Strategy for Hagrid's when staying offsite?

[Smugpugmug]

Hi! My friend and I are spending 1 day at Universal (we have a 1 day park to park pass) in mid May and we are not staying at a Universal hotel (we are ubering from Animal Kingdom Lodge). We will try to get to the parks early so that we in the front of the offsite crowd but I was wondering if we should head to Hagrid's first thing or if we should go to Velocicoaster and stop by Hagrid's later in the day. Both of us have Express Pass so we are not worried about missing our other must dos and we have a dinner reservation at Mythos close to park close on our park day so we don't think we'll have time to hop on line before the park closes. My friend hasn't been since 2016 and I haven't been to Universal since the month Escape from Gringotts opened so the new rides that weren't open during our last visits are must dos for us.

Thanks!

 

[mom2rtk]

I would do velicoaster first thing then watch the app for a time the wait dips a little on Hagrids. If it drops under an hour give it a go. Then also step in line right before closing.

 

[ChrisM]

Definitely keep tabs on posted times as noted above.

Also, outside of Friday and Saturday evenings we found that although posted times stayed in the 70-80 minute range, the actual wait around 8pm and after was reliably half the posted time.

It's also worth noting that as long as the ride doesn't experience any down time, if the line is backed up to just about where you enter the castle (indoor portion) the wait from there will be roughly 30-35 minutes.

 

[thevolcanogod]

Hagrid drops during lunch time abs dinner time so 12 and 5. We noticed this all days. If you can’t early access then I vote don’t bother with either that early. Go do some express pass stuff then hit both during the afternoon when times drop. Both were still high waits after regular park opening. Still lots of peeps from early access plus the flood of non early access. Jump in Hagrid at noon and wait an hour. Jump in velocicoaster at 2-3pm and wait 45 mins.

 

[Westerner]

I would not go 1st thing in the morning if offsite, you'll probably hit peak crowd then. Agree with the advice to keep an eye on wait times and hop over if/when it gets to an hour or so. For us that happened around 5-6pm.

 

[Smugpugmug]

Thank you to everyone for the responses! So I have 2 follow up questions - should we head to Studios first and then Islands? My friend's must dos in Studios are Rip Rocket, Escape from Gringotts, Fast and the Furious (she wants to see how bad it is lol) and Men in Black. She is fine with skipping everything else if we do have to wait in a long Hagrid's and Velocicoaster line.

Secondly, we have a 5:45 dinner for Mythos - should we make it earlier so we have enough time to enter the Hagrid's line at park closing (which is 7 pm on our park day) or keep it as is?

 

[ChrisM]

Thank you to everyone for the responses! So I have 2 follow up questions - should we head to Studios first and then Islands? My friend's must dos in Studios are Rip Rocket, Escape from Gringotts, Fast and the Furious (she wants to see how bad it is lol) and Men in Black. She is fine with skipping everything else if we do have to wait in a long Hagrid's and Velocicoaster line.

Secondly, we have a 5:45 dinner for Mythos - should we make it earlier so we have enough time to enter the Hagrid's line at park closing (which is 7 pm on our park day) or keep it as is?

I'm only going to caution you about Fast and the Furious as follows: we, too, rode it just to see how bad it was - and regretted it.

First, it sucked. But the worst part of it all was how much time it took up. Even with Express - and literally being the only ones in the Express line - it all takes an infuriating long time. The merge point with the regular line still has plenty of line to stand in, then you are subjected to two extremely boring and long pre-shows with live actors - then you stand in another line to actually board the ride vehicles. And then the ride sucks.

You've been warned!

 

[Smugpugmug]

Thank you for the warning - it's a bit of a running joke between us that we want to see how bad that ride us since we have seen the hipe/ignored the spoilers on purpose so we are willing to wait a tiny bit to experience it even if that means missing out on some other stuff at the park. The shows aren't that important to us and we don't care about Minions. It would be nice to ride ET but we would 100% hustle over to Islands to ride Hagrid's and Velocicoaster if we end up doing Studios first.

