Latest / Mom Street USA / 106. One Day Park Strategy: Universal Studios Florida (Hub Episode)

Transcript

106. One Day Park Strategy: Universal Studios Florida (Hub Episode) · Mom Street USA

• 0:05
  Welcome everybody to Mom St. USA.
• 0:07
  My name is Jackie AKA Wishes. Mama and I am joined for this
• 0:11
  hub episode by our good friends Duck and Jess AKA Beanie Duck.
• 0:16
  And today we are starting a new series.
• 0:20
  It is something that we've touched on in the past over here
• 0:23
  at Mom Street, but we are going to be doing a series of one day
• 0:26
  park strategy. So we are going to be
• 0:29
  highlighting all four Disney parks and all three of the
• 0:32
  Universal parks and kind of giving you guys an idea of, OK,
• 0:35
  if you've got one day in this theme park, what is a good
• 0:38
  course of action for me to take? So this is Part 1 of what will
• 0:42
  inevitably be 7 parts to this series.
• 0:45
  And we are kicking off this series by starting in Universal
• 0:50
  primarily because we've got Duck and Jess with us here today and
• 0:53
  they are our mom St. Universal experts here.
• 0:56
  So before we jump into all of that, Duck Jess, how are we
• 1:00
  doing today? Excited to continue the
• 1:03
  universal talk. They have infiltrated the mom
• 1:07
  streets world with all the universal lingo.
• 1:11
  We're going to make Universal fans out of all he is.
• 1:13
  Get you know I will. I will say on my last trip down
• 1:20
  to Florida, I did visit Epic Universe, which is to come.
• 1:25
  So I'm excited to give some input and like actually have
• 1:28
  some knowledge when it comes to because we will be covering Epic
• 1:32
  Universe in this series, which will be exciting and something
• 1:35
  brand new to probably the majority of our listeners.
• 1:39
  So that will be exciting, but you know, Universal I, I'm not,
• 1:44
  I'm not completely sold on the OG 2 parks yet, but like I'm
• 1:47
  sold on Epic. So we're, we're good.
• 1:49
  We're good there. So when we get there, it'll be
• 1:51
  good. We'll take what we can get,
• 1:53
  slowly, slowly. That's it.
• 1:56
  One park at a time. I love this.
• 2:00
  Well, let's go ahead and hop in because we've got a ton of
• 2:03
  notes, just some kind of general notes about the series that
• 2:09
  we're jumping into. For each park that we're going
• 2:11
  to be talking about, we're going to give you kind of two courses
• 2:14
  of action. One being if you're just walking
• 2:17
  up to the park, planning to do standby for everything, not
• 2:21
  planning to use any sort of passes, things like that.
• 2:24
  And then the another kind of course of action would be if you
• 2:27
  are planning to use at Universal, it's called the
• 2:30
  Express pass at Disney, it would be lightning lanes, multi pass,
• 2:34
  single pass, those types of things.
• 2:35
  So you're going to kind of hear some repeat of information just
• 2:40
  because we are going to go over kind of two sides to that one
• 2:43
  day plan. Basically, you're going to just
• 2:46
  have to know going into it whether or not you're planning
• 2:49
  to use any of those or whether your budget allows for you to
• 2:52
  use any of those types of assistance to shorten the
• 2:56
  weights for you and your travel party.
• 2:59
  So you will hear us talk about that in every episode.
• 3:01
  We're going to go over that just because we know that we, we have
• 3:04
  a lot of people that are hardcore one way or the other,
• 3:07
  right? We have a lot of people that
• 3:08
  Nope, their budget doesn't allow it.
• 3:10
  They don't want to use that. They're just going to go with
• 3:12
  the standby and go with the flow.
• 3:14
  And then we have another group that definitely budgets for, for
• 3:17
  those express passes and those lightning lanes.
• 3:19
  So want to give each side of that some, some notes about what
• 3:25
  to do with their day. So just like I said, general
• 3:28
  notes and you'll hear that in all 7 and I'll probably repeat
• 3:31
  myself about this in all 7 episodes of this series, but
• 3:35
  that's what we're dealing with. So yes, today we are starting at
• 3:38
  Universal Studios Florida. And now this is the part of the
• 3:41
  podcast where I'm going to close my mouth because I do not have
• 3:45
  enough of the knowledge about this, and I'm going to let Duck
• 3:48
  and Jess take it away. So let's talk about Universal
• 3:51
  Studios Florida, all right? Let's get to Yappin, my
• 3:54
  favorite. Let's go.
• 3:57
  So like Jackie said, today we're covering Universal Studios
• 4:01
  Florida, which to anybody who's maybe new and jumping into just
• 4:05
  the Universal world, this is not referring in general to the
• 4:09
  resort. When we say Universal Studios
• 4:12
  Florida, there are technically 3 parks under the Universal
• 4:16
  umbrella, right? So we have Epic Universe, which
• 4:18
  is the Brandy new one that everyone's losing their minds
• 4:21
  over us included. And then there are the two we'll
• 4:25
  we'll call them the traditional Universal parks.
• 4:27
  There's Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida and
• 4:31
  that Universal Studios Florida is what we're talking about
• 4:33
  today. We are not suggesting A1 day
• 4:35
  strategy for all three parks. It's probably in some way
• 4:40
  doable, but no thank you. No thank you.
• 4:43
  We are, we are theme park enjoyers, not theme park
• 4:46
  challengers. I'm going to leave that to the
• 4:48
  Youtubers. That is on our vibe.
• 4:52
  So, yeah, so when we are talking about Universal Studios Florida,
• 4:54
  we are today specifically talking about that theme park.
• 4:58
  Yep. And if you are completely new to
• 5:00
  the universal world, so to speak, we did kind of a whole in
• 5:04
  depth series about Universal not too long ago.
• 5:08
  So hop back into our archives. If you're like, I don't know
• 5:11
  anything about, you may want to go listen, like pause us right
• 5:14
  now and you may want to go listen to that first because
• 5:18
  that will give you some of the background knowledge because
• 5:20
  we're not really going to get into what rides are what and
• 5:23
  what food options there are and all that kind of stuff because
• 5:25
  we've covered that already. So if you are someone that needs
• 5:29
  that, hop back to the series on Universal that we did just a few
• 5:33
  weeks ago and then come back over here.
• 5:36
  And then welcome back. Yes, exactly.
• 5:38
  Perfect. OK.
• 5:39
  So what are some general, like first thing in the morning
• 5:44
  thoughts that we need to have about Universal Studios?
• 5:47
  So something important to know is that currently Universal
• 5:51
  Studios Florida does not offer early admission for resort
• 5:55
  guests. Once Upon a time they did.
• 5:59
  Post COVID, they haven't and it doesn't seem like it's coming
• 6:02
  back anytime soon. And this is purely because of
• 6:06
  the number of high volume attractions that are found
• 6:10
  within this particular park, right?
• 6:12
  There's a lot of people eat or rides here.
• 6:14
  So while there are a few heavy hitters in here, you know,
• 6:19
  there's the two coasters that we'll get into that are really
• 6:22
  like the, the big, you know, quote, UN quote, the big
• 6:24
  attractions, a lot of stuff. While the weights can get high
• 6:28
  because of the sheer volume of people, there is less need for
• 6:31
  them to do this early entry to sort of satisfy the need of, you
• 6:36
  know, oh, we have these huge rides and there's only so much
• 6:39
  capacity that we can have on them.
• 6:41
  So it is the older park, it was the original Universal Studios
• 6:46
  park that opened up. So a lot of the the rides
• 6:48
  reflect that like People Eater mentality that we saw in the
• 6:53
  late 90s, early 2000s of sort of like theme park development.
• 6:59
  The general rule of thumb, even though there is no early entry,
• 7:04
  try to get there about 40 minutes early.
• 7:07
  So whatever your earliest time is, right, this is Evergreen
• 7:11
  advice. If in the future they decide,
• 7:13
  you know what, everybody just loves the Mummy rides so much,
• 7:16
  we better start opening an hour early.
• 7:19
  The general advice that we're going to give throughout the
• 7:22
  series is that you want to get there at least 40 minutes before
• 7:26
  your earliest entry time. That will give you time because
• 7:30
  even though the the it's not open open, there are times where
• 7:33
  they may let you in up to a certain point.
• 7:35
  Much like Disney, right? You can physically walk into the
• 7:38
  park up to a certain point and then they will drop the rope, so
• 7:42
  to speak. It will drop the dividing line
• 7:44
  and allow you in. Universal Studios Florida is
• 7:48
  much less likely to do that than the other park that's here,
• 7:51
  Islands of Adventure. But it does happen, especially
• 7:53
  during the summer season. You know, they want to let
• 7:56
  people start filtering in, you know, and get to the areas that
• 7:59
  maybe they need to get to to avoid sort of a crowd crush
• 8:03
  situation first thing in the morning because their entrance
• 8:06
  gates are pretty narrow. Yeah, much more narrow than most
• 8:09
  of the Disney gates. Yes, yeah.
• 8:12
  And again, this is just a feature of how they built it,
• 8:15
  where they built it, when they built it, right it I, I think
• 8:18
  that when they built this, they anticipated it being popular,
• 8:22
  but I don't know that they foresaw even the success of the
• 8:25
  park. I think they may have designed
• 8:27
  some features of the park a little bit differently if they
• 8:30
  kind of knew the the capacity that would really happen in the
• 8:34
  future. With that 40 minute rule that I
• 8:37
  was just mentioning that is during like general time.
• 8:40
  If you're going super popular time like summer weekends or
• 8:44
  like around Christmas, you're going to want to push that to
• 8:47
  and getting there an hour before your earliest time.
• 8:51
  Maybe it's overkill, maybe you're going to end up with the
• 8:53
  one day where no one's there in the morning.
• 8:55
  But we like to err on the side of caution, especially if you
• 8:58
  only have one day. So you're really going to set
• 9:00
  yourself up for success if you give yourself that extra buffer
• 9:04
  time to show up and start lining up to get where you're going.
• 9:08
  Yeah. And I think one of the big
• 9:08
  things to remember and consider with that is that the parking is
• 9:12
  a very different situation at Universal.
• 9:15
  Now some of you, if you're staying on Universal property,
• 9:18
  you won't have to worry about dealing with the parking
• 9:21
  situation that is over there. But if you are someone who has a
• 9:24
  car or is renting a car and is planning to drive, that is
• 9:28
  something to consider, just much like it is at many of the Disney
• 9:30
  parks too, right? If you're going to Magic
• 9:32
  Kingdom, there's a whole parking thing you got to you got to
• 9:34
  navigate and figure out, but you have to remember that.
• 9:37
  So what should we remember and consider when we're navigating
• 9:41
  the parking and getting having to go through City Walk when it
• 9:44
  comes to that? So what you're mentioning
• 9:47
  Citywalk we talked about in our previous episode, right?
• 9:50
  That is sort of the the nightlife district is what it's
• 9:53
  generally, you know, thought of as it's connected to Universal.
• 9:57
  It is not physically within the theme parks, but it is still
• 10:01
  Universal property. So the way that it works is if
• 10:04
  you're coming from off property, right, you're, let's say you're
• 10:07
  staying at Disney, you're driving over for a day or even
• 10:10
  if you're just a local driving on, so you'll drive up.
• 10:13
  There is a massive parking garage.
• 10:14
  It is the biggest parking garage I think I've ever seen in my
• 10:17
  life. It's crazy.
• 10:19
  So there's a parking garage, there is the option for like
• 10:24
  additional VIP parking and there are always those options.
• 10:28
  You know, which I, I, I don't know if we mentioned in our
• 10:30
  previous episodes, but I, I doubt, I don't think so.
• 10:34
  I think we talked. That we did either.
• 10:35
  But are we? Perspective.
• 10:38
  But it feels like it was 100 years ago, even though it was a
• 10:40
  few months ago. We talked about this.
• 10:44
  But yeah, so there is the option for like, you know, like VIP
• 10:47
  parking and things like that. But either way, no matter what,
• 10:49
  you're going to end U in this garage.
• 10:52
  You walk through the garage to the entryway to city.
• 10:55
  Walk. At Citywalk is actually where
• 10:59
  the security screening is. So if you are a Disney person,
• 11:02
  the thing that we can compare it to is as you're going towards
• 11:05
  Magic Kingdom by like the TTC where you that is like a
• 11:10
  screening area as well. That's probably the closest
• 11:14
  analogy that we have. So before you physically enter
• 11:17
  Universal property, you are being screened for security.
