Epic Universe Rope Drop Strategy

In this week's episode, Jared highlights his rope drop strategy for the new Universal Studios park, Epic Universe. 

Transcript

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On this week's episode of a Dryer Dose of Disney, Jared shares with us his tips and tricks for rope drop at the new Epic Universe Park. Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer Dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared Dryer, and today we are gonna be talking to you about Epic Universe and the Rope Drop strategy for that new park. This is an exciting new park in a new addition to the Universal Studios part of Orlando. And it's a park we went to twice over the last couple months. And we had a wonderful time. There are some great unique rides and unique lands there, and we just did an episode that reviewed the park and talked about all the great rides and all the great food, and we're gonna go into a little bit of that detail today, talking about the rides specifically. But what we wanna do today is we really wanna highlight a good solid rope drop strategy for this park, so that way you can go out there and make the most of your day. And I will say that when we went to this park with our friends, we were able to get through all five lands. Every single ride that we wanted to, some of them multiple times before the end of the day. So it was very easy to do. And this is the strategy that we followed, is the one that I'm gonna share with you today, and we spent a lot of time thinking about this before we got to the park. So I wanna encourage you to follow this guide. This is gonna be a great way to get to all the rides in the park, and we're gonna give you some tips and tricks along the way as well as our, I can do this all day, tip of the day at the end. So if you listen to that last episode, or if you're familiar with Epic Universe, you know that this park has five lands, and in fact, it's really four lands surrounding the central hub of this park called Celestial Park. So in Celestial Park in the middle, you've got all the shops, you've got a few great restaurants, and I encourage you go listen to that episode where we talk through all the restaurants because there are some amazing ones here. And then you have the four lands that surround it. So within Celestial Park itself, you have a carousel. You have Stardust racers, and then you've got Super Nintendo Land is one of the world's Dark universe, which is the classic universal monsters world Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter and Isle of Burke, from How to Train Your Dragon. So those are the four lands that you're gonna want to go through. Now, a lot of the marquee rides, the two big rides at this park, the ones that have the longest waits by far, and everyone's gonna be going for, is going to be Mario Kart over at the Super Nintendo Land. And then the Battle of the Ministry of Magic in the Ministry of Magic Harry Potter World. These queues are gonna be long all day. And if you have, obviously. Early park access from being on site. We're gonna encourage you start your day with one of those two rides if you want to knock it out right away. And the reason is the other parts of the park are not open yet. They're not gonna open until the general admittance is allowed in. So those that are gonna be your only real options at that point in time. So we encourage you, definitely go through those and try to knock those out early in the day. If you are an early park goer. Now for those of you who aren't like us or the majority of people you're gonna get in at General admittance, so let's talk through what the strategy is, but back to these two big rides. So Mario Kart is a really fun ride. You're gonna get on a cart of four people. It's all virtual reality, and you're gonna go through and earn some coins. I will tell you the standard queue for the most part, was over a hundred minutes the entire day that we were there. However, single rider was very quick. And there's no posted wait time for single rider. I can tell you that. We rode this across the two days. We were there three separate times. Twice on the first day that we went, and most of the waits were just about 10 minutes long for a single rider. Our longest wait was about 20 minutes. Every single time we got in the queue ranged from 90 to 120. So you can imagine if you can do single rider in 10 minutes, that's gonna be better than pretty much any other wait in the park. So we're gonna highly recommend that you do single rider at Mario Kart. And then same thing over at Ministry of Magic. Now, the first time we went through here, we did the standard queue. Because we wanted to make sure we saw the whole queue and that we could ride together the first time we did it. However, I will tell you, just like a lot of our other episodes first of all, the queue, you're still gonna go through the entire queue in the single rider line, so you're not gonna miss anything. But I will also tell you that by the time we got to the ride and you're on the ride. If you're not interacting with anyone else in your group or your party. And so it is almost identical to writing single rider. And the time that we did the single rider queue, that took us about a 30 minute wait. And that posted wait time was over a hundred minutes. So it's much, much quicker to do single rider and to separate your party in these queues than it is to go through the entire wait yourself. So we know that these are the big marquee rides. Everybody wants to ride them. You're gonna get a chance to ride them. But I'm gonna tell you, you are gonna be way better off doing single rider. So with that being said, here is our recommendation on how we did our day and what I would recommend for you. So when you go into the park, I'm gonna tell you stay to the right and you're gonna want to go to the Isle of Burke and you're gonna wanna start with hiccups, wing gliders. This is a medium-sized rollercoaster. It's a lot of fun but because of the lockers and the load unload time and all of that, this line can get long very quick throughout the day. And first thing in the morning at rope drop is when it's gonna be shortest. Now, in some of my other episodes, I have told you if you're gonna do rope drop, you should look at these heat map. And try to find a heat map with the wait times listed throughout the day. And then it obviously goes green, yellow, red, based on how long it takes to get into the ride itself. With the heat maps on hiccups wing gliders, if you ever look at those, you will see you have a very short segment in the first 30 minutes where it's gonna be green. And then after that it's gonna go yellow and red the rest of the day. So our goal is right at Rope drop. We wanna get on hiccups winged gliders. Now. I will also tell you though, when we did this both days, this is where we started both days, the ride was not open immediately at park opening. So one time we went over and jumped onto flight school and tried that one out. Which is right next door. And that took us about 15 or 20 minutes. And then we eventually came back later to hiccup swing gliders. The second day we said we would wait, and it was about 15 or 20 minutes after park opening, they got the ride open and we were on the first car at that point in time. So it wasn't too bad of a wait. If