Universal is fun. Nice weather for it right now - days are no warmer than 83 degrees generally and the breeze is back. Not much rain lately. When it does rain it's predicatably for an hour or two in the afternoon.
If you're visiting for the weekend the Wife and I would be happy to join you. Haven't done Universal in a while (we did Islands of Adventure the last two times over there) and I think the new Mummy ride is open now. My schedule's a bit too tight this week to get away on a weekday though. I live an hour's drive north of Orlando. Email me at
PCA@TheFlyingPenguin.com
If you like fast and scary rides then you may want to do Islands of Adventure which is part of Universal Studios, but it's a seperate park and you either need a seperate ticket for it or else a 2-park ticket. There's 2 VERY good rollercoasters there, and the Spiderman ride is awesome.
Universal also has a huge public mall/restuarant area outside the park (you have to walk through it to get to the parks) with theme restuarants like Margaritaville and Nascar. Those are the better eating places.
Best deals for a short visit is to find some stand along side the road and pray they're legit. The cops do stay on top of it pretty well though, and as long as it's some sort of permanent looking structure and they have a Florida State Occupational License taped to the window then you can be fairly sure you're not getting ripped off. Some of them are VERY cheap because they're selling un-used or partially used tickets someone else bought and I'd be leary of that - not sure how that works, and never tried one.
Generally you can get a better deal almost anywhere than buying them at the gate. There's plenty of legit sites you can buy them from online.
I usually buy my tickets at one of the Florida Turnpike rest stops because I KNOW the stands in there are legit.
You can tell how long the lines will be by how early the park closes. If it closes early then the management expects light attendance. I just checked and Universal closes 6pm the next 2 weeks most days (as opposed to 9pm or 11pm towards the end of December) so I'd say it won't be too crowded.
Most of the parks now offer, for an additional fee, an "Express Pass" that greatly shortens the amount of time you spend in line. I always buy the Express pass - it's not cheap but it's worth it. As a typical example when the wait in line is 10 minutes, the express pass generally gets you right on the ride with no wait. Rides with a 20 - 25 minute wait generally are only 5 minutes on the express pass. Be aware that the Express pass only gets you on the Express line once for each ride. If you want to do it again you have to get on the regular line or buy a one-time express pass for that ride.
Instead of paying for an "all rides" Express pass that gives you one express line on each ride, you can also just buy an express pass for one specific ride (they have self serve express pass machines near each ride). More cost effective if you only want to use express on 1 or 2 rides, but you're better off getting the "all rides" express pass if you plan on using it with more than a couple of rides, and as I said it's worth it.
Some of the parks are starting to experiment with pagers (like restuarants) so you don't have to wait in line - you take the pager and go do something else and come back when the pager goes off and only stand in line a couple of minutes at most. I think I heard only Sea World was using it so far - not sure. Industry watchers expect this to be the next big thing.
BTW: Something most people are a little suprised about is that your ticket usually DOES NOT include parking at universal, and they hit you up for $8 (or $10 - don't remember) for parking. I always felt that was a ripoff considering most of the other parks let you park for free. Considering what they get for tickets they can certainly afford to let you park for free.
The one nice thing is that Universal has all under-cover parking, and moving walkways to take you to the park entrance (although it's still worth paying a few extra bucks for the closer "executive" parking. Some of the regular parking is a pretty long hike even with the moving walkways.