• 11:20
  Even if you're not going to the parks, you're just going into
• 11:23
  City Walk, they screen right there.
• 11:26
  Yeah, similar to the parking garage at Disney Springs now
• 11:28
  that they've implemented that as well.
• 11:30
  So you literally get out of your car as you walk in, you know,
• 11:35
  out of it's a little further removed at Universal than it is
• 11:38
  like Disney Springs. It's like in the parking garage
• 11:41
  at City Walk. It's a little further out where
• 11:43
  you have some walking to do before you actually get to that,
• 11:46
  but it is very similar to what you find at Disney Springs.
• 11:49
  Or, or you can ride Universal's version of the people mover,
• 11:53
  which is the moving walkway, like the having some airport,
• 11:55
  the moving airport walkway. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 11:58
  We call it Universal's people mover.
• 12:01
  So, yeah. So, so but yes, you're right.
• 12:03
  There is much more distance in between, right?
• 12:05
  It's it's so you walk into the garage, you go through your
• 12:09
  screening, you walk down that walkway and then that dumps you
• 12:13
  into city walk. And then you can either go right
• 12:15
  to go to Universal Studios Florida or you can go left to go
• 12:18
  to Islands of Adventure. So generally with City Walk, if
• 12:21
  you only have one day at Universal or like one day for
• 12:24
  each park, we love City Walk, but it is not the highlight
• 12:28
  attraction there, right? Like if you were there for the
• 12:30
  theme parks, do not stress if you can't do anything in city.
• 12:33
  Walk. Yeah.
• 12:34
  If most things there can be done at home, yes.
• 12:37
  Like escape rooms, movie theaters, mini golf.
• 12:40
  Mini golf. Yeah, I'm sure you have all of
• 12:42
  that in your hometown. So don't stress you're not
• 12:45
  missing like Velocicoaster in there or anything like that,
• 12:49
  right? Like there is no, I absolutely
• 12:52
  am going to waste this trip if I don't see it.
• 12:54
  It's a it's fun, but it is their entertainment district, right?
• 12:58
  So it's not a total crisis. If on your limited time with
• 13:02
  your trip, you can't, you can't hang out in there except for
• 13:06
  Voodoo Doughnuts. You have to say absolutely, you
• 13:08
  must get voted. It is worth the walk from like
• 13:11
  on the way back to city walk at the end of the night give give
• 13:15
  yourself some food and. Donuts, you have to pass by it
• 13:17
  anyway. It's not right.
• 13:18
  Got out of your way, that's. Right, perfect.
• 13:22
  All right. So once we have arrived at the
• 13:25
  park, yes, are we doing, we're doing express first, right?
• 13:29
  So we're going to talk as if you are using an express pass.
• 13:33
  So Universal has two different versions of their express
• 13:35
  passes. 1 is just the standard express pass.
• 13:39
  It's like a single use per ride pass.
• 13:41
  Think of it like the Lightning Lanes at Disney's at once, and
• 13:44
  you're done. The difference, I'm sorry, not
• 13:46
  to cut you off, but the difference important to know
• 13:49
  between here and Disney. Disney you like book your time
• 13:52
  that you have to do you have to do that.
• 13:55
  You don't have to do that. You just physically walk up.
• 13:57
  They will scan your your pass and then it's considered spent
• 14:02
  for that ride. If you have the single use, you
• 14:03
  do not have to schedule in advance.
• 14:05
  You can just hop it now whenever.
• 14:08
  There is also the Unlimited Express, which is exactly what
• 14:12
  it sounds like. It is unlimited, right?
• 14:13
  So you can walk up to that ride and use the express pass on it
• 14:16
  as many times as you want to. And I'm laughing only because
• 14:19
  we've ridden the Mummy like five times in a row.
• 14:21
  Yeah, that's right. Because we had the Express and
• 14:23
  there was nothing like, I forget what it was.
• 14:25
  A bunch of stuff was down and we were there and we were like, you
• 14:28
  know what, let's go on again. Whatever.
• 14:30
  I see no problem with this getting the most out of your
• 14:33
  money, that's exactly. And boy, how do you do we?
• 14:36
  And the thing thing to know is that Universal Express passes
• 14:40
  can be very, very expensive, sometimes even more than the
• 14:44
  cost of your ticket into the park.
• 14:47
  So the single use one is usually a little bit cheaper and then
• 14:53
  the unlimited one is obviously the most expensive option and
• 14:56
  that is the one that can get like insanely pricey.
• 14:57
  So we're kind of planning this out as if you have just the
• 15:00
  single use, you know, standard pass.
• 15:04
  But something to note too is if you're staying in some of the
• 15:08
  more like higher end hotels on universal property, if the
• 15:11
  unlimited express pass is included with that.
• 15:15
  So that is a nice perk. So if you are staying on
• 15:17
  property, you can get that included, you know, with your
• 15:20
  stay, but otherwise it is something to kind of price out
• 15:23
  and see if it makes sense for your family and for your trip.
• 15:25
  So we're just kind of talking about this as if you're just
• 15:27
  using, you know, the the standard express pass.
• 15:31
  So the general kind of principle that we follow is to start with
• 15:34
  your biggest ride and then kind of going around in a
• 15:37
  counterclockwise motion. So this kind of make sure that
• 15:39
  you save your single express rides for maybe the second time
• 15:42
  around, you know, on that most anticipated ride.
• 15:46
  And it allows you to kind of get to the park efficiently, get on
• 15:50
  all the rides you want and then kind of avoid the traffic
• 15:52
  because everybody kind of like with Disney, you tend to go off
• 15:55
  to the right. So kind of going in that
• 15:57
  counterclockwise motion kind of helps with it.
• 15:59
  Yeah, the flowing Universal, if you want to pull up a map now,
• 16:04
  but the way that a lot of traffic goes in Universal
• 16:08
  Studios in USF is that people will you walk right into the
• 16:12
  minion section. So people will kind of stop at
• 16:15
  the minion section and then we'll continue on in a clockwise
• 16:19
  motion around like then they'll head back to the Harry Potter
• 16:22
  section and then so on and so forth.
• 16:24
  Or they will go right to the Harry Potter section and then
• 16:27
  they're like, well, we're at the back of the park, so let's
• 16:29
  continue, continue around. And they will generally continue
• 16:32
  to go clockwise. If you go counterclockwise, you
• 16:35
  were then generally going against the flow of the busiest
• 16:38
  traffic. And in, in our itinerary, we're
• 16:41
  going to talk about it too. But that lets you knock out the
• 16:44
  two most popular rides in the park fairly easily.
• 16:47
  So that is our our hot take of the day is is to start in the
• 16:51
  back and then go counterclockwise.
• 16:53
  I mean, I always live by the rule that left is always right.
• 16:57
  That's it. So like exactly right, you know,
• 17:01
  and that you will find that in a lot of theme parks, not just,
• 17:05
  you know, Universal Disney, you know, they're all set up a
• 17:08
  little bit differently, but generally speaking, your
• 17:10
  tendency is going to want to be to go right ish.
• 17:15
  Most of the time the better option is to go left.
• 17:18
  So firm agreement. Yes.
• 17:21
  And I should mention before we get too much further in this,
• 17:23
  that this I the itineraries that we're giving are going to give
• 17:27
  you the majority of the rides are almost all of the rides, if
• 17:30
  not all of the rides at these parks as we kind of go through
• 17:33
  this whole series. That being said, if you get to
• 17:35
  part of this itinerary and you're like, no one in my group
• 17:38
  wants to ride that cool, great, skip it and move on, right?
• 17:40
  Like just, you know, take a look at at the order that we're we're
• 17:44
  and we'll get some graphics and have some nice little little
• 17:48
  screenshot able little itineraries for you after we
• 17:53
  kind of get through the the series with this.
• 17:55
  But the the whole thing is like, you can take this and then cater
• 17:58
  it to your group. So if there's a right on here
• 18:00
  that we talked about that you're like, Nope, don't want to do
• 18:02
  that, cool, skip it, move on. Yeah, 100%.
• 18:05
  And I make, I make throughout this we make some notes as to
• 18:09
  possible substitutions, but also something to know as we're going
• 18:13
  through this, it's much easier to give firm times or you know,
• 18:18
  estimated times with the Express pass.
• 18:21
  We've done both with Express and without Express, all three, all
• 18:25
  these Universal parks except for Epic.
• 18:27
  So like so Universal USF and IOA, we've done extensively both
• 18:32
  with and without Express passes. It is much easier for us to give
• 18:35
  you a rough estimated time for with Express pass, right,
• 18:40
  Because we know generally the queue takes us 1/2 hour to go
• 18:43
  through, takes us 5 minutes to get loaded up.
• 18:45
  So you are in and out of this ride in 40 minutes, right?
• 18:48
  It is much, much harder. I'm going to say impossible for
• 18:51
  us to give you exact timings when it comes to doing things
• 18:54
  without an express pass. So when we were researching
• 18:57
  this, we're not we're not able to give you exact times.
• 18:59
  We are giving you very rough times.
• 19:01
  So you may find you get through a lot of this stuff quicker if
• 19:04
  you go at a less busy time of year.
• 19:07
  Or even think factors like the weather could help you, right?
• 19:10
  If it's raining in the morning and people aren't really showing
• 19:13
  up, the bigot. A lot of the big attractions at
• 19:15
  USF are indoors. So they're not closing just
• 19:18
  because it's, it's inclement weather.
• 19:19
  So you might be able to knock out five rides in two hours,
• 19:24
  right? So it, it's very dependent on
• 19:26
  the number of factors. So we give you a sample
• 19:29
  itinerary, we give you advice as to what to follow.
• 19:32
  But do just understand that as you're going through your day,
• 19:35
  especially without express, it's really important for you to plan
• 19:39
  ahead, right? Get your big rides, you know, in
• 19:43
  your thoughts and also keep checking the app, right?
• 19:45
  Because that app is going to be your best friend in terms of
• 19:48
  wait time times, in terms of where everything's located,
• 19:50
  fastest route, things like that. Absolutely.
• 19:54
  OK, so are we ready to hop into our first little section of our
• 19:59
  itinerary here? Yeah.
• 20:00
  Let's rock. Perfect.
• 20:02
  So what are we doing first? All right, so again, this is the
• 20:06
  with express itinerary. So Studios opens right at 9:00.
• 20:12
  What you're going to do is if you're going to get there
• 20:15
  between 8:00 and 8:40, again, depending on how busy it is
• 20:18
  there, we said earlier they're going to start maybe possibly
• 20:22
  scanning folks in, kind of depends on the season, the time,
• 20:26
  how many staff they have, etcetera.
• 20:27
  But either way, you're going to want to get there fairly early.
• 20:32
  You have your 9:00 AM entrance, you're going to go right to
• 20:37
  Gringotts. You're going to go.
• 20:39
  You're going to book it straight to the back of the park.
• 20:41
  You can't miss it. It's a giant brick wall that you
• 20:45
  can enter the night buses outside.
• 20:47
  You're just going to haul it and you're going to go right to
• 20:49
  Gringotts. If this is of any interest to
• 20:52
  you at all, go right to Gringotts because this wait by
• 20:56
  midday, no matter how busy or not busy the park is, gets long.
• 21:01
  It just does. If you are not a coaster person,
• 21:06
  we then recommend going right to whatever your number one
• 21:09
  attraction is. That way you can get at least
• 21:12
  one ride in before you have to use that Express pass, right?
• 21:15
  So you get your, your one freebie ride, we can call it.
• 21:19
  If you have kids, we do suggest that you know this is of
• 21:24
  interest to your kiddos, that Minion Mayhem ride that also
• 21:28
  gets a very long line by midday. It's upwards of 90 minutes by
• 21:32
  midday. So you're going to want to be
• 21:34
  line it right there and make that your number one priority
• 21:38
  because again, I don't think anybody wants to wait 90 minutes
• 21:41
  at 2:00 PM with a Craigie child. Now, are you saying that at even
• 21:47
  at 9:00 AM the express pass should be used for green?
• 21:49
  Or is this a standby that you're doing first before you start
• 21:53
  your express pass? That one so, so a standby.
