Just so happen to be at Universal on a Fan Fest night, should I change the date we go?

[BirdyGirl85]

Hello. Just looking for some advice here. I was planning on a trip for a few days with our 4-year-old daughter. We will be going to Legoland for two days, and Universal Studios for one. I know Universal is not really a park for little kids, but I haven't seen Super Nintendo World yet, and my daughter actually happens to like Mario games, so we thought this would be fun for her as well. (Also planning for her to play in Super Silly Fun Land, the Jurassic World playground The Secret Life of Pets ride), I was thinking of going to Universal on Friday April 25. But then I found out that that is the first Fan Fest Night. I'm not really interested in Fan Fest Night, other than maybe the Yoshi Meet and Greet & egg scavenger hunt.

I know this is a new event, so there's not much experience to go by, but in my situation, would you go a different day? I know some tickets for Fan Fest night start letting people in a 2:00 pm. Do you think it would start getting crazy busy after 2:00 pm? I am planning on getting there when the park opens at 8 am, so that's at least 6 hours before 2:00 pm when some of the Fan Fest guests start coming in. (Not sure yet if I want to spurge on the early morning entry to Super Nintendo World).

We could go on Wednesday April 23 instead; would you do that to avoid the possible crowds of a Fan Fest Night? I mean we aren't doing everything in Universal, so even if starts getting crowded at 2 pm, maybe we would have mostly done all the things we wanted to do? Probably the Studio Tour and Jurassic World, maybe the Mummy, but the highest priority is Super Nintendo Land and the things I mentioned earlier for my daughter.

 

[Disney Dad ADL]

I don't know about your questions regarding fan fest night, but we were just at Universal Hollywood this weekend and we got a lot done before 2 pm without Early Entry.

This is how our day went, but note that we have season passes so we weren't trying to necessarily maximize our day. There are several things that we did that you probably shouldn't do.

Park hours were 9 AM- 9PM on Saturday 4/12. We got there around 8:35 AM, no line at security. They were checking people through the gate when we got there, I think they had just started but I am not sure. They let you in to the entry area and had a rope drop type thing. Around 8:50-8:55 they allowed people into the park. We went directly to Mario Kart. Basically what they did as that the employees walk the group all the way down to Nintendo World, you aren't allowed to pass them. We were not too far from the front (maybe 100-200 people in front of us?), though if you are with your daughter you may get passed by more people. But Mario Kart was basically a walk on at that time, then we did Jurassic Park right after and it was 5 minute wait, so we were basically done with those 2 rides after 20 minutes or so. We didn't do Mummy. Wait times were around 25-30 minutes on Mario Kart and Jurassic Park as we were leaving the lower lot.

We did Studio Tour right after that which was a walk on (which is probably not the recommended way to do it, but was a priority for my son since he loves it, lol). While I was on Studio Tour with my son, my wife/daughter went on Secret Life of Pets and Flight of the Hippogriff. Then we did minions (25 minutes), had lunch at 3 broomsticks, and did Kung Fu Panda, then the Waterworld show at 1:15 pm (this probably is also not efficient use of time).

So my wife/daughter did Mario Kart, Jurassic World, Secret Life of Pets, Hippogriff, Minions, lunch, Kung Fu Panda all before 1 pm.

Me/my son did Mario Kart, Jurassic World, Studio Tour, Minions, lunch, Kung Fu Panda before 1 pm.

With Early Entry you could do even more. The benefit of Early Entry outside of Mario Kart is that you can do the games down in Nintendo land, sometimes the lines for those can get kinda long during the day

Edit to add: you can also download the Universal app, it shows wait times (you don't have to be at the park) so you can get an idea of what they look like for research purposes

 

[BirdyGirl85]

Thank you for letting me know about your experience. I am considering the Early Entry, especially since it's a Fan Fest Night and I'm worried about it being crazy busy after 2:00 pm, but of course I am not sure if it will be at that time.