Universal Mid-May

[lacey]

Anyone been to Universal in mid-May? DH and I are going 16th-19th. The crowd calendars I have seen have high crowds (8ish/10). Should I stay at one of the hotels with the express pass? Kids are staying home so I don't need to deal with them in long lines. It's a decent savings to stay at Cabana Bay or Aventura but we can spring for one of the other ones if we are going to be standing in line for an hour+ for every ride.

[Zoly]

Personally, we loved staying at a hotel that got us the Express Pass. I'm not sure I could go back to standing in regular lines now. We definitely still had to wait in line - especially for the Harry Potter rides, but it was still worth it to us.

[elcjet]

If the crowd calendar says 8/10, I'd spring for Express pass. If you upgrade your tickets to an annual pass, you may be able to get Hard Rock, Royal Pacific, or Portofino for a discount that will make it worthwhile.....

[tripleshot]

We went a couple of years ago during spring break. If you stay at one of the express pass hotels for one night, you get the pass for both check in and check out day. I booked the room at a discount through cheaptickets.com (check for coupon codes). So we got there super early in the morning, checked in and got our passes, hotel stored our luggage, then we went to the park for the day. We stayed that night at the hotel and then moved to Cabana Bay for the next night. We were only in the parks for 3 days and had passes for two. It was plenty of time and we loved cabana bay. The Universal forum on disboards was super helpful and was how I learned of those tips.

[Doggy Mommy]

I went last year toward the end of May, the week before Memorial Day. It was a great time to go to both Universal and Disney and it was not super busy. We spent part of our Universal day with friends who had the express pass. Generally we would get in our line, they would get in their line, and we’d get off the ride about 3 minutes after them. We totally didn’t think it was worth it for the express pas.

However after going there again on Presidents’ Day weekend when it was CRAZY STUPID BUSY, I soooo wish we had express pass!!! I would possibly wait until you’re there to see if you need it. But I hear the hotels are great so if it makes sense to stay there, that would be fun.

[auroraloo]

We are here right now, staying at Cabana Bay. Crowd calendars had it at 7/10. it really hasn't been bad. With the app, you can do virtual line for Jimmy Fallon and Fast and Furious while you're in other lines. With early admission, we went straight to Olivander's and Escape from Gringott's and both waits were less than 30 minutes. We came back to the hotel for a nap and when we went back to the park around 5, the minion ride had a 35 minute wait, and the rip rocket hollywood thingy had 70 minutes, so we did minions, and by the time we got off that, the hollywood coaster was at 15 minutes.

If our kids were with us, we would absolutely buy express passes. But it's me and H, and it really hasn't been bad at all.

I will say, the burger I had at Cowfish today may be the best burger I've ever had in my life. And I was raised by a butcher.

[lacey]

I forgot I posted this! Thanks for your thoughts everyone!