• 21:56
  So we will tell you when you're starting to use the Express
• 21:58
  passes these first few rides, essentially if the wait is 1/2
• 22:03
  hour or less first thing in the morning, you are going to want
• 22:06
  to just do that standby. It is generally not 1/2 hour
• 22:09
  first thing in the morning. They may post that time, you
• 22:13
  know, just just because they got to start somewhere, right?
• 22:15
  They got to give a rough estimate.
• 22:16
  They got to do what they got to do in terms of their own
• 22:19
  logistics as a park. But generally speaking, we have
• 22:23
  seen half hours posted for Gringotts and then it ends up
• 22:26
  being 20 minutes, right? So it is always whatever your
• 22:30
  number one priority is to make sure that you get on that first
• 22:33
  ride as soon as possible. You were going to want to go
• 22:36
  right there and get right in the standby line.
• 22:39
  And then later if you enjoyed it as much as we think you probably
• 22:42
  well, because if it's your most anticipated ride 9 times out of
• 22:45
  time, you're going to have a good time, right?
• 22:48
  So then that will later in the day let you use that express
• 22:51
  pass when the line is longer. Perfect.
• 22:54
  Yeah. And you'll find this is the case
• 22:56
  at almost every theme park that we're going to talk about.
• 22:59
  Generally speaking, the 1st hour ish, maybe 2 hours at some parks
• 23:04
  are really just a great time to rack through standby queues and
• 23:09
  get those in. So that way, like Duck
• 23:11
  mentioned, if you want to go back to these rides again, you
• 23:13
  still have the ability to do that using that Express pass.
• 23:17
  Yeah, agreed. And like we said, you may get in
• 23:21
  and out of these rides in 20 minutes.
• 23:23
  We have budgeted for some of these about 40 minutes.
• 23:26
  So if you can find that you get out of Gringotts and it's still
• 23:30
  at that 20 minute mark, right? Again, you know what I mean?
• 23:33
  Like this is a great time again for you to check the app, for
• 23:36
  you to keep an eye on the wait times.
• 23:38
  And if it's low enough, just get right back in line and go ahead
• 23:41
  and knock it out one more time. Because then usually by, like
• 23:45
  you said, about an hour and we see those wait times start to
• 23:47
  climb as people are filtering in, they're ready to go.
• 23:50
  A lot of people don't want a rope drop, but they'll go for
• 23:53
  opening an early morning, so this is a good time for you to
• 23:57
  knock out your number one ride and then maybe do it a second
• 24:01
  time even before you need to burn that Express pass.
• 24:04
  Perfect. OK, So we have ridden Gringotts.
• 24:07
  We are exiting the queue. We decide that we're going to go
• 24:11
  do something different next. Where we headed after that?
• 24:13
  So you were going to expeditiously head to the right,
• 24:17
  you're going to just the exit Harry Potter and and hook a
• 24:20
  right and you're going to go for the Mummy.
• 24:23
  That is Gringotts and the Mummy are the two biggest attractions
• 24:26
  within USF. They are the coasters in there.
• 24:31
  And while there are other great rides, these because they are
• 24:35
  coasters, they just inherently have lower capacity than some of
• 24:38
  the other rides in here, right? So like we're going to talk
• 24:41
  about like something like Men in black in a little bit.
• 24:43
  That ride moves like 18 trillion people in an hour.
• 24:47
  Like it's unbelievable how fast they move people through it like
• 24:50
  breaks quantum physics, how quickly you can go through that.
• 24:53
  So coasters have just by nature of what they are and the spaces
• 24:58
  in which these coasters are built are lower capacity.
• 25:03
  So you know you are there is going to just be inherently a
• 25:06
  higher line time for them. So by knocking these out first
• 25:10
  thing, you are a setting yourself up for a really great
• 25:14
  day because nothing feels better than just like dashing into a
• 25:16
  theme park and knocking out your most anticipated rides.
• 25:19
  Like you feel you're like immediately I'm good no matter
• 25:23
  or what else happens the rest of the day.
• 25:24
  I am riding the high of the fact that I knocked out my most
• 25:27
  anticipated ride. But more than that, you really
• 25:31
  feel like you know you're you're getting your experiences worth
• 25:36
  when you can knock out these larger attractions.
• 25:38
  And then later you can go back and ride them again with Express
• 25:42
  and you can just basically walk right on with a minimal weight.
• 25:46
  Perfect. Love this.
• 25:48
  So you get in line for the Mummy, right?
• 25:51
  Rough. Roughly, we're thinking
• 25:52
  9:00-ish. You got in line for Gringotts,
• 25:56
  say 940. You get out, right?
• 25:57
  We'll give you some time for loading, things like that.
• 26:00
  Then you're going to be able to walk over to the mummy about 10
• 26:03
  AM. You're going to get in line for
• 26:04
  the mummy between 10:00 and 11:00.
• 26:08
  The wait time usually hovers between 1/2 hour and 45 minutes.
• 26:13
  Anything more than that, if you want to use the express, you can
• 26:16
  go ahead and do that. If you want to wait a little bit
• 26:19
  later in the day to see where the plan is taking you, you can
• 26:22
  do that too. Because don't forget you can use
• 26:24
  that express at any time of day. There's no reservations to make.
• 26:28
  There's no planning that you need to do other than walking up
• 26:31
  and scanning your ticket. That's all.
• 26:33
  So depending on what you're feeling, we suggest if it's 45
• 26:36
  minutes or less, just go ahead and hop in the queue.
• 26:39
  It usually moves pretty quickly. I know I just said it's like a
• 26:42
  lower capacity ride, but they are very efficient with their
• 26:44
  loading and unloading. So you move through pretty
• 26:47
  quickly. So we're going to say, let's say
• 26:51
  it takes you about an hour right to to get in through the Mummy.
• 26:54
  That brings you at 11:00. If you're feeling a little
• 26:57
  hungry, right across from the exit of the Mummy is an Auntie
• 27:00
  Anne's pretzel place. We recommend stopping there
• 27:04
  because also right next to that and around 11:00 is the Blues
• 27:08
  Brothers show. So like you've just knocked out
• 27:10
  the two biggest rides in this park.
• 27:13
  You need like a little bit of a victory snack and like some
• 27:16
  vibes. Little treat, a little treat, a
• 27:18
  little snack, right? Everyone loves a little pretzel
• 27:19
  nugget. So that is 100% a great option
• 27:24
  because it's all, it's all right there.
• 27:25
  It's literally you exit the mummy and you look at the
• 27:27
  building physically across from you and it's the Auntie Anne's.
• 27:31
  And it's a little deceptive because it does look like a
• 27:34
  like, just like a New York corner store.
• 27:36
  And then you read the banner and it says Auntie Anne's and you're
• 27:38
  like, well, now wait a second. I know that.
• 27:42
  And that's perfect because those are two of your top thrill
• 27:45
  rides, right? So like, if you're someone
• 27:46
  that's like, I'm going to wait to eat until I've done those.
• 27:50
  Perfect timing. That's me and that's why, and
• 27:52
  that's why I'm so hungry by 11:00 and I'm looking for those
• 27:55
  pretzels because I'm a human who I can't eat and then go on a
• 27:59
  ride. I commend everybody who can.
• 28:02
  I need to wait. It's like swimming, like I need
• 28:04
  to wait like 1/2 hour before I get on the ride.
• 28:06
  So I'm not eating a Big Breakfast or anything like that,
• 28:09
  right? Like I might have a pastry,
• 28:11
  might have a couple sips of coffee, and then I'm off on the
• 28:13
  rides. Believe me, that's enough to
• 28:16
  wake me up. But you know, I can't eat a lot
• 28:19
  before we get on ride. So that's a really great point.
• 28:21
  And by that time I'm usually starving.
• 28:23
  So that's like a good break time.
• 28:25
  I can have my little pretzel snacks, we can watch the Blues
• 28:27
  Brothers show, and we can just sort of relax after sprinting
• 28:30
  into the same park. Perfect.
• 28:33
  All right, so we we grabbed a snack, we caught some vibes.
• 28:36
  Where are we headed next? So you're now going to be
• 28:40
  entering the illumination area, right?
• 28:42
  If we're continuing our counterclockwise motion, you're
• 28:45
  going to go back into that minions area that you just sort
• 28:48
  of sprinted through before. So this is 1130 and especially
• 28:54
  if it's a busy time of year, now is when you're going to start
• 28:57
  wanting to use the Express pass. Keep an eye on wait times.
• 29:01
  Of course, like we said, the general rule of thumb is half
• 29:04
  hour or less. Don't even bother with the
• 29:06
  express pass. You can save it for later.
• 29:08
  So if the either of the minions rides are of interest to you, I
• 29:15
  would knock those out now, like I said, just use the express and
• 29:17
  pop right on. Because around now is when the
• 29:20
  wait time start to go up because now you really have everybody in
• 29:23
  there, right? Maybe some some of the not so
• 29:26
  morning people are rolling in, some parents who maybe they're
• 29:29
  kiddos just did not want to get in the park that early, right?
• 29:32
  Maybe they slept in a little bit.
• 29:33
  They're planning on staying late.
• 29:35
  This is now when the the height of the day really starts.
• 29:39
  So this is roughly when you're going to want to start using
• 29:42
  express passes if anything's 1/2 hour or more.
• 29:45
  So if you are not interested in doing the Minions rides, you
• 29:50
  could grab lunch now at 11:30 instead of maybe having the
• 29:54
  snack at 11. You could alternatively grab
• 29:57
  lunch if If not, if Minions is of interest to you, we
• 30:03
  definitely recommend grabbing a snack and then waiting until
• 30:06
  about 1:15 for lunch because basically between like 1145 and
• 30:12
  1 is when everybody else also thinks it's a good idea to have
• 30:16
  lunch. How dare true.
• 30:18
  How dare. It's so true.
• 30:22
  That's true everywhere. Everybody all decides to eat at
• 30:25
  the same time. Yeah, First off, that's
• 30:28
  offensive that everybody also gets hungry the same time that I
• 30:31
  get hungry. But but truly and Universal does
• 30:35
  a a good job. They have the mobile ordering
• 30:37
  and it's like basically available everywhere and it's
• 30:40
  pretty efficient. But like the truth of the matter
• 30:42
  is it's just a busy time. You may not find seating, you
• 30:47
  know, So if you can eat early or eat late, and I feel like this
• 30:51
  is going to be the general principle across the board for
• 30:53
  all of these, try to eat outside of peak time.
• 30:56
  If you can avoid it, please do. Even if you have to grab a
• 30:59
  snack, excuse me, even if you have to grab a snack to kind of
• 31:02
  like hold yourself over or your kiddos over, it's worth it to
• 31:07
  have that stress free dining experience by waiting that
• 31:10
  little bit. Now also just the caveat to
• 31:14
  that, don't wait too long either.
• 31:17
  Like don't. Don't get hangry.
• 31:19
  Don't make your kiddos hangry. That felt targeted.
• 31:23
  It was not a promise, all right. But the.
• 31:26
  Snacks. Done it.
• 31:26
  The snacks are crucial, so if you know that you're going to
• 31:30
  wait until 1:30 or two to eat lunch, you have got to make sure
• 31:34
  that you plan at least two snack breaks in your morning block
• 31:37
  before lunch. 100%. Yeah, because you're going to
• 31:41
  be. Cheez its or something in your
• 31:43
  back room for the kiddo? Yep.
• 31:44
  Just make your fellow eat. Yeah.
• 31:47
  Yeah. Because you you are.
• 31:49
  You're walking more. You're more active there.
• 31:51
  You're you need more sustenance to keep you happy. 1000.
• 31:55
  Degrees. Yep, just just at least two
• 31:58
  snack breaks if you're going to do a late lunch.
• 32:01
  And I'd still contemplate a snack break even if you're doing
• 32:04
  an early lunch too, depending on your your preferences.
• 32:07
  With your group, Yep, firm agree.
• 32:09
  You know yourself and your kiddos best.
• 32:12
  It's always good to have like Jess said, like back you just a
• 32:15
  backup cheese it or something right?
• 32:16
  Like. A singular cheese it in your
• 32:19
  bag, but. It's going to be one of those
• 32:21
  really large ones like Taco Bell.
• 32:24
  That's it. Like the like the tostadas that
• 32:26
  Taco Bell sold that were just giant cheese.
• 32:28
  It's it's those just one, just one, one per person in your
• 32:32
  group. Yes, excellent.
