Universal Express Pass, needed?

[Minnies World]

My family has only been to Universal once for the first round of Harry Potter. We will only be there for a day arriving early and staying late. My plan is to be there the Thursday after Labor Day which at Disney is usually a pretty quiet time. We will purchase the one day park hopper pass to be able to see all things Potter.

Question is that week of Labor Day do we need to purchase an express pass? According to crowd level charts I've looked at Universal will be more crowded than Disney World but getting as much done as possible and all of Potter is important to my family.

Any knowledge of crowds at the Universal Parks, popularity of Harry Potter during this week and tips and advice for navigating the 2 parks would be appreciated.

Thanks for the help and advice.

 

[drcasey]

I would splurge for the express pass. It works for most attractions in the non potter areas of the parks. It also works for the Dragon Challenge and flight of the hippogriff in HP, but doesn't work on gringotts, forbidden journey, or the hogwarts express. If you want to do all of potter, plus other areas of the park, I would say you definitely need them. If you are staying onsite, you can enter one side of the HP world an hour before the parks open to non onsite guests, plus you get free express passes added onto your tickets. If you are not, you should arrive before rope drop and go straight to gringotts. Last we were there, we rode gringotts, did ollivanders, then rode the Train to Hogsmeade and did forbidden journey and the other rides, shows, wand stuff etc over there. Then we explored other areas of the parks and later rode the express from Hogsmeade back to diagon alley (the train ride is different each way!) and played around in diagon alley at night

 

[RMichael21]

My family has only been to Universal once for the first round of Harry Potter. We will only be there for a day arriving early and staying late. My plan is to be there the Thursday after Labor Day which at Disney is usually a pretty quiet time. We will purchase the one day park hopper pass to be able to see all things Potter.

Question is that week of Labor Day do we need to purchase an express pass? According to crowd level charts I've looked at Universal will be more crowded than Disney World but getting as much done as possible and all of Potter is important to my family.

Any knowledge of crowds at the Universal Parks, popularity of Harry Potter during this week and tips and advice for navigating the 2 parks would be appreciated.

Thanks for the help and advice.

We were able to do everything in both parks in 12 hours with our Express Pass (including 2 and a half hours in Diagon Alley), so if recommend it. But, we were onsite guests, so it was complimentary.

 

[AndrewsJ]

Now that Kong is an Express pass attraction I think it is worth it.

 

[englanddg]

Worth every penny...