 

[Westerner]

Thank you to everyone for the responses! So I have 2 follow up questions - should we head to Studios first and then Islands? My friend's must dos in Studios are Rip Rocket, Escape from Gringotts, Fast and the Furious (she wants to see how bad it is lol) and Men in Black. She is fine with skipping everything else if we do have to wait in a long Hagrid's and Velocicoaster line.

Secondly, we have a 5:45 dinner for Mythos - should we make it earlier so we have enough time to enter the Hagrid's line at park closing (which is 7 pm on our park day) or keep it as is?

One thing to watch out for: avoid peak wait times at the HW Express for hopping between the parks. For whatever reason Express pass seemed to save us not much time over regular line. e.g. 60 minute posted wait, 40 minute actual wait with Express pass.

 

[Smugpugmug]

One thing to watch out for: avoid peak wait times at the HW Express for hopping between the parks. For whatever reason Express pass seemed to save us not much time over regular line. e.g. 60 minute posted wait, 40 minute actual wait with Express pass.

Yeah, that ended up happening to me the last time I was at Universal even with Express. My friend is not at all a Harry Potter fan and only enjoys the rides, so she wouldn't mind missing the train if it ends up being a long wait.

 

[ClapYourHands]

One thing to watch out for: avoid peak wait times at the HW Express for hopping between the parks. For whatever reason Express pass seemed to save us not much time over regular line. e.g. 60 minute posted wait, 40 minute actual wait with Express pass.

The benefit is very lopsided. The merge is pretty early at King's Cross, so you don't save much time there. But the Hogsmeade station lets you right up from the front steps with EP vs having to snake through a long line for standby.

 

[Spike101]

Thank you to everyone for the responses! So I have 2 follow up questions - should we head to Studios first and then Islands? My friend's must dos in Studios are Rip Rocket, Escape from Gringotts, Fast and the Furious (she wants to see how bad it is lol) and Men in Black. She is fine with skipping everything else if we do have to wait in a long Hagrid's and Velocicoaster line.

Secondly, we have a 5:45 dinner for Mythos - should we make it earlier so we have enough time to enter the Hagrid's line at park closing (which is 7 pm on our park day) or keep it as is?

For F+F use the single rider line, the ride will be a walk on and save you loads of time, I rode F+F twice on my last visit using single rider, it has a cheesy so bad its good kind of charm about it, but its not a ride you want to be waiting any longer than 10 or 15 minutes for.

Also if you're lucky like I was and time it right you'll get a near empty party bus.

 

[Smugpugmug]

For F+F use the single rider line, the ride will be a walk on and save you loads of time, I rode F+F twice on my last visit using single rider, it has a cheesy so bad its good kind of charm about it, but its not a ride you want to be waiting any longer than 10 or 15 minutes for.

Also if you're lucky like I was and time it right you'll get a near empty party bus.

Would you say it's faster than just using Express pass for it? Both of us splurged and bought a 1 time Express pass so we could ride all of our must dos at least once.

Also this is a weird question but are you allowed to bring drinks on queues? I was thinking of grabbing a Butterbeer before entering the Hagrid's line and I was curious as to whether this was allowed (sorry I still have my Disney planning brain on and I know at certain points in the queue you have to get rid of drinks)

 

[wdwrule]

Would you say it's faster than just using Express pass for it? Both of us splurged and bought a 1 time Express pass so we could ride all of our must dos at least once.

Also this is a weird question but are you allowed to bring drinks on queues? I was thinking of grabbing a Butterbeer before entering the Hagrid's line and I was curious as to whether this was allowed (sorry I still have my Disney planning brain on and I know at certain points in the queue you have to get rid of drinks)

Single rider is definitely faster than express on F&F because you’ll skip the pre shows and walk right into the loading area unless you want to experience the pre shows.

I know you can take Butterbeer on the Hogwarts Express but I always forget which rides allow drinks in their queues.

 

[CAPSLOCK]

With one day, is Mythos a must-do?
I would be inclined to do dinner outside the parks after park close, to maximize ride time.