• 32:36
  OK, so you have planned your lunch and figured out timing
• 32:41
  with that. So this now we're going to give
• 32:43
  you still times of the afternoon, but they may or may
• 32:45
  not be off a little if you take a later lunch, earlier lunch.
• 32:48
  So keep that in mind, figure that out, do some math in your
• 32:51
  brain. You can do it.
• 32:52
  I promise you can. But where are we headed after
• 32:56
  lunch? So after lunch, around like
• 32:58
  1/30, 1:45-ish is a good time to find a spot for the 2:00 PM
• 33:02
  parade. So this starts.
• 33:04
  But Jess, what time does the 2:00 PM parade start?
• 33:06
  I don't know, I think it's 4. Oh, I knew it.
• 33:09
  I knew The train was just 2:00 PM.
• 33:11
  Parade. So this starts in Hollywood next
• 33:16
  to Cafe La Bamba, and then it goes down through elimination
• 33:19
  and then around the New York area.
• 33:21
  And then it, you know, kind of comes back the way that it came.
• 33:24
  So the parade route is also available on a map on
• 33:28
  Universal's website. So if you want to kind of see
• 33:29
  where it stops and kind of figure out where you guys want
• 33:31
  to be on that route. So the parade takes about 20
• 33:34
  minutes to go by. So it kind of depends on where
• 33:37
  in the route you are. You know, obviously if you're
• 33:40
  towards the end of the route, it'll take longer for that
• 33:43
  parade to get to you. I am shocked by this thought.
• 33:46
  Time works this also. Buys you a little bit of extra
• 33:49
  time if you're doing the late lunch you can.
• 33:52
  So what happens a lot with this parade is that people will be
• 33:57
  where it starts and then clear out once it's passed, not
• 34:00
  realizing it makes that loop back.
• 34:03
  So that is a good place to sort of, you know, if you're running
• 34:06
  a little bit late, maybe you were just finishing up lunch
• 34:08
  that where the parade starts is also where it ends.
• 34:11
  So that is a good place to, if you think the parade's about
• 34:14
  halfway through exactly, just sort of like loop right back and
• 34:17
  you know, you can usually get some some good, good spots to
• 34:20
  view. Yeah, I didn't realize that it
• 34:22
  literally makes a circle. Yeah, You know what most people
• 34:25
  don't because it's very different than how Disney does
• 34:28
  things, right? They Disney, it's just like it's
• 34:31
  down Main Street. It's also true for Universal
• 34:36
  that it's down there to Main Streets, I guess three main
• 34:39
  streets, but it makes just a circle around the block.
• 34:42
  Basically, because of how Universal set up, they have to
• 34:47
  store their floats and such only in that one area, and there's no
• 34:51
  real room for them to sort of, you know, bring it through the
• 34:54
  backstage area. Yeah, right.
• 34:57
  Right, yeah, that makes sense. And Victoria's saying in our
• 34:59
  chat something that's important to think about with the Parade
• 35:02
  2. She said she once got stuck in
• 35:04
  the loop once and couldn't get out to get to like ET or
• 35:07
  something like that. So keep that in mind where
• 35:09
  you're watching the Parade 2. So that way as it loops back
• 35:12
  around, you don't get caught on the wrong side of the parade
• 35:15
  route depending on where you're going next, which is where are
• 35:20
  we going next, Jess, Speaking of ET, hey.
• 35:24
  So Speaking of ET, so after the parade around 2:45, you can
• 35:28
  start making your way back towards ET.
• 35:30
  This ride does get a pretty long wait if it is peak season, so
• 35:33
  you might want to use your express pass.
• 35:35
  But if it is a short wait, like 20 minutes or so, see the
• 35:40
  express pass for later when it might get a little bit busier.
• 35:42
  So this is another people either ride.
• 35:45
  It goes through people like you would not believe everyone is
• 35:48
  seeing that freaky little alien while they're riding their
• 35:50
  bikes. The Faster Than You Believe,
• 35:52
  however, it is one of the most family friendly rides.
• 35:57
  So A, when it's a billion degrees out, it's an air
• 36:00
  conditioned queue, everybody wants to go there.
• 36:03
  B, when it's peak season and there's a lot of families there,
• 36:06
  everybody's going to want to go there because it is one of the
• 36:08
  most family friendly attractions in the park.
• 36:11
  So it it will move fast, but there is a high volume of people
• 36:17
  that are there. So we've seen weights for ET be
• 36:20
  like 4 minutes and then we've seen them be 90 minutes.
• 36:23
  So yeah, it's very dependent on what else is going on in the
• 36:26
  park. What if anything else is down?
• 36:28
  If it's very hot or raining, if there's a lot of people.
• 36:31
  So just keep that in mind. If it's like 20 minutes or less,
• 36:34
  just get right in line and you know, like just said, otherwise,
• 36:37
  go ahead and use that express pass and and move on.
• 36:40
  Yeah. So there are a couple more kind
• 36:42
  of kiddo friendly attractions here.
• 36:44
  There is the playground that they can, you know, play around
• 36:47
  on if you are looking for just time for them to kind of run
• 36:49
  around to get some energy out. And then there is also the
• 36:53
  Troller Coaster if you have any kiddos that are interested in
• 36:55
  that. So those might be some good
• 36:57
  things to hit up while you're over here as well.
• 36:59
  And then there is also the Bourne Stunt Tacular show that
• 37:03
  is in this area. So if that is interesting to
• 37:05
  you, then you can, you know, kind of set aside some time
• 37:07
  around now to, you know, go and watch that show as well.
• 37:11
  If that's of interest to you at all, I recommend it.
• 37:14
  If you are a Disney person and you like the Indiana Jones stunt
• 37:17
  show, you will love the Bourne Stunt Tacular Show.
• 37:21
  It is very good. It is widely regarded as one of
• 37:23
  the best stunt shows in at a theme park in the US, period.
• 37:28
  So it is. It's a really good show.
• 37:30
  Yeah. So if you have teenagers that
• 37:32
  are maybe like not super into some of the other, you know,
• 37:35
  like the dream works stuff over there, the Bourne stunt Tacular
• 37:38
  is it's a great show. All right, so this kind of all
• 37:41
  puts you around like 4:00-ish that you'll be arriving to The
• 37:45
  Simpsons area. So there are a few rides in this
• 37:48
  area. There is a motion simulator
• 37:50
  ride, Matt for me and then Matt for Until the World ride.
• 37:56
  So if you are motion sensitive, much like duck over here, this
• 37:59
  would be a good time to have another, you know, snack stop or
• 38:02
  drink stop. You can go into most Tavern and
• 38:05
  have yourself a little meal and a Duff beer if you are of age.
• 38:10
  You can also have a flaming MO if you are of age.
• 38:13
  I know what that is. So might be a good time for that
• 38:17
  if the rides in The Simpsons area are not something that
• 38:20
  clutch your boat. Pack it up, pack it up.
• 38:23
  I'm good. And there are also, if you have
• 38:24
  kiddos and you're in this area and you're not wanting to do the
• 38:27
  rides, there are like little carnival games and stuff that
• 38:29
  you can do too. So that is something else to
• 38:31
  kind of eat up the time and keep the kids entertained if like The
• 38:35
  Simpsons just really isn't necessarily their vibe.
• 38:38
  Wrong. Everyone loves everybody's vibe.
• 38:40
  It should be everyone's vibe, but you know.
• 38:42
  Bye, Doctor Nick. You can also just like go into
• 38:46
  MO's Tavern and have dinner too. You can get like a full meal in
• 38:49
  there if you want. You could also buy like those
• 38:52
  big Donuts and like all of that. So The Simpsons area has a lot
• 38:54
  to offer even if you're not doing the rides.
• 38:58
  So this all puts us to the Men in Black ride around 5:00.
• 39:03
  So you can go on that ride. It's usually never more than
• 39:05
  like a 10 minute wait because like Duck said, it really just
• 39:08
  eats through people. Like it's, it's insane.
• 39:12
  Basically it moves through and like it is like a stop and you
• 39:14
  have to load people like things. So I don't like it defies.
• 39:18
  It's a I'm telling you, be this quick, but it is.
• 39:21
  Time works differently in the Men in Black, right?
• 39:23
  It does. They use the flashy thing you
• 39:25
  you forget. The D neuralizer, but it truly
• 39:31
  it's it's high capacity. There's many it's basically like
• 39:35
  three groups of nine on two different sides.
• 39:39
  So it's a lot of people very quickly that are moving through.
• 39:42
  So or three groups of six, Sorry, I can't count, but is it,
• 39:47
  it doesn't really matter. It's a lot of people, a lot of
• 39:49
  people moving really fast and I can't count.
• 39:52
  We've established this. It's all right.
• 39:54
  We don't have to count. So yeah, I mean, this ride
• 39:57
  typically is not a very long wait, but if you want to, you
• 39:59
  can use your express pass. If you want to save it and do
• 40:02
  another lap around and come back to it, you absolutely can do
• 40:05
  that too. But honestly, it's usually never
• 40:08
  a very long wait. If you want to feel like you've
• 40:10
  used your express pass, you can use the express pass, but
• 40:13
  there's like no need to do it for men in black and particular.
• 40:17
  Maybe up down your walking distance a little bit.
• 40:19
  Yeah, that would be the perk. So this all kind of puts us
• 40:24
  around 5 thirtyish and we are kind of back near the Hogwarts
• 40:28
  area. Somebody did comment in the chat
• 40:31
  before about it's not really labeled.
• 40:33
  It is not really labeled where the Hogwarts area is, but there
• 40:36
  is the night bus right outside and there is the King's Cross
• 40:39
  station that is like right by it.
• 40:41
  So there is it's kind of the entrance is hidden away because
• 40:44
  it is Diane Alley. So it is hidden away, but it's
• 40:48
  kind of right in that area. And then you can kind of just go
• 40:50
  back. It looks distinctly British.
• 40:52
  It does look distinctly British, Yeah.
• 40:53
  You're in New York and then all of a sudden you're in London.
• 40:56
  So that is like your hint that it's nearby.
• 40:59
  So you can go back to the Hogwarts area or the Harry
• 41:02
  Potter area. Ride Gringotts again using your
• 41:04
  Express pass, this time to the ride or the line I am sure will
• 41:07
  be very long. And then when you're done there
• 41:10
  that puts you about 6:15-ish. Head back over to the Mummy and
• 41:13
  use our express pass on the Mummy if you didn't have to use
• 41:15
  it in the morning. And then that puts us at dinner,
• 41:20
  at around dinner time. OK, so now that you've made your
• 41:24
  full loop back, this will put you about in New York or San
• 41:28
  Francisco. So there's two good options
• 41:31
  there for dinner. I would also say carry out good
• 41:35
  options with it's still theme park food, right?
• 41:37
  Like we're not, it's not, it's not Michelin star dining.
• 41:39
  That's right, Michelin star dining because I said one time
• 41:42
  it was good food and I got yelled at in the chat.
• 41:45
  And I just want to say like I want to caveat it.
• 41:47
  It is good for theme park food, but it is you are still in the
• 41:50
  theme park. Like I want to make that clear.
• 41:52
  Manage our expectations. That's right.
• 41:53
  Let's be clear what this is Theme park food.
• 41:57
  But yeah, so there is Louise, which is an Italian adjacent
• 42:01
  restaurant, and then there is Richterberger in San Francisco.
• 42:06
  So those are two good quick options.
• 42:09
  And if you need to like sit down, there's Lombard Seafood
• 42:12
  Grill. We haven't eaten there.
• 42:14
  We've sat down in there during like our tours for HHN.
• 42:17
  We have not personally eaten there, but again, like I, I
• 42:21
  don't imagine there's anything necessarily wrong with it.
• 42:24
  I haven't heard anything horrific about it.
• 42:27
  And I would recommend Finnegans is also a good place that's more
• 42:31
  like a bar vibe. We've talked about that before.
• 42:34
  However, it is closing this upcoming year for extensive
• 42:38
  renovation. So through most of 2026, I
• 42:41
  believe it will be closed. So if you're listening to this
• 42:44
  very soon or in the far-flung future, go ahead and have go
• 42:49
  ahead and go to. But just know that it is for
• 42:53
  most of 2026, there's a planned renovation for it.
• 42:57
  It sorely needs it. I love that place, but it needs
• 42:59
  the update. So said it'll be closed.
• 43:02
  Happy that it's getting the update.
