Heading there in a fortnight. 5 of us will cost for the 3-day Magic Your Way is just under $1500 and Universal 2-day Park-Park w/ extra day free is just under $1300. That is under the old price structure. We are driving and staying in a place where we will cook all meals. It is expen$ive! No doubt about that. We figured we might as well do it now because our oldest who is in college might not get the time to do this with us.

Look on craigslist for people renting their season passes.

Check Mousesavers.com- they have a ton of info on tickets for Disney/universal

Are your kids really into Harry Potter or not ?

Harry Potter advice (if you or your kid are into that)
I don’t think the express passes work on any of the Harry Potter rides (I think it works on the 2 coasters but not on the rides you really want it to work on (forbidden journey/gingrott’s Bank)
You need a “park to park” pass to ride “Hogwarts Express”, I liked it, but the kid thought it was boring.
Your kids gonna want a “wand”- the Interactive ones are $ 50ish,,,, ask around, if anyone you know has been to Universal, ask if you can borrow theirs. Your kid will never use it again.
There are 2 Potter themed restaurants (1 in each park) they were pretty similar and actually fairly reasonable by theme park standards, include that in your budget
Is it your kids birthday?. Go to guest services and get a “it’s my birthday button”. The will increase the odds the kids will get picked for the “wand ceremony” at Olivanders
Your kid wants a Hogwarts “cloak/gown”. Buy it in Amazon rather than at the theme park -there I just saved you $50

There are 5hotels that are “on property” staying at some of them (hard rock/Portofino) will give you express passes and some will not - I think all will get you into park 1 hour early. The ones that give you express passes are very expensive, but they give your express passes for the day you check in and the day you check out, so that may (or may not) be cheaper than just buying express passes. Oh, and you’re still gonna wait in line with express passes, it’ll just be a shorter line.

You have my sympathy- but I gotta admit, Universal did a great job with the Harry Potter stuff and I’m not even a fan.

Yep, good thing you didn't try Disney.

Friend just got back from Disney. He said he must of spent around $3k for a 4 day trip. His rational was that most people who go to Disney and stay in the really nice resorts must be very wealthy.

I told him there are just a lot of suckers.

I’m going to have to sell a kidney if my kids ever want to “do” Disneyland/world, Universal Studios, etc. We are a family of 6. I can’t imagine what that would cost for a week!

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Harry: "I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this."
Loyd: "I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of shit, man."

Gets cheaper the longer you stay. Stayed a week a while back on a family reunion, decided to add another day, the 8th was almost just a few dollars more

I went with the wife (then gf) a long time ago when the Harry Potter portion was still relatively new (prior to any of the expansions). We stood in line for the wand "show" and bought a couple. After we got home they just sit in the box collecting dust....almost $100 to take up space and collect dust.

It was pretty darn cool though but next time we'll just head to the Universal in California (relatives live there so we have a place to stay to save costs on hotel and the tickets are a little bit cheaper than Florida).

Not sure when you went to universal, but there are 2 kinds of wands now.

One kind is just decorative. The newer kind are interactive - they have an rfid sensor on the end, and there are certain places around Harry Potter World where you stand at a certain place, wave the wand, and something happens; a fountain turns on, a statue moves etc. Kids really enjoy it, and if they did all the events it can kill a couple hours while you hang out and have a few beers. The downside is the $50 wand is useless outside the park. Just search YouTube for “interactive universal wand” if you want to see them in action

Way before that. It was about 7 years ago when there was only made of wood or whatever they used for materials. They were still about $40-50 each though.

We went 3 years ago over Christmas / New Years. A few days at the universal parks and a few days at the Disney parks.
We didn’t do any of the front of line passes. We live in So Cal and stayed on “West Coast time” during our stay. We’d show up after lunch and stay until close. You can ride a ton of rides with very litttle wait during the last hour they are open. And do the “single rider”!lines whenever possible.

Passes are not linked to the season pass holder?

Lots of good info here. Thank you!

It's a LOT cheaper if you're a Florida resident too. My guess is a lot of folks are. I can get non black out tickets for $80 for two parks with express lane, if I get 2 day passes etc.
We've gone twice since moving to FL, that's about it for me. Been there done that. Couple of cool stuff but plenty of other ways to spend your money and see things that are way nicer.

The only thing that was really worth it was Epcot and for different reasons. My dad was a production manager (passed away in 2014) and worked for Disney in 1979-80 on a couple of things (including the really bad Condorman). The movie about France at Epcot was the one he was prod manager on and he took me with him for a few days, including the shots in the mountains (in a small helicopter). I had no idea and when watching it all looked very familiar. I searched online and saw it was indeed him.

You have received a lot of helpful replies, and about the only thing I can add is that I just took my family to Universal Studios on Sunday. So, just some thoughts, maybe with a mix of buyer's remorse.

How old are your kids? You said just one day at Universal, right?