 

[ClapYourHands]

With one day, is Mythos a must-do?
I would be inclined to do dinner outside the parks after park close, to maximize ride time.

No. It's good, but not worth missing ride time with only one park day. I eat there when I want a nice break for lunch - gives down time in air conditioning without having to go back to the hotel. It's less chaotic than a lot of the counter service restaurants and not much more expensive. But having a reservation means you have to stop whatever you are doing to get to it, which could mean you have to leave a line to hoof it over.

Alternately, it's good if you do the last possible reservation and you can walk out after the park closes; it's kind of magical when the crowds have left. But doing the late reservation sacrifices the ability to jump into a line right before the park closes for one last ride on a headliner.

 

[Smugpugmug]

No. It's good, but not worth missing ride time with only one park day. I eat there when I want a nice break for lunch - gives down time in air conditioning without having to go back to the hotel. It's less chaotic than a lot of the counter service restaurants and not much more expensive. But having a reservation means you have to stop whatever you are doing to get to it, which could mean you have to leave a line to hoof it over.

Alternately, it's good if you do the last possible reservation and you can walk out after the park closes; it's kind of magical when the crowds have left. But doing the late reservation sacrifices the ability to jump into a line right before the park closes for one last ride on a headliner.

Yeah this was something I was contemplating. When I made the reservation the park hours were not posted yet and with Studios closing at 6 and Islands at 7 I am unsure if we should stick with our reservation or cancel and get more park time. I would 100% rather wait for Hagrids and Velocicoaster and be able to do all of our must dos than eat at Mythos, but I have literally never eaten at any Universal restaurant except for the one in Marvel Island (Yes I know that one is bad but my party at the time wanted pizza) so I wanted to experience something new.

I'm leaning towards canceling due to the park closing early (apparently it's for a company event and not a grad bash like I thought)

 

[jimmymc]

Do it later in the day. The line will be 90 minutes from just early entry, but it slowly dips over the day. I also think a lot of people park hop to Studios at night, so the line really goes down at dinner time.

 

[Smugpugmug]

Do it later in the day. The line will be 90 minutes from just early entry, but it slowly dips over the day. I also think a lot of people park hop to Studios at night, so the line really goes down at dinner time.

Yeah that's what I plan to do after reading these responses. We cancelled our Mythos dinner so we will just grab something quick to eat and then go ride it.

I did see on another thread that they close the queue for Hagrid's an hour before park close and on the day I'm going there's an event so IOA is closing at 7. I'm hoping that the parks will be less busy due to that so I could ride with a reduced wait (meaning anything 60 and below)

 

[kathy884]

My kiddos went on March 22nd (one day park to park ticket with one time express pass -- offsite). They did all their other must dos and at around 5 p.m. got in the line for Hagrid's, waited 85 minutes, and they were next in line. And what do you know the ride broke down. They asked staff their opinion and staff said it would be a while for sure and that they personally wouldn't recommend waiting. So the kids left and did other stuff. The ride they saw 45 minutes later was still down. And after having to do the 85 minute wait, just really didn't have it in their heart to try that long line again. // They were quite disappointed about missing this one (having gotten so close and having waited so long), but other than that had a good day.

With the express pass, they just had the two long lines Velocicoaster and the line for that was 45 minutes. And then of course the unfortunate 85 minute wait with no ride. Hopefully you'll have better luck for this ride. The other stuff with the EPs had super short waits.

Do note that this was a super busy day. Express passes in fact were sold out. Other days of the week they were selling the express passes for over $300. I bought the kids the one time ones (still pricey in my book, but less than a deluxe hotel room by a ton for $130 pp).

My niece who is a HUGE Disney fan, actually enjoyed Universal the most this week. Express Pass was just so nice.

The kiddos enjoyed the Jurassic park area most. I would have thought they would like the Harry Potter areas best, but they said as cool as they are it was wall to wall people, so they really didn't want to spend all that much time there on top of doing the attractions they wanted to do.