• 43:04
  Yeah, and just note about that again, if you need more advice
• 43:07
  on where to eat, we talked about kiddo friendly options,
• 43:11
  especially already in our previous episodes.
• 43:14
  So look back in our archives that are all available anywhere.
• 43:17
  You're, you're listening to us, right?
• 43:18
  Our archives exist on YouTube, on Chip and Co, on Spotify, on
• 43:22
  all the places. So head back there and if you
• 43:25
  like, can't find something, please reach out to us and be
• 43:27
  like, hey, I'm looking for this. You said it was there.
• 43:29
  I can't find it. I'm happy to help you.
• 43:32
  Just send us a message. I again am thrilled to chat
• 43:35
  about Universal, so any question you have I'm happy to answer.
• 43:39
  Love this. OK, so we had a wonderful
• 43:42
  relaxing meal inside the air conditioning.
• 43:46
  We're ready for our third, our third wind of the day for our
• 43:50
  our evening plans. Where are we headed?
• 43:54
  So this is going to put you about 7:00.
• 43:57
  The park can close anytime between 9:00 and 1:00 AM.
• 44:03
  It's super depends on the time of year.
• 44:05
  It's super depends on the night, if there's anything else going
• 44:09
  on, if there's a special event, what what have you.
• 44:11
  So, and just keep an eye on that.
• 44:14
  Just check the app. If you're not sure, ask a team
• 44:16
  member. They'll be happy to tell you.
• 44:19
  So we're, we're going with assuming that this park is
• 44:22
  closing about 10:00, right? Because that's, that's usually
• 44:24
  what it is between 9:00 and 10:00 typically.
• 44:27
  And it's usually only those special times or when it's
• 44:29
  really busy that it closes as late as 1:00 AM.
• 44:32
  So we'll just go with a rough at 10:00.
• 44:35
  So this is putting us at about 7:00.
• 44:39
  If you wanted to do the Fast and furious, well, it's still open
• 44:44
  or Transformers, which is also right there.
• 44:47
  You can do so now it depends on the weight.
• 44:49
  And also at this point, like when we get to this point in the
• 44:53
  night, if we haven't used express on a ride, we will just
• 44:55
  use the Express on the ride, right?
• 44:57
  Because even though it's maybe not like a huge time savings, it
• 45:02
  is a more direct route usually in the queue.
• 45:04
  It dumps you in a more convenient place.
• 45:06
  So overall, like it saves you, I don't know, like 1000 steps on
• 45:10
  every ride, right? Like, it doesn't seem like that
• 45:12
  much, but it really does add up when you've been going since,
• 45:15
  say. You're just done by then you're
• 45:17
  you are just done. Use the express pass.
• 45:20
  Just after dinner, use use the express pass.
• 45:22
  Just just do it. Yeah, it's worth it.
• 45:25
  And, and also like, I don't know, it makes me feel like I'm,
• 45:27
  I'm getting more out of right. Like maybe I didn't need express
• 45:30
  mass. There's been more than one time
• 45:32
  where we've looked at each other and we're like, we don't need to
• 45:34
  use it, but I need to use it. You know what I need?
• 45:37
  That's it. Just get the little scan
• 45:39
  checkpoint, get to say thank you to the team member and move on
• 45:43
  up. But yeah, so, so now is a good
• 45:44
  time to do either Fast and the Furious or Transformers.
• 45:49
  And this is now entering what we call clean up hours.
• 45:52
  I love that it's firm. This is, yeah.
• 45:54
  Yeah, this is clean up. This is you've done everything
• 45:56
  that you wanted to do. You made your full lap, you got
• 45:59
  some food, you got some treats. This is now when you go back and
• 46:03
  you do whatever you haven't done, right?
• 46:04
  Maybe there's a show that you wanted to see, maybe there's
• 46:08
  rides. We usually use this time for
• 46:09
  shopping so we can kind of hang out in the air conditioning
• 46:12
  after a long day, right? So this is when we're looking
• 46:15
  for souvenirs for us or for our friends and family.
• 46:17
  Like that's what we use clean up time for usually.
• 46:22
  And again, like if there wasn't anything that you got that you
• 46:24
  did, like you didn't burn your express pass for, you can go and
• 46:28
  use that now, even if you don't like need it, you need it.
• 46:30
  You know what I mean? It's also a good time to take in
• 46:35
  any park atmosphere that you haven't had the chance to do.
• 46:39
  This, I feel like is much more applicable advice for when we
• 46:42
  get to Epic Universe because everything in there is so
• 46:45
  immersive. But also like if you're like us,
• 46:48
  like I just love theme parks and I love people watching at theme
• 46:51
  parks. Like that is truly at least half
• 46:53
  the experience for me. So sometimes we'll just like, if
• 46:56
  we're done, like we'll just sit down on a bench and we'll just
• 46:59
  like, you know, grab some something to drink and people
• 47:03
  watch, right? Like we'll just grab a little
• 47:04
  soda pop, a little snack and watch.
• 47:07
  And it's so fun, right? So that's, that's, that's our
• 47:11
  big evening activity. I love.
• 47:14
  And if you can hang on until park close, there is now, we
• 47:18
  talked about it a little bit, I think last episode.
• 47:22
  There is now a projection show in the middle of USF.
• 47:27
  So there is like the large lake body of water towards the front
• 47:31
  of that. And like the New York ish area,
• 47:33
  there is now a projection show because they were able to
• 47:36
  finally get the money to fix the fountains and and get that all
• 47:40
  together. Yay.
• 47:42
  The Halloween Horror Nights one that they did was excellent,
• 47:46
  amazing. I really, we were very impressed
• 47:48
  with it. So now they've brought back
• 47:50
  sensational as Symphonic Spectacular, which is that show
• 47:54
  that gets projected on. It is, I believe the official
• 47:58
  answers to when it starts is 10 minutes before close, maybe it's
• 48:02
  15 minutes before close. And that will be true whether it
• 48:04
  closes at 9 or closes at 11 or what have you.
• 48:07
  That's the general time. So you're going to want to
• 48:10
  probably go to the viewing area, which is pretty clearly marked.
• 48:13
  And again, if you're not sure, you can ask a team member and go
• 48:18
  probably maybe about 20 minutes, 1/2 hour before, maybe a little
• 48:21
  earlier than that if it's very busy, just to make sure that you
• 48:24
  get a good, good viewing area. Excellent.
• 48:28
  So, OK, that kind of puts a pin on our day if we're using
• 48:32
  Express now we're going to talk about without Express.
• 48:37
  With just. Standby.
• 48:39
  On the yeah, the Standby TM, also on the way out, you're
• 48:43
  going to want to get Voodoo Donuts.
• 48:44
  I know we said it. I'm going to say it again.
• 48:46
  That is the best way to end off a Universal day is Voodoo
• 48:48
  Donuts. Absolutely love this.
• 48:51
  And then you've got Donuts for the next morning, which I think
• 48:53
  we also have talked about on a previous Universal episode where
• 48:56
  we said, hey, just grab grab a couple extra your your next
• 49:00
  morning. You'll be grateful that you did.
• 49:03
  Let me tell you, nothing feels better than having sore theme
• 49:07
  park feet and eating an Oreo doughnut at 8:00 AM like it.
• 49:11
  Truly, it is. It is, It heals you.
• 49:14
  It is a life affirming experience.
• 49:18
  I love this so much. OK, so let's think about what we
• 49:22
  need to do now. If we're attempting to tackle
• 49:25
  this park without Express, what do we need to know before we
• 49:30
  even talk about itinerary? What do we need to know about
• 49:32
  this park and doing standby? Yes, so if you are doing
• 49:36
  standby, there are definitely longer lines to contend with.
• 49:38
  So you really need to pick like your top three absolute must do
• 49:42
  attractions in the park and then if you get to do everything
• 49:46
  else, great, wonderful. That's just like extra icing on
• 49:48
  the cake, right? USF does have a lot of high
• 49:51
  capacity rides though. So we did you know, kind of talk
• 49:53
  about it in, you know, talking about it with Express Pass and
• 49:56
  some of them really are usually very short lines to get through.
• 49:59
  So it is kind of realistic to get through a lot more rides in
• 50:02
  this park than in maybe IOA or Epic.
• 50:07
  But to avoid the disappointment, kind of stick with like I have
• 50:10
  these three must do that. I absolutely need to get on and
• 50:13
  then I'll see what else I can kind of get through during the
• 50:15
  day. So kind of a theme with all of
• 50:18
  the theme parks when it comes to standby, like you'll hear us
• 50:21
  talk about that with probably every other park when we talk
• 50:24
  about not using these express passes or lightning lanes, you
• 50:27
  need to have a priority list. So you you kind of have to have
• 50:31
  that set up before you even, but you should have that set up well
• 50:34
  in advance is my advice to you. Sorry.
• 50:38
  Absolutely. So we'll start in the same place
• 50:41
  here as we would if we had express.
• 50:43
  You're going to head to your most anticipated attraction.
• 50:48
  However, what kind of is different here is where you
• 50:50
  might go afterwards, right? So instead of, you know,
• 50:54
  necessarily going counterclockwise, hitting all
• 50:56
  those attractions that way, you might have to do a little bit
• 50:58
  more zigzagging across the park. So basically if there is
• 51:02
  anything that you want to ride in the weight is 30 minutes or
• 51:04
  less, that really is, you know, kind of where you should be
• 51:06
  heading because those weights will fluctuate throughout the
• 51:09
  day. And I will say this is less true
• 51:15
  here because of the nature of the fact that there's a lot of
• 51:18
  just like people eat or ride. It is vastly more true in IOA
• 51:24
  and Epic Universe. If you are doing either of those
• 51:28
  parks without express, you were going to have to do a lot of
• 51:31
  zigzagging, a lot of checking the app.
• 51:34
  I think the same is true for a lot of Disney stuff, right?
• 51:36
  Like you were, you were simply going to have to go cross park a
• 51:39
  lot. So that is something to consider
• 51:41
  in your day planning. And just like, like when, when
• 51:44
  you're considering if express is worth it or not, you know, just
• 51:48
  how much can you, and if you're going with family members or
• 51:51
  friends, like how much can they physically do too?
• 51:54
  You know, that's also important to consider.
• 51:56
  It is of course, like financial is like the number one
• 52:00
  consideration. But if you're on the fence about
• 52:02
  it, I, I think considering your group size, how many people you
• 52:07
  know, you're, you're going with and the capabilities of those
• 52:10
  people, right? Because you may be going with
• 52:12
  small children and if all children can zigzag far less
• 52:15
  easily then then maybe a group of three focused adults.
• 52:19
  So. Right.
• 52:20
  Well, and I will say because we haven't mentioned it this
• 52:22
  particular episode that like when it comes to kind of
• 52:25
  figuring some of that out, travel agents can really be your
• 52:28
  best friend. Because sometimes depending on
• 52:30
  your group, it may be more cost efficient to stay at one of
• 52:35
  those deluxe resorts and get it included then it would be for
• 52:38
  you to price it all out separately individually at a
• 52:41
  lower tier resort. So just things to consider,
• 52:45
  especially with Universal having so many different ticket
• 52:48
  options. If you remember when we talked
• 52:49
  about the ticket options, there's 18 billion and they just
• 52:52
  changed them again last week because now the three day
• 52:56
  ticket, you can do Epic more than one day and they have all
• 52:58
  these other options with their park to park tickets.
• 53:01
  And we're not going there. We're not doing it again.
• 53:04
  Jackie, I can't do it again. I can't do it.
• 53:07
  I can't go back there. So.
• 53:09
  Call a travel agent, use a travel agent.
• 53:12
  There are so many really, really great ones out there.
• 53:14
  Just a reminder, make sure that you are using a travel agent
• 53:17
  that does not charge for their services.
• 53:19
  It should be free because they get paid by the the theme park
• 53:23
  that they are booking for. Just a reminder out there to our
• 53:25
  lovely listening audience. But use a travel agent if you
• 53:29
  need to do some of that price comparing to see what makes more
• 53:32
  sense. Because like you said, if you've
• 53:34
  got a group of five, maybe it is more cost effective for you to
• 53:38
  go to a deluxe resort and get that included.
• 53:41
  Because not only that, you can stay one night and get 2 days of
• 53:44
  express included because check in day and check out day you
• 53:47
  become eligible. So lots of little things with
• 53:49
  that. Again, we're not going, we're
• 53:51
  not going there. However, your travel agent can
• 53:54
  go there. So contact them that is.
