Crowds at USO/IOA?

[Nickb23]

Hello. We are coming in later this week (Thursday August 16) and I wondered how the crowds were at this point in the season. I am hearing that they are lighter at WDW and busier at Universal.

 

[nighttowll]

Not sure about Disney, but I’m going to IOA and US tomorrow unless something changes. The plan is to arrive for early entry and leave sometime after lunch. I’ll try to pay attention and report back how the crowds / lines are and how much we were able to do. We don’t have EP, so it will be all standby or single rider for us.

 

[Disneylover99]

We’ve been in the parks without EP for the past 3 days. I haven’t found it too crowded but my family has done a lot of single rider rides. We will be there for the next few days with EP so we’ll see how that goes.

 

[nighttowll]

Ok, I’m reporting back as promised. Since I took notes to report back here, I decided to go ahead and write a mini trip report. If you’d like to read that in detail, here’s the link:


US Early Entry and IOA Monday the 13th Report


If not, here’s the summary:

We've been going about once or twice a week this summer, and it did seem less crowded, especially in the morning, then it has been. On the street and in the stores, there was much more room to maneuver. You weren’t as on top of people as it has been, so it felt less crowded space and people wise. There was also a noticeable difference in Hogsmeade from what it has been. You could actually see the ground during the middle of the day. However, that doesn’t mean the park wasn't still crowded or lines weren’t still long, especially during the busiest part of the day. We also left about 1:30, so I’m not sure when the crowds actually peeked or when they started to taper off again. By lunch, lines for many rides were at or over 45 minutes, with the more popular rides already well over an hour, so it is definitely still busy.

During early entry and for about the first hour IOA was open, lines were non existent or short even for headliners, except maybe Hulk. It really depends on if the posted 20 minute wait was correct or not, but even if it was double that, it would still be a drastically better wait than the 90 minutes it was later in the day.

By lunch, most lines were starting to get long outside of the kiddy areas. Seuss Land was still very manageable. Not walk ons, but very short waits, under 20 minutes or less. The characters were also out doing shows and meet-n-greets. Very cute.



Wait times at 10:15 were:

• Spiderman 25
• Kong 25
• Forbidden Journey 25
• Flight of the Hippogriff 30
• Hulk - unknown, but I’d guess high, it was listed as 5 on board, but that was incorrect
• Everything else under 20

Link to picks of wait time board: US Early Entry and IOA Monday the 13th Report



Wait times at 12:45 were:

• Spiderman 45
• Kong 100
• Forbidden Journey 60
• Flight of the Hippogriff 50
• Hulk 75 (board still showed 5, but actual ride said 75)
• Jurassic Park 60
• Dr. Doom 35
• Ripsaw Falls 45
• Bilge-rat Barges 40
• Everything else 20 or under

Link to pics of wait time board: US Early Entry and IOA Monday the 13th Report

 

[Pinkgurlshubby]

We were just there as well, 3 days Friday Saturday and Sunday. I expected the week-end to be crowded and I was wrong. We tried to pack on as many rides as we could before noon and pretty much succeeded. Mind you this is our second trip so we already knew where we wanted to go but just to give an idea of what we do, we stay on site to get the express pass but in the afternoon we head back to the resort to get pool time in and go back around 3 and get into city walk then early dinner and change parks. UO in the am and then IOA and the next day we switch it. This works best for us especially when the sun gets too hot. Nighttowll is definately correct on the wait times. My wife and youngest went on Kong while myself and oldest waited it out. I rode it 3 times when it opened I am ok. Even with the fast passes we counted 15 buses until theirs went by. It was around 30 minutes. Unfortunately as much as it is a fun ride it's just not very well designed. And know that the dragons coaster is gone the flight of the hippogriff has a long line. Last time we rode it some 7 or 8 times with zero lines. This time we went twice and were good. Minions was as usual ridiculous but it's a fun one to do at least once. I would head to that or Kong before anything else, even the HP rides were not that bad.
By the way it rained every day. It's Florida. It's sunny and within half an hour it's raining but it doesn't last. Worst we saw was Sunday's monsoon. We had had 3 good sit down meals and decided on panda express and bk and the monsoon hit it was bad. We gave up waiting it out and ventured store to store and an hour later it was done and the clouds moved on. We decided that we weren't going back to the park for 2 hours so we traded the time in for more pool and drink time.
Counting down to our next visit.

 

[HM]

The crowds are large but not huge. We just spend Sun, Mon and Tues in the parks.
Sunday was the least crowded. There are a ton of folks from overseas (mainly British) visiting right now.
We were able to do the parks fairly easily without long waits by doing the popular things first or last and watching wait times on the App.
We skipped RRR, Hulk, and the water rides but did everything else with 30 or less minutes wait (with no Express Pass). The longest wait we ever saw was Kong at 120 minutes, most stayed under 80 minutes with the bulk at 45 minutes during the mid-day. Much better than when we were there in mid-December.

 

[macraven]

Thank all of you for sharing your experiences and advice.