB has the biggest capacity hit. It had one of the longest waits this morning because one track wasn't operating and a lot of vehicles needed to be sanitized. Combined with the limitation of one party per vehicle, MIB has become unpredictable. Virtual Queue would help a lot here.
Hagrid might be the highest capacity ride in the resort at the moment. My train left the front and last row unseated (probably for sanitation), but the other 5 rows were in use. Of course, demand is still high for the ride, but it only took 10-15 minutes to get through the check-in and queue. It's the first time riding Hagrid hasn't been stressful!
I expect today and the next four days to be the busiest Universal will be all summer save for the Fourth of July. As has been discussed before, there's pent-up demand locally, but based on today's trends, the parks will likely be very quiet once the initial rush is over. The parks kept getting quieter and quieter ever since my earlier update at 2, and it wasn't even raining for the rest of the day. If Universal's main consumer base for the summer isn't staying long, imagine how a normal day will be without the hype of re-opening. Maybe I'm wrong and demand among non-passholders is moderately high, but I'm not seeing it based on economic and tourism forecasts.
I look forward to going back sometime soon. Today was a pretty stress-free day, and I rarely felt unsafe or uncomfortable. Universal did a good job today, and they're pretty much ready to handle the public. Oh, and the Velocicoaster construction?
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