• 53:57
  That is, in fact their job, that.
• 53:59
  Is their job, so figure that out.
• 54:01
  If you need help connecting to a travel agent, send us a message.
• 54:05
  We are not travel agents. We love to give information and
• 54:08
  help people plan. We are not travel agents.
• 54:10
  So. But if you need help connecting
• 54:13
  to 1:00 and you're like I'm lost, I need help, please send
• 54:16
  us a message Mom St. usa@gmail.com Message us on our
• 54:19
  social medias. We will connect you to a travel
• 54:21
  agent. No problem.
• 54:24
  OK, sorry, rant over. No continue.
• 54:27
  Good and important. Land, Thank you.
• 54:29
  Yes, yes. So as we mentioned before too,
• 54:32
  the times that we give on this are really going to be more
• 54:35
  general like morning, afternoon, evening.
• 54:38
  Approximately between 9:00 and noon maybe.
• 54:42
  We'll see. Rather than exact times because
• 54:44
  it's all kind of fluctuates depending on how busy it is, how
• 54:47
  long the lines are that you're waiting on.
• 54:49
  So really if you are going in without Express, you have to
• 54:51
  have the universal app be like on top of checking wait times
• 54:55
  and you know to make sure that you get to everything that you
• 54:59
  want to do because it is something is very hard to
• 55:01
  protect to predict the wait times.
• 55:03
  Yeah. And I will also say you can set
• 55:05
  notifications in the app. Don't rely on them.
• 55:09
  They don't sometimes go out. It's good to have right like as
• 55:13
  a maybe I'm not looking at my phone right that second and I'll
• 55:16
  get notified. Don't rely on them.
• 55:18
  And if there is something that you are interested in and it has
• 55:22
  a persistently long wait through the day, it is not a bad idea to
• 55:27
  post up near there. Maybe find a park bench or
• 55:30
  something where you can sit and see the wait times.
• 55:33
  Because the wait times will change faster in person than
• 55:36
  they will get updated on the app.
• 55:38
  We have seen it happen where a wait was posted at an hour and
• 55:42
  then it dropped to 1/2 hour. We got in line.
• 55:45
  It wound up being 20 minutes, but it did not update on the app
• 55:48
  for a significant period of time because I kept checking because
• 55:51
  that was curious. So the app is good.
• 55:54
  It is a good gauge and it is going to be your best friend,
• 55:57
  especially if you're like across the park.
• 55:58
  There's no possible way for you to know what the true wait time
• 56:01
  is right? However there there is just
• 56:04
  simply more strategy to be employed around the park than
• 56:07
  solely relying on the app. It's a good gauge and it's an
• 56:10
  important tool, but it shouldn't be your end all be all.
• 56:13
  All right. So with all of that caveat being
• 56:17
  said, your morning's going to look pretty much like it did
• 56:20
  with the Express Pass, right? That is the general advice that
• 56:23
  we give. Like Jackie said across theme
• 56:25
  parks, you're going to go to whatever your most wanted is.
• 56:28
  If it's Gringotts, go right for Gringotts.
• 56:31
  If you have kids, like we said before, prioritize that minion
• 56:35
  mayhem. That advice still holds true.
• 56:39
  And then you're going to want to go for whatever your second is.
• 56:41
  Again, like if you're doing Gringotts into The Mummy, this
• 56:44
  will still be a viable strategy even without Express because
• 56:48
  like we said earlier, what Express allows you to do is
• 56:51
  rewrite it again later in the day.
• 56:53
  The unfortunate truth is there is a good chance that once you
• 56:56
  knock these two out in the morning, that will be your only
• 56:59
  ride for the day unless you want to wait a very long time,
• 57:01
  especially if you're going during peak season.
• 57:04
  We have seen the wait for The Mummy get up to like 2 hours,
• 57:07
  right? It can be extreme.
• 57:09
  So it's good to keep an eye on it, you know, later in the night
• 57:12
  as people are filtering out or sometimes you get lucky if you
• 57:16
  eat at those off times. You can go when everybody else
• 57:18
  is at lunch. You may get lucky.
• 57:21
  Or if you are not interested in the parade or the show, right,
• 57:24
  All those typical theme park tips still apply.
• 57:28
  But whereas with Disney, you get like a huge draw during the
• 57:32
  fireworks. So that's a great time to go,
• 57:36
  you know, to to the rides. That is not generally the type
• 57:39
  of crowd that's going to Universal.
• 57:40
  People are not going to Universal necessarily for this
• 57:43
  additional entertainment. They are going for the coasters.
• 57:46
  So they too are going to prioritize those coasters.
• 57:49
  So that is just something that you're going to have to keep in
• 57:51
  mind. So those weights will get high
• 57:54
  and during peak times, Christmas, summer, they'll stay
• 57:57
  high. I mean, they generally won't dip
• 58:00
  even by the end of the day when you're thinking that people are
• 58:02
  going to, you know, filter out for dinner or, you know, there's
• 58:06
  no firework show or anything like that to pull people.
• 58:08
  So it's just simply two different, you know, desires of
• 58:13
  what people are getting out of their theme park experience.
• 58:17
  Yeah, And do keep in mind that a few of these do have like a
• 58:21
  single rider option. So like if it's just grown-ups
• 58:24
  or people that are old enough to utilize that, that want to do it
• 58:28
  again, that could be an option that you look into.
• 58:30
  Now if you've got littles, maybe you can rotate through and take
• 58:34
  turns doing single riders, kind of like that type of thing.
• 58:37
  So do rider swap and they do rider swap if you need to do
• 58:40
  that as well. But that would still require.
• 58:43
  Just keep in mind that rider swap still requires someone to
• 58:46
  wait in that stand by queue, yes, So keep that part in mind
• 58:51
  as well. Yes, 100%.
• 58:54
  Yes, but some of them do have single rider.
• 58:57
  So if that is something that you are able to utilize or that some
• 59:02
  people in your group are able to utilize or take turns or you
• 59:05
  know you guys are smart theme park people, I have faith in
• 59:08
  you. You can figure that out and
• 59:09
  figure out how to work through that, coordinating who's going
• 59:13
  to ride what when. But that could be an option for
• 59:16
  some of these rides that maybe you want to do a second time.
• 59:20
  Yeah. And I will say single rider is a
• 59:23
  good option for USF. It is not always a good option.
• 59:29
  In IOA. There is specifically one ride,
• 59:31
  it's Hagrid's that I'm thinking of that single rider can be
• 59:34
  brutally long, even longer than standby.
• 59:37
  So if it's like a peak day, that may not be the option.
• 59:40
  We'll talk about that much more when we get to Islands of
• 59:43
  Adventure, but that is generally true for both Gringotts and this
• 59:49
  Gringotts have single router I. Think it does.
• 59:52
  I think it does now. Mummy definitely does.
• 59:55
  Almost all of them do. Yes.
• 59:56
  So according to the interweb, great.
• 1:00:00
  Thanks. Single rider lines are almost
• 1:00:03
  always available, almost always not guaranteed, especially early
• 1:00:07
  morning, late evening, not always guarantee Minion Mayhem,
• 1:00:12
  Fast and the Furious, Gringotts, Men in Black, Revenge of the
• 1:00:17
  Mummy, and Transformers. Thank God, thank.
• 1:00:20
  God. Fast and the Furious has a
• 1:00:22
  single rider. I was worried I would have to
• 1:00:26
  wait the full 3 minutes because nobody wants to go on that ride.
• 1:00:31
  Fast and the Furious has no haters.
• 1:00:32
  Duck is dead. I am fast to get furious over
• 1:00:39
  the stupid. Ride.
• 1:00:44
  Yeah. So those are ones that may have
• 1:00:47
  them. And if you're not sure, like go
• 1:00:49
  ask with the team member that's hanging out.
• 1:00:52
  There's always gonna be a team member somewhere near the
• 1:00:55
  entrance queue. So just be like, hey, single
• 1:00:58
  rider. And they may say not currently
• 1:01:00
  open. Yes, it is.
• 1:01:01
  Here's where you go. Various different things that
• 1:01:03
  can happen with that, but those are the ones that, according to
• 1:01:07
  the interwebs, typically have them open.
• 1:01:10
  And that is true, like you said, with the caveats of sometimes
• 1:01:13
  not early in the morning, sometimes not late, sometimes
• 1:01:15
  it's a staffing thing. So it's, it's very possible that
• 1:01:18
  even during peak times when you'd expect a single rider to
• 1:01:21
  be open, I don't know, maybe the whole ride crew got hit with
• 1:01:24
  food poisoning, right? Like it happened.
• 1:01:26
  So like there's extenuating circumstances.
• 1:01:29
  But like Jackie said, please just always talk to the team
• 1:01:31
  members. They are happy to guide you in
• 1:01:33
  the right direction. Yes, perfect.
• 1:01:35
  OK. So I think that kind of covers
• 1:01:39
  morning vaguely because that's about the best we can do, right?
• 1:01:43
  So that is approximate morning, right?
• 1:01:45
  You're going to knock out your number one and probably #2 rides
• 1:01:50
  either by doing everything in the minions area.
• 1:01:52
  If you have kiddos. I'm not trying to stereotype.
• 1:01:55
  I just know a lot of children love the minions.
• 1:01:58
  I also love the minions, but that's neither here nor there.
• 1:02:00
  Or you're going to be the the thrill people and you're going
• 1:02:03
  to go for the, for the, the coasters that will bring you to
• 1:02:08
  about 11:30. We recommend getting lunch now,
• 1:02:13
  right? This is, this is before the
• 1:02:14
  rush. This is worth it to just get
• 1:02:16
  lunch knocked out early. So again, we're sticking with
• 1:02:19
  those. We are going to recommend doing,
• 1:02:21
  of course, the quick service. So we're going to say do either
• 1:02:24
  Louise in New York or Richterberger in San Francisco.
• 1:02:29
  So there are other you can also, if you can, if you want to wait
• 1:02:33
  like this is this is all fluid, right?
• 1:02:34
  Like maybe you knock both of those out and it's only 10:00 or
• 1:02:38
  10:30. We've done that before, right?
• 1:02:40
  Like we've gone really quick and they were both short wait.
• 1:02:43
  So then we were done. So then you can walk around or
• 1:02:45
  do some shopping or keep going on to the next ride or get a
• 1:02:48
  snack, right? So like this is what we're
• 1:02:50
  talking about when we say without express, like everything
• 1:02:53
  is so fluid because the lines are unpredictable.
• 1:02:56
  So just pick your top, get those done and then and hang out the
• 1:03:00
  rest of the day and hit what you can.
• 1:03:03
  Perfect. OK, so after lunch, what should
• 1:03:06
  we be kind of keeping an eye on? Yeah, after lunch, check the
• 1:03:10
  wait times, right? It could be worth it to hit up
• 1:03:13
  the Transformers ride or if you haven't done one of the Minions
• 1:03:16
  rides or you know, anything like that, kind of hitting those up
• 1:03:19
  while you're in that area, assuming you went to, you know,
• 1:03:22
  one of The New Yorker same friend restaurants for lunch.
• 1:03:25
  And then if neither of those is on your list and you can just
• 1:03:28
  head to whatever your next preferred ride is or whatever
• 1:03:30
  has the shortest wait and is, you know, on your list of things
• 1:03:33
  to hit. So once you've gotten to the
• 1:03:35
  next ride, definitely time check, prioritize either the
• 1:03:39
  parade or the Born Spectacular if you are interested in doing
• 1:03:43
  either one of those. And then definitely move on back
• 1:03:46
  towards that Simpsons area and Men in Black if you have not
• 1:03:48
  done so already. But again, those are usually
• 1:03:51
  areas where the weights are pretty low on rides anyway.
• 1:03:54
  So that is something you can kind of push until later in the
• 1:03:56
  day. So then that'll put you back
• 1:03:59
  around dinner time. And as we discussed in the
• 1:04:02
  Express pass, you know, kind of portion, you can try to sneak in
• 1:04:06
  a few additional rides or you know, do some shopping at this
• 1:04:09
  time as well or just head and get some dinner.
• 1:04:13
  I'll also recommend just really quick for the the parade or the
• 1:04:17
  stunt tacular. If you're prioritizing rides,
• 1:04:20
  you're probably only going to get to do one of those things.
• 1:04:23
  So just depending on the time check, maybe see what's
• 1:04:27
  happening sooner. So that way you can knock that
• 1:04:29
  out. Or if you have a preference,
• 1:04:31
  just make sure that you're building that time into your day
• 1:04:34
  because the parade is at 2. And then the born stunt tacular,
• 1:04:38
  I think is I think it's like every like it's not every hour
• 1:04:42
  on the hour. It's like every 15 on the 15,
• 1:04:44
  right? It's like 11/15, 12:15, maybe
• 1:04:47
  2/15, 3:15 and 5:15, something like that.
• 1:04:51
  So of course, check the app, ask a team member.
• 1:04:55
  So, you know, we do, if you are trying to prioritize rides, we
• 1:04:58
  do recommend just picking one over the other to make sure that
• 1:05:01
  you can maximize the number of times that you're going to ride
• 1:05:04
  Men in Black. I know we're, I know we're like
• 1:05:07
  kind of knocking it, but that's. It's a very.
• 1:05:09
  Fun. It's actually genuinely one of
• 1:05:11
  my favorite rides. If I can go down memory lane for
• 1:05:13
  a second, I think I've talked about this.
• 1:05:16
  I went to Universal as a kid with my family and I have like
• 1:05:19
  such a distinct memory of always getting the high score and
• 1:05:23
  making my sister so mad. I have I like actually love that
• 1:05:28
  ride so much. I I made my parents buy me a de
• 1:05:32
  neuralizer toy. Like I have it still my closet
• 1:05:35
  like made. Then it like did the flashy
• 1:05:37
  thing. It made the noise.
• 1:05:38
  Exactly right, That's exactly right.
• 1:05:40
  I love that ride so much. Of course, we watch men in black
• 1:05:43
  all the time growing up. My family is like big sci-fi
• 1:05:45
  people, so it was always on. So I was just like, I really
• 1:05:48
  love the men in ride Black. It's a very fun like shooting
• 1:05:51
  gallery type ride. And my hint to the general
• 1:05:54
  public is always make sure that you are the one to press the red
• 1:05:57
  button. That's it.
• 1:05:58
  That's all I'm going to say. You heard it here first, folks.
• 1:06:04
  Elbow your child to push the. Red button.
• 1:06:09
  I do not condone this behavior. Don't listen to them.
• 1:06:15
  Wrong. Only listen to me.
• 1:06:17
  Elbow. Elbow the grandmother next to
• 1:06:19
  you and the child to your right. Take them out.
• 1:06:21
  Hit the red button. Oh my gosh.
• 1:06:24
  Anyway, back to yeah, basically. Sued.
• 1:06:28
  Basically it's so the afternoon you're going to kind of focus
• 1:06:32
  on, if I'm understanding correctly, like San Francisco,
• 1:06:37
  New York area ish. So mostly, so you're going to
• 1:06:43
  eat in San Francisco, in New York, and then you're going to
• 1:06:46
  move on, continuing around prioritizing whatever is
• 1:06:50
  important to you, right? If you want to go to ET, go to
• 1:06:53
  ET after that. If you're interested in riding
• 1:06:55
  men in Block, go to there. So this is where the zigzag kind
• 1:06:58
  of comes in and where you need to kind of pay attention to the
• 1:07:01
  times on the app, right? Because ET might be 40 minutes
• 1:07:05
  now. And so instead, you're going to
• 1:07:07
  go ride the Tilt a hurl in The Simpsons area.
• 1:07:10
  And then once that's done, done, oets back down to a 20 minute
• 1:07:14
  wait. I better go book it back over
• 1:07:16
  there, right? So this is where your priority
• 1:07:18
  list and your use of the app is going to really come in handy,
• 1:07:22
  right? So this is where the zigzagging,
• 1:07:25
  the checking, the looking comes in handy, right?
• 1:07:27
  So we kind of start, say, everybody eat in the New York,
• 1:07:31
  San Francisco area because it's sort of like a neutral location,
• 1:07:34
  right? Central.
• 1:07:35
  Yeah, it's like as central as you can get here because that's
• 1:07:39
  what then where the pathway splits.
• 1:07:42
  So you can go right towards ET and the DreamWorks area and then
• 1:07:47
  you'll hit Simpsons or you can go left towards more of New
• 1:07:51
  York, which is the Mummy, and then into into the Harry Potter
• 1:07:56
  section. And then they meet in the back
• 1:07:58
  at Men in Black. So, so it's like it's truly just
• 1:08:01
  a giant circle with these like different areas.
• 1:08:04
  So this is, we say New York and San Francisco a because it's
• 1:08:08
  very everybody friendly food, right?
• 1:08:10
  It's like Italian food. So you get like Sabarro's pizza
• 1:08:13
  basically, or like chicken fingers, right?
• 1:08:16
  It's like new. York, or like classic New York
• 1:08:19
  slice, who are we got seen in the office?
• 1:08:23
  It's a great one or you can get burgers right, like and there's
• 1:08:26
  like all kinds of options with like chicken sandwiches and
• 1:08:29
  stuff at Richters too. So like those are very neutral
• 1:08:32
  eating locations and they are somewhat centrally located
• 1:08:35
  because it's easy to go down either way that that splits.
• 1:08:40
  So that's why we recommend eating in that area and then
• 1:08:42
  making your decision as to which way you're going to go and then
• 1:08:46
  start your zigzagging from there.
• 1:08:48
  Yeah. So that being said, not only do
• 1:08:50
  you want to make sure you have your top like 3 priority, you
• 1:08:54
  kind of want to rank the rest of the rides and have that in your
• 1:08:57
  back pocket because that's what your afternoon is going to look
• 1:09:01
  like, right? So that's what Duck was just,
• 1:09:03
  you know, explaining geographically to us what makes
• 1:09:06
  sense. So, you know, by the time you
• 1:09:09
  get to that lunch time, chances are good two, if not two of the
• 1:09:14
  three or three of the three of your top rides you may have been
• 1:09:17
  able to knock out before you hit lunch.
• 1:09:18
  So you need to have something you don't want to be you don't
• 1:09:22
  you don't want to be stuck going.
• 1:09:24
  What do you want to do? I don't know what do you want to
• 1:09:25
  do? I don't know what do you want to
• 1:09:26
  do? So you know, right, there's
• 1:09:28
  there. The list of attractions in this
• 1:09:31
  park is not so immense that you can't just like sit through, sit
• 1:09:35
  and look through them and do a quick like, OK, we got our top
• 1:09:38
  three, what's our next three? Let's rank those.
• 1:09:40
  What's our next three? Let's rank those.
• 1:09:42
  You know you still want to have some backups to your backups to
• 1:09:45
  make sure that you have something concrete that is
• 1:09:48
  guiding you, especially if you are in an indecisive party, a
• 1:09:51
  large party or a party that has not been to Universal before.
• 1:09:54
  Yep, Yep, absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:09:56
  And this is actually a pretty good park if this just general
• 1:09:59
  advice if you haven't been to Universal before, USF is a good
• 1:10:03
  part to start with because it's far less overwhelming in the
• 1:10:06
  action so. It's not going to be like this
• 1:10:08
  with IOA. You're epic.
• 1:10:10
  Nope. We're like, go right back to it.
• 1:10:12
  Yes, yeah, you're right. It's going to look very, very
• 1:10:15
  different. Right, Perfect.
• 1:10:17
  OK. So I think that kind of gives us
• 1:10:19
  a good afternoon game plan. So then dinner, right?
• 1:10:26
  Yep. So then when it comes to dinner
• 1:10:27
  time, this sort of where you're going to eat sort of depends on
• 1:10:31
  where you've wound up, right? If you didn't eat in New York
• 1:10:34
  and San Francisco, you can go hit hit up either one of those,
• 1:10:37
  right? If you're on the other side of
• 1:10:39
  the park, there's The Simpsons, MO's Tavern.
• 1:10:42
  They have plenty of options in there.
• 1:10:44
  It's called MO's Tavern, but it's not just Tavern food,
• 1:10:47
  right? There's like Cletus's Chicken
• 1:10:48
  Shack, and it's all theme to The Simpsons in there.
• 1:10:51
  So we've talked about it a little bit more, I think on our
• 1:10:53
  previous episodes, but there's lots of options in there for a
• 1:10:57
  variety of foods that folks may be interested in.
• 1:11:00
  So that's, you know, if you're on the other side of the park,
• 1:11:02
  that's, you know, a viable option to eat at.
• 1:11:06
  So what you're doing for dinner kind of just depends on your
• 1:11:09
  proximity to things. And again, if you can eat
• 1:11:12
  outside of peak times, great. So once you have eaten and you
• 1:11:17
  are ready to get back out there, this again is our clean up time,
• 1:11:21
  right? So this is a good time still to
• 1:11:23
  do shopping because if you're like us, you prioritize rides
• 1:11:27
  during the day and then you're doing your shopping in the
• 1:11:30
  evening rather than like as you go along.
• 1:11:33
  So this is like maybe you didn't get to ET because the timing was
• 1:11:37
  really high during the day, but you did everything else that you
• 1:11:40
  wanted to do in the park. So maybe you get in line even
• 1:11:43
  though it's 45 minutes, right? So, you know, you have AS, like
• 1:11:47
  you said earlier, Jackie, with the rankings, once you sort of
• 1:11:50
  have accomplished without express everything that you want
• 1:11:54
  to do, this is now sort of your victory lap, much like when you
• 1:11:57
  do have the express. This is now you know what, I
• 1:12:00
  wasn't going to ride Men in Black again, but I'm going to
• 1:12:03
  because I'm back here. I might as well or I wasn't
• 1:12:05
  going to get in line for Gringotts again.
• 1:12:07
  But it's only a 30 minute wait because everybody's at dinner or
• 1:12:10
  you know what have you. I'm going to go hop in line or
• 1:12:13
  something like that. You know, I'm or I want to go
• 1:12:16
  walk around the DreamWorks area yeah you know, maybe there's
• 1:12:18
  nothing that I want to ride or my kiddos are interested in, but
• 1:12:21
  it's a cute area so I just want to go take a stroll back there.
• 1:12:24
  This is still the evening time is like great theme park people
• 1:12:28
  watching time. It's great clean up time if
• 1:12:31
  there's something that you want to go back to in a gift shop or
• 1:12:34
  there's another ride. So the principle holds true both
• 1:12:37
  between express and not express that the evening is your your
• 1:12:40
  wrap up, right. So that's, that's our general
• 1:12:45
  take and that's our, our usual, you know, theme park plan when
• 1:12:49
  it comes to evenings. The other thing that I do want
• 1:12:53
  to note though is that the Mummy and Gringotts, I've said it
• 1:12:56
  throughout this, but those weights stay pretty high even
• 1:13:00
  into the evenings. So even until basically they
• 1:13:04
  close, right, it's not the worst idea to hop in line at the end
• 1:13:10
  of the night. It is sometimes true that they
• 1:13:13
  will leave the wait times looking high and they are not
• 1:13:17
  necessarily high, right? But you're taking the gamble
• 1:13:20
  because that's happened to us where we were like there's no
• 1:13:23
  way it's an hour and it was completely an hour.
• 1:13:27
  So that's fully like the gamble that you're taking when you're
• 1:13:30
  getting in line. When it says 60 minutes posted,
• 1:13:33
  you might be surprised and it's only 30 minutes, but you might
• 1:13:35
  be horrified and it's actually 60 minutes so.
• 1:13:39
  Well, and like the other parks, and we'll talk about this there
• 1:13:41
  too, they cut off the express sign.
• 1:13:45
  So they don't leave that open until the very end of the day.
• 1:13:49
  So if you are someone that wants to get on something like
• 1:13:51
  Gringotts or The Mummy, getting in that line is going to be at
• 1:13:55
  least more of a true probably representation of the wait time
• 1:13:59
  because you're not going to have a giant influx of people trying
• 1:14:02
  to use their express at the last minute.
• 1:14:04
  That would have already happened a little bit earlier in the
• 1:14:07
  evening, chances are. So keep that in mind.
• 1:14:10
  A little bit different at Disney because they do allow lightning
• 1:14:13
  lanes all the way up until park close for that.
• 1:14:17
  So a little bit different, but generally still that way when we
• 1:14:21
  get to Disney, but we'll get there eventually.