you consider that, we were the very first ones to get on there. I can imagine if you're at the back of the pack and it's gonna take you 30 minutes, plus you had to wait 15 for it to even open. That may be a little bit of longer wait, and it may not be worth it to you, but. If the ride is open, I will tell you, you wanna start with hiccups wing gliders, because this one is going to be a longer wait later in the day. Now, right after you're done with Hiccups wing gliders, we recommend go hit Flight School. It's right next door. It's not gonna have much of a wait. And if you wanted to, you could do fire drill after that and knock out Isle of Burke. Now again, if you've listened to our other episodes, we like to knock out. Full sections of the park so we can get outta there and not have to come back unless we choose to ride something again later in the day. So we're gonna tell you start with Isle of Burke and knock that out second. Soon as you're done with that, we're gonna tell you go all the way diagonal across the park. So I know it's a little bit of a walk, but you're gonna go next to Dark Universe and we're gonna tell you to follow. The next ride with curse of the werewolf, and you're gonna wanna ride that rollercoaster. That one also has a single rider option that's gonna be much quicker than the traditional line. But another consideration of this ride is the queue is outdoors. So if it's gonna be a hot day, you're gonna wanna get this done early in the day. So chances are, is after. Hiccup, swing gliders, and doing all the Isle Burke, it's probably about an hour, maybe 90 minutes into the day at this point. So you're still early enough to do that outdoor queue without melting in the sun. So we're gonna encourage you. If the general queue is less than 20 minutes, you're probably better in the general queue, but if it's longer than 20 minutes, you're probably gonna be better in single, rider, because this one seats four per car and it moves pretty quickly. Go. Definitely check that out. As soon as you're done with Curse of the Werewolf I will tell you that you're gonna want to go do Monsters Unchained. It's right next door, that one throughout the day, because the load is so fast on this ride typically doesn't have a longer wait than 10 or 20 minutes. And every time we saw it posted between 10 and 20 minutes, when we would go in there, we would walk straight on this ride. So we would walk straight through the queue and we were getting on the ride immediately. And it literally takes you probably five to 10 minutes to walk the entire queue. So that is the majority of your wait time there. So we would say, knock that one out next. Once you're done with the Dark universe, we're gonna tell you I would go over next to Super Nintendo land. If Donkey Kong does not have a long wait yet, this is another ride that's gonna it. It'll be high at the beginning of the day. It's going to get a couple times during the day that it's gonna dip. And if you can catch it in a dip, you're gonna want to do that next. So if you're able to catch it in a dip, and what I mean by that is in the 30 to 40 minute range definitely less than an hour. If it's more than an hour, I probably wouldn't do it then. But you're gonna want to go do the Donkey Kong Minecart Madness ride at that point, if that's a ride you're interested in doing. Now, on our other episode, we did talk about this as a jerky ride. It doesn't have much of a plot or a point, and it's a smaller rollercoaster. So if you wanted to miss one throughout the day or wanted to make sure you did all your rides that you were interested in, this is one that I may skip. So it's a fun little ride, but at the same time, you're not missing anything if you decide to skip it. From there I would go over and I would do Mario Kart and do Bowser's challenge, and I would do that in the single rider and then again, knock out that land there. And then I would go over to Harry Potter land because this ride is gonna start in peak early in the day. And as the day goes on, it's gonna start dropping down. And then I would do ministry magic through single rider there. Once you're done with that, I'm gonna come back out and I'm gonna do Stardust racers. And there's a couple reasons I saved Stardust Racers for later. The first reason is this line moves very quickly. Though it can get backed up a little bit during the day because there's two rollercoasters going at the same time and they're loading to at the same time. The ride moves fairly quick. Now another tip here is they do have single rider, but it's not often open. So I'm gonna encourage you. If it's not open, you're gonna get into the queue. And you're gonna want to go to the yellow line. Do not go to the green line. Green is gonna be backed up because there's rumors online or people are talking about that green is more intense than yellow. And I will tell you I rode them both. It is barely different at all. And the only difference between the two is green has a little twist at the top and yellow doesn't. It's got it at the bottom of the hill. So really outside of that, the tracks are identical. So go on the yellow, it's gonna shorten your wait time, probably by about half. When you get into there. So if it is, got a posted wait time at 30 minutes, your yellow wait time's probably gonna be somewhere in the 15 to 20 minute range and you're gonna get on pretty quick. The other reason I waited to ride this and put it later in the day is this is a really great ride at night. So if you've done your whole day, let's say you took your breaks, you stopped, you went shopping, you ate some food, and it's now getting later in the day and it's dark out, this is a great time to go ride Stardust Racer. So I would encourage you if you ride it during the day, come back and do it again at night if you're able to. Because it is that much better at night. Similar to the Velocicoaster. Over at Islands of Adventure. So that is my tips on how to get through this park. Now that brings us to the, I can do this all day tip of the day. And this one is similar to the one I did in the last episode. And that is gonna be at all costs. Whatever you do not wait and do not ride. The Yoshi Ride in Super Nintendo land. This thing is the worst ride I've ever ridden in my entire life. It is lame. It makes it's a small world look like a rollercoaster. So definitely skip that ride. It's very short. It's not worth the wait at all, and it's not, again, it's not worth your time. So skip that ride at all costs and save your day to go do the other bigger rides now. As I said on the last episode, if you've got really little kids and by little kids, four or younger they may enjoy this ride and it's definitely worth waiting for them. So they get a ride that they can do during the day, but for anyone over the age of probably five or seven, they're not gonna enjoy this ride. It's just being on a small carousel at a small park. So it's not a very good ride at all. So definitely skip that. But with that next week we've got our Millennium Falcon tips and tricks, which actually has a really controversial tip on it. So we encourage you to go listen to that and give us some feedback on that one as well. And we hope that you have a magical week as you're planning your next vacation, and we will talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye.