we are going next month just me and the wife for business...leaving the kids home... and we wanted to do Islands of Adventure AND Universal Studios in 1 day (that's all the free time we have) so we called and found out Express pass DOES NOT work on anything Harry potter...bummer :-( so we called a private tour (up to 7 people) for $2500 or $900 and you go in a group of 8-10 but its obviously 6-8 strangers....QUESTION ....has anyone here ever done that tour? how do they get 6 people to agree what rides to even do? very curious....thanks in advance!
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NOT SO private VIP tour?
- Thread starter Dvcden
- Start date
the only info they said was " you will do 10-14 rides depending on how fast your party moves and they will be the top 10 rides" very vague but really all I want is both potter rides, Hogwarts express back and forth, spiderman, hulk, rip roller coaster, despicable me, transformers... those are the longest lines so those would be the ones we want to cut
sonoma15
Well-Known Member
I have done the tour multiple times, but not with as much as 6 people. But usually they bring you in front of the rides and if someone wants to ride they bring them through the exit to the front of the line, if nobody wants to ride they skip it.
also you get to go in some cool areas
also you get to go in some cool areas
I have done the tour multiple times, but not with as much as 6 people. But usually they bring you in front of the rides and if someone wants to ride they bring them through the exit to the front of the line, if nobody wants to ride they skip it.
also you get to go in some cool areas
ewwww baby that's the kinda juice im lookin for
did you do the $2500 private tour or the $450 per person one? ( i know the price fluxuates season to season so ball park) I've done the $2500 once when I was a kid but it was only Universal Studios and it was our family of 4...my wife and I ride every ride so the more the merrier curious how they break that up...thanks for writing in!
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Why not just spend a night at a Universal Orlando Resort deluxe hotel to get the Unlimited Express Pass Plus and early entry to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley? Get to Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts first thing and go from there. Hogwarts Express has been eating people quite well and the line for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey moves rather well as well. Then everything else you can do with Express Pass.
think about this:
1 room Royal Pacific $330 for 1 night
2 1 day passed to both parks $135 each ($270)
so $600 before you step on the property
or $900 gets you in, with a tour guide...for the extra $300 you have No waits, used our DVC points to stay the extra day so cost us next to nothing (11points), and you don't have to move your luggage around and pay for cabs from the airport ($75) to RP and then back to Disney($45). instead take mears shuttle for $60 round trip so save another $60.
the extra $240 ($120 per person) just Overall it turns out to be more cost effective to just pay the Guide and wait in NO lines...if it wasn't so hot and crowded I would 100% do exactly what your talking about but given the circumstance I think the extra money is well spent and you cant put a price on time....or maybe you can
so a little delayed but better late than never! so we arrived to universal studio taking a cab from bay lake towers to universal...got dropped off in the valet...got yelled at by security (apparently cabs aren't allowed in valet) but after a little back and forth apparently they are....if your on a VIP tour ;-). finally get to the vip lounge outside of universal studios..only again more disappointment...your names were never on the list and all guides were booked :-(. BUT after speaking to the manager sonja and showering her out email confirmation and credit card billed by universal she made it up IN SPADES! we got upgraded to the "private" vip tour! man what an amazing experience. rode escape from gringotts 3 times....from 8-2 we rode every ride in the park multiple times our tour guide Josh was the man! knew everything about every ride...learned so much that 1 day....learned more in 6 hours with him than the other 20+ times we have gone with out a guide! likeeee the 3d glasses they use are patent pending strictly for universal studios and have built in alarms in them that will go off if you attempt to leave the ride with the paid...they cost the park $10 per pair! compared to the old ones were about .30 a pair. or the absolute best seat on any 3d ride in the middle ...thats where the programmers site to program the ride so all illusions are based off that seat! always though the front was the best...wrong-0 . we of course tested this riding in every row on gringotts, spiderman, transformers, harry potter, and simpsons. my suggestion is i would rather go to universal on the vip tour once every 5 yrs than go every year with out one! it was so much more than just "skipping lines" it was literally making you the star of the show...every ride was like you owned it (or at least rented ;-)) and going through diagon alley and him explaining how it was built what does what how it works was priceless. what started out as a miserable and questionable decision turned out to be one of the best park days of our lives! The staff at universal especially Sonja and Josh made a trip that started with fights with valet, fights at ticket window simply ...well ... magical!
erstwo
Well-Known Member
Question - pricing the non-private VIP tour at Universal in late October is roughly half what is stated above - $250ish. Is it the same tour?
I'm thinking it is, just with lower pricing due to the time of the year/ day of the week. Just trying to be sure I'm booking this tour with the great reviews!
I'm thinking it is, just with lower pricing due to the time of the year/ day of the week. Just trying to be sure I'm booking this tour with the great reviews!
StageFrenzy
Well-Known Member
What's with all the ...
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the guide told us he sometimes does the VIP tour and each guide has their own way they like the tour to go and what rides to do. from what he said all 3 potter rides (gringotts, hogwarts express, and forbidden journey) are all must dos! so knowing that hogwarts express is different when traveling to and from the islands of adventure you kinda have to ride it twice... so that's 4 rides out of MAX 12 right there...the guide at that point has free reign to choose the next 6-8 rides. you learn a TON of secrets about the park... things you woulda never found going to the park 100x! I'll give you 1 example... behind hulk there's a giant building... that building is one of the biggest generators in the world ... the hulk ride has 200+ air plain tires that launch it and every tire has it's own engine... so when the ride is launched all engines fire at once! when they were testing it, the ride shut down the Orlando power grid multiple times so they had to install a generator to run it because the entire Orlando power grid wasn't strong enough. so many more things but one thing they won't tell you is if they are building a new kong ride in IA but I'm like 99% they are