• 1:14:26
  But yeah, and I will just say we this has happened to us a couple
• 1:14:29
  times. Sometimes even when it's that
• 1:14:32
  hour wait, you're walking out into an empty park and walking
• 1:14:35
  out into an empty park any time is awesome.
• 1:14:37
  So that's my take on it, even if it's actually an hour.
• 1:14:41
  So what you got to finish it out on?
• 1:14:42
  The kind of thing at the end of the day.
• 1:14:45
  You get to hang out in air conditioning for a little bit
• 1:14:47
  and then you get to walk out to a somewhat empty park and it's
• 1:14:51
  really cool, so. And you're not fighting all the
• 1:14:53
  crowds that are also like, you know, leaving at the same time.
• 1:15:00
  Yeah, much easier. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:15:03
  Love that. OK, well, so hopefully this gave
• 1:15:06
  you at least a good framework to work off of.
• 1:15:10
  Again, we will have kind of as we work our way through these,
• 1:15:13
  we will have some kind of graphics for you all to to have
• 1:15:17
  to maybe screenshot. So that way you can keep them on
• 1:15:21
  your phone and use them as as a basis when you are creating your
• 1:15:24
  itinerary for your specific needs.
• 1:15:27
  We'll make sure to post those on our our social media.
• 1:15:29
  So that way they have they have longevity and you can find them
• 1:15:33
  there. They'll also be on the Discord
• 1:15:35
  and on our Patreon, all of the places which you should find us
• 1:15:38
  there. Because if you've got questions
• 1:15:40
  or comments or suggestions for us, we would love, love, love to
• 1:15:45
  hear from you again. We are Mom St. usa@gmail.com and
• 1:15:49
  you can find us on the social medias at Mom St.
• 1:15:52
  USA. We do have a Patreon account
• 1:15:55
  that is still fairly new that we are kind of figuring out how
• 1:15:59
  we're we're going to work some things over there.
• 1:16:01
  But currently it holds some unedited versions of our
• 1:16:04
  podcast. So if you want to hear all the
• 1:16:07
  bloopers and you want to hear my dog interrupting us, and you
• 1:16:11
  want to hear, you know, all of the random things that happened
• 1:16:14
  that get cut out of the nice polished version.
• 1:16:17
  Now, have you guys ever seen that episode of It's Always
• 1:16:21
  Sunny where he's like, where's Pepe Sylvia?
• 1:16:25
  That is what I turn into through maybe 70% of these episodes.
• 1:16:29
  So if like weird rants are your thing, you're going to love the
• 1:16:32
  unedited versions. So yes, those exist only on our
• 1:16:37
  Patreon. So if you are interested in any
• 1:16:40
  of that, we also post sneak peeks of like what's to come
• 1:16:43
  over there. So if you want to know what
• 1:16:45
  we're going to be talking about in future episodes, it's it all
• 1:16:48
  can be found over there again. Mom St.
• 1:16:50
  USA over on Patreon as well. Before we end tonight, I will
• 1:16:55
  just let everybody know kind of what is coming up.
• 1:16:59
  Again, we are just going to stay in this series for the next now
• 1:17:03
  6 episodes so. Years.
• 1:17:08
  So we are going to continue on the one day park strategies.
• 1:17:11
  We're going to do a little hopping back and forth between
• 1:17:14
  Disney and Universal just because we want to really make
• 1:17:18
  sure that we have Duck and Jess here when we're talking about
• 1:17:20
  Universal because I can give you my thoughts, but they probably
• 1:17:24
  won't be right. So you don't want that.
• 1:17:28
  It will not be helpful to anybody and I will just be
• 1:17:32
  stressed about it. So we want to make sure that
• 1:17:34
  they are here whenever we want to talk about Universal so they
• 1:17:37
  can give you the most accurate information.
• 1:17:39
  So the next episode, we will actually be going back to Disney
• 1:17:44
  and hitting one of the parks over there.
• 1:17:47
  And then after that we'll be back at Universal and then back
• 1:17:50
  at Disney. So we're going to hop kind of
• 1:17:51
  back and forth to mix it up a little bit for you guys.
• 1:17:54
  But the plan is that we will, yes, hit all seven of the major
• 1:17:58
  theme parks in in the Orlando area.
• 1:18:01
  Maybe someday we'll figure out, you know, SeaWorld and Legoland
• 1:18:04
  and Busch Gardens and all those others.
• 1:18:07
  We'll get there. It'll happen eventually.
• 1:18:09
  It took us, it took us 2 1/2 years to even just get to
• 1:18:12
  Universal. So give us some time, OK?
• 1:18:16
  So we're on. Track to get there maybe by
• 1:18:17
  20-30. We got this.
• 1:18:19
  It's going to be great. It's going to be great.
• 1:18:22
  So that is the plan coming up. But before we officially wrap
• 1:18:27
  Duck and Jess, do you guys have any final thoughts on USF before
• 1:18:30
  we park hop back over to Disney next?
• 1:18:33
  Episode just that USF is the most doable park without
• 1:18:40
  express. I still recommend it if you can
• 1:18:44
  swing it. And of course you're going to
• 1:18:46
  have to do the math out with how many people you have.
• 1:18:49
  You know if it's worth it for you to get the to stay at like 1
• 1:18:53
  of the premium hotels, things like that.
• 1:18:56
  It is the most doable. I still recommend it if you're
• 1:18:58
  going through peak. The other parks are not are are
• 1:19:02
  much more difficult to get through everything if that's if
• 1:19:05
  that's what you want, right? Like you also then have to weigh
• 1:19:08
  your options up. Is hitting every ride important
• 1:19:11
  to me or is it more important for me to hit my top three and
• 1:19:16
  then just enjoy the atmosphere of the park, right?
• 1:19:18
  Just depends on how you experience theme parks yourself.
• 1:19:21
  We're big go go, go, go go do and see everything people.
• 1:19:25
  I know there are plenty of people who are like, I'm going
• 1:19:27
  to get on 2 rides today and then just hang out and people watch.
• 1:19:30
  And there's like no wrong way to experience a theme park.
• 1:19:34
  So I think when you're going through, when you're making
• 1:19:36
  these decisions, you just need to know what's important to you
• 1:19:39
  personally as you are enjoying these parks, right?
• 1:19:43
  If you're not a big coaster person, then you then express
• 1:19:46
  may not be the top of your priority list, right?
• 1:19:48
  Maybe that's better served to do some dinner experiences in city
• 1:19:52
  Walk or, you know, maybe you can then spend the extra money on
• 1:19:56
  some souvenirs. Maybe memories are more
• 1:19:58
  important to you and you can buy like the photo.
• 1:20:00
  Packages or spend that time getting photos with characters,
• 1:20:03
  right? We didn't touch on any of that
• 1:20:05
  today because that's not our itinerary experience.
• 1:20:08
  But however you want to experience the parks and
• 1:20:11
  whatever is important to you. There is no, like I said,
• 1:20:14
  there's no wrong way to experience a theme park.
• 1:20:16
  So when it comes to express and when it comes to weighing your
• 1:20:19
  options, that's all really important.
• 1:20:22
  USF is the easiest to do without express because of the nature of
• 1:20:25
  the rides that are in there. IOA and Epic, very, very
• 1:20:30
  difficult to hit everything in there without Express.
• 1:20:32
  So again, you just need to weigh what is important to you
• 1:20:35
  personally as you're going through these parks.
• 1:20:37
  And I know a lot of this audience has kiddos and a lot of
• 1:20:41
  rides. I mean, I bet we've we spent a
• 1:20:44
  lot of time in our original Universal series talk about how
• 1:20:46
  family friendly Universal has become and now is.
• 1:20:49
  But the go go, go. I need to hit all the roller
• 1:20:52
  coasters. If you have small kiddos might
• 1:20:53
  not be what you're trying to do. So again, this might be
• 1:20:56
  different if prioritizing the family friendly things is what
• 1:21:00
  you want to do. Even IOA might be a little bit
• 1:21:02
  more doable in a day to hit everything that you want to hit
• 1:21:06
  if you're not trying to get on, you know, Hagrids and
• 1:21:08
  Velocicoaster and all the things there.
• 1:21:10
  So it all just really depends, you know, like Duck said, on
• 1:21:13
  what kind of works for you and all the go, go, go might not be
• 1:21:16
  the best if you have kiddos, might want to just not do
• 1:21:18
  express. Take it slow.
• 1:21:19
  We get to what we get to and all that, rather than feeling, oh, I
• 1:21:22
  paid all this money for Express, my kids having a meltdown, I'm
• 1:21:24
  not going to get on this ride. Yeah, and use my Express pass
• 1:21:27
  and now I've wasted money. So you know, it all just depends
• 1:21:29
  on your group and who you're with.
• 1:21:31
  Yeah, and I hope that throughout this series for not only just
• 1:21:34
  the Universal parks, but for Disney too, we may give you some
• 1:21:38
  more information that maybe allows you to pick and choose
• 1:21:41
  based on your budget. So if you're listening to this
• 1:21:44
  and you go, yeah, this seems totally doable.
• 1:21:46
  We don't need express. But then you hear IOA and you're
• 1:21:48
  like, Oh no, I want express for that.
• 1:21:49
  You know, like it may give you the ability to kind of do that
• 1:21:52
  same thing will happen with with the Disney parks.
• 1:21:54
  Will, I will talk in depthly about lightning lanes and what
• 1:21:58
  to do and what makes sense and all of that 'cause that's a
• 1:22:00
  whole nother animal when we get to that point you.
• 1:22:02
  Are the expert lighting lane expert.
• 1:22:05
  I said it. I'm on record.
• 1:22:07
  You are. You are the Queen of Lightning
• 1:22:09
  Lanes. I I'm, I'm pretty good at that.
• 1:22:12
  Yeah, so, so, but I love what you said, that there's no wrong
• 1:22:16
  way to do a theme park. I think that's so important and
• 1:22:18
  so crucial for our audience to really hear.
• 1:22:21
  Like, no matter what happens, there is absolutely no wrong way
• 1:22:25
  to do it. Your way is the way that you
• 1:22:27
  should do it. And what is on your list is what
• 1:22:29
  you should hit and what you should be doing and what your
• 1:22:32
  kiddos want to do is what you should do.
• 1:22:33
  And if they want to meet 18 characters in one day, then do
• 1:22:37
  it. You know, again, like like we
• 1:22:40
  mentioned, we we focus mostly on rides just because that is the
• 1:22:43
  the majority of what people are going to these theme parks to,
• 1:22:47
  to do. But that doesn't mean that you
• 1:22:51
  have to do exactly what we said. Like we said, there's no wrong
• 1:22:54
  way to do a theme park. Make your list based on what you
• 1:22:56
  guys want to do and have a wonderful time.
• 1:22:59
  Yeah, absolutely. That's the most important thing
• 1:23:02
  and you're enjoying your trip and your time, whether you are
• 1:23:05
  going solo or it is a big family trip, whatever it is, the most
• 1:23:10
  important thing about the theme park is that you are enjoying it
• 1:23:13
  and you are making the memories that you want to make.
• 1:23:15
  That is more important than anything else.
• 1:23:19
  And I hope that the the information that we've given you
• 1:23:21
  today and through the rest of the series really helps you make
• 1:23:24
  those decisions to make the trip your own and for you to
• 1:23:28
  prioritize what's important to you and any of your travel
• 1:23:31
  companions, be it your family or like I said, you're doing a solo
• 1:23:34
  trip, as long as you enjoy it, that is what's the most
• 1:23:36
  important. I love that.
• 1:23:39
  What? A happy little note to end on
• 1:23:40
  that was so good. We did it.
• 1:23:42
  You guys crushed it. Claps through us all around.
• 1:23:46
  Well, thank you guys all so much for joining us and for being
• 1:23:49
  here for this episode. We love you.
• 1:23:51
  We appreciate you. If you're listening on whatever
• 1:23:54
  platform you're listening on, leave us a comment.
• 1:23:55
  We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what your favorite
• 1:23:59
  ride is in USF, or if you haven't been, let us know what
• 1:24:02
  you would, what your top choice would be when you go to the
• 1:24:04
  park. We would love to hear from you,
• 1:24:06
  but for now that will complete our visit to USF.
• 1:24:10
  We're headed on to another park next week and we hope you will
• 1:24:13
  all join us then. And we will see you very soon on
• 1:24:16
  the next episode of Mom St. USA.
• 1:24:18
  Bye everyone. Bye.