We went down for my daughter's gymnastics meet, which was Friday, and made it an extended Orlando trip. We went to Disney a couple of years ago, so wanted to do the other stuff this time around. This is a regular meet on my daughter's gym's schedule, so I imagine we'll be back in 2 or 3 years. I was pretty tight on the budget and time, and probably tried to pack too much into a few days - SeaWorld on Saturday, Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure on Sunday, and ended up doing Atlantica on Monday. Of those, the only one I regret is Atlantica, as it is pretty expensive for what it is. Overall, I think we did try to do too much.

Specific to Universal, we got the 2-park 1 day park hopper passes. We happened to get them through the gymnastics meet at a discount, so unfortunately, I don't know how to get you a hookup there. The hotel we stayed at (Best Western Orlando Convention Center) did have a kiosk selling discounted tickets, but I didn't look at the Universal prices since I already had them. I didn't get the impression the discounts were spectacular (maybe better than AAA, though!). If you are a Costco member, you could check their travel deals - they have Universal, but it looks like it's going to be a hotel/park bundle.

We were there on a Sunday, so I don't know how that influences the busyness of the park. We got there when the park opened at 9 am, and went straight to Islands of Adventure. We did the Hulk ride first, and that had maybe a 15 minute wait. Overall, the lines weren't too bad - we rode most of the rides. If you are going for the rides (and your kids are over 54"), I don't think you'll be able to ride every ride in both Universal and Islands of Adventure in one day. We did end up skipping the Harry Potter rides (Islands of Adventure) and Minion Mayhem (Universal Studios) because of the wait times. Our longest wait was the Transformers 3D ride, which was about an hour (but worth the wait, in our opinion). Most wait times were 15 minutes or less. If you want some pointers on which rides are worth it/less worth it, I'd be glad to inject my opinion there. If I were to focus on just one park, that would be a tough call - both had some fun rides and shows.

Plan on at least 20 minutes of walking from your parking spot to the entry of your park of choice. It's a long hike from the parking ramps (we parked in the Jaws section, which I believe is the furthest away), through security, and through CityWalk. Security was a bit of a mess, mostly due to people being rude.

The food prices at Universal are insane (at the same level of insane as any of the Orlando theme parks) - figure around $15 per person per meal for crappy food. Their food plan is confusing, too. We did buy a couple of refillable souvenir cups (about $15 per cup, a little less if you buy several). You can bring a backpack with snacks and up to 2 liters of water. Of course, then you'll need somebody to hold all your stuff while you ride rides. Some rides allow for you to bring a bag on, but it's confusing as to which ones will until you get there.

They have the Mardi Gras parade going on now, which was fun for the kids. As a father of two girls (ages 11 and 9), I'm not so sure I'm excited about my girls being excited about getting beads at Mardi Gras... lol!

Oh, and sunscreen - Universal's main park isn't especially shady. Islands of Adventure has some more shade.

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador

Seems like when we have been you had to place your finger on a scanner to show the pass belonged to you.

I read that too. Yeah, no chance to rent someone’s season passes.

Well, here is the decision.

Going to Florida was more of an escape of winter for me. It’s a surprise for the kids. We leave tomorrow and the twins, both 9, do not know yet.

It seems many people plan multiple day trips and “specific” trips to do Disney or Universal. The ex-wife asked me to not do Disney as she wants to take them at some point. That’s fine by me as it isn’t anything I need to do with my kids. Plenty of other Dad stuff I can do as they grow.

So, I decided to not make this adventure get out of hand. I’m simply doing one day, one park tickets. No express passes. I plan to get there early and hopefully lines won’t be that bad. The kids should be excited since this is a surprise and frankly- they will have a lesson in disappointment if we stand in line and should have purchased express passes.

Looking on the website, they adjust the price of the express pass depending on the day. I though $99 per person was a lot, turns out it is $139. That sealed the decision for me- not doing it.

Correct. They Disney was more vocal about it but I’m guessing universal had the same issue with people selling bad tickets so they just made a blanket policy on it.

Also for Disney at least the price per day falls off a cliff the more days you buy so they don’t want people buying more then they need and selling it for cheaper.

Here was the outcome. Checked into the hotel, which was in Tampa, not Orlando. We decided to go to Busch Gardens, mainly because we planned to go for only 1day and tickets were $104 per person and free food all day. We sat in line for 30 minutes at the first ride and the girlfriend said- yeah, I’m not doing this. Lol. Bought “Quick Que” for $39, unlimited use. No better way to feel like royalty with a theme park in your back yard- Michael Jackson style.

Hit every ride at the park and many multiple times. Every time we basically walked into the ride “que” and had to wait 3-4 coasters til we were on. Maybe 10 min wait tops. $160 for a family of 4 for quick que was way more affordable than $139 per person at Universal. Not to mention free food for all of us. We stayed from park open to park close and had lunch and dinner. Food was actually better than expected.

A successful trip and lots of fun. I liked Cheetah Hunt roller coaster the best. It would accelerate before the drops. Very cool.