The Universal Orlando website publishes preliminary park hours up to 6 months in advance, but schedule adjustments can happen at any time, including the day of your visit. During the off-season, parks may be open as few as 8 hours (9 a.m.–5 p.m.). At busy times (particularly holidays), they may operate 8 a.m.–11 p.m. Volcano Bay is open anywhere from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the off-season to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the summer.
Early Park Admission is a benefit for those staying in onsite hotels where they can enter one or multiple parks before official opening. Which of the two theme parks opens early for resort hotel guests can change often and is occasionally available at both parks. Volcano Bay almost always offers an Early Park Admission period.
Queues to rides and attractions usually close to new guests at exactly the park's official closing time; if you are already in line at closing, you will be permitted to stay as long as it takes for you to ride, barring technical malfunctions. (An exception to that rule is popular rides like Reign of Kong and Escape from Gringotts, which may close their entrances before the rest of the park if the queue length significantly exceeds the time remaining in the operating day.) The main gift shops near the front of each park remain open 30 minutes to an hour after the rest of the park has closed.
Tip: Buy a Coca Cola Freestyle cup! They are under $20.00. When you purchase one you get free refills all day and after that you can bring the cup back to the park and re-charge it for about $10.00 and get free refills for that day as well.
Or: Bring bring your own cup and get free Ice and water.
Quitting Time
Because the day parking for all Universal parks and the CityWalk shopping, dining, and entertainment complex is consolidated in the same parking structures, chaos can ensue on days when both parks close at the same time. Fortunately, Universal usually tries to stagger the parks' closings by at least an hour, but occasionally both theme parks empty at the same time, resulting in an epic flood of humanity heading to the parking garages.
If you are unlucky enough to find yourself in such a situation, I suggest taking a side-trip to CityWalk and sitting out the stampede with a snack or drink. If you haven't yet exited the park, you can try lingering inside the gates as long as possible, browsing the shops which remain open past closing time. Security guards will eventually gently shoo you out, but not until most of the parking mess has cleared.
“Technical rehearsals,” or “soft openings” as they are commonly called, are when Universal uses its paying guests as guinea pigs, and allows them to preview an attraction that isn't yet ready for prime-time. Technical rehearsals may be held anywhere from a few weeks to a few days before a new ride officially opens, but are never pre-announced or guaranteed; front-line employees may be instructed to deny that any opening is possible until the moment they open the queue. In exchange for bragging rights that they were the first inside a hot new attraction, technical rehearsal participants must accept the possibility of waiting a long time without ever getting to ride, as the soft opening may end at any moment.
Experience one Theme Park each day.
Get access to more than one Theme Park on a single day. This ticket also gives you the ability to ride the Hogwarts Express between Hogsmeade™ at Universal's Islands of Adventure™ and Diagon Alley™ at Universal Studios Florida™.
Skip the regular line at participating attractions once per day at both Universal Studios Florida™ and Universal Islands of Adventure™
Allows you to bypass the regular lines an unlimited number of times per participating attraction.
The Three Premier Universal Hotels that include the Unlimited Express Pass
While Universal Orlando has made strides recently in convincing visitors to make UOR their primary destination, for many travelers a stop at Universal is still a side-trip in their Walt Disney World-centric vacation. If you are devoting the bulk of your Orlando holiday to Disney, but still want to make a detour to Universal, you have three primary options:
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