YodaRulz
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2023
My daughter, sister-in-law, and I went to Orlando on vacation for a split Universal/Disney stay. Our Universal stay was from Thursday 11/30 – Monday 12/4. We decided to do a Private VIP Tour on our first full day at Universal (12/1) so we could take a slower approach the other days, shop, and spend time at the pool.
Here is our experience, hope this helps if you are considering a private tour…. (warning TL;DR)!
How much is it? What do you get?
We did the 1 day, 2-park private tour - ensure you have already purchased your park-to-park tickets for the day (these are not included as part of the tour price). Prices for the tour in December 2023 started around $3500 and went up for a 2 park tour depending on the day. In addition to the tour itself you get unlimited express passes for everyone for the rest of the day, free valet parking (which we didn’t need as we were staying on site), photo package, 10% discount on purchases (including CityWalk), & breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Arrival/Check-in
Our tour started at 9am (and finished at 5pm) and were advised to show up ahead of time to get checked in and eat breakfast. The check-in is through Universal Studios arches to the right. We arrived about 8:15am and little before 8:30am we were let in, checked in, given our VIP lanyards/passes, and met our tour guide Brittany. Ensure you have your reservation number with you and ID.
Breakfast
Our guide walked us over to the Café La Bamba for breakfast. Being in the first tour of the day all of food was hot and fresh and everything we ate tasted great! They also give you bottled water to take with you from breakfast. While we ate, our guide joined us, and we talked about what we wanted to accomplish. Since it’s a private tour we got to decide what we wanted to do. Our top things were Hagrid’s as many times as possible (due to no express pass line), backstage stuff, and as many rides as we could fit in. I am the only big roller coaster person in our group, so I saved Hulk, Rip Ride, and VelociCoaster for our other days since we had express passes included with our hotel stay.
Lunch and Dinner
For lunch and dinner, we were given a list of choices of the nicer restaurants and were able to make our selections before we arrived so they could make our reservations. For lunch we chose Mythos and dinner Toothsome. You can also choose to eat at other places not listed like the Leaky Cauldron, 3 Broomsticks, etc. if you want just let them know. There is an hour’s break for lunch regardless of where or if you eat. At Mythos my favs are Spanakopita Dip, Souvlaki Couscous Bowl (chicken), and Fork, Knife and Spoon Grilled Cheese! Note: for each meal you get an appetizer, meal, dessert, and drink (non-alcoholic) included.
Rides
We were able to do 23 rides (some of those were repeats) over the course of our day between the 2 parks. Your guide can ride with you (which ours did) OR they can hold your bags, etc. You enter through the exit and are basically walked directly to the front and onto the ride or pre-show. You can request any seat you want except on Hagrid’s because the moving conveyor belt and small load area won’t allow for you to wait. Since the photo package is included, our guide went and got our photos after each ride that offered them. Below is a list of every ride we did:
There was also the ability to see some backlot and behind the scenes areas, do meet and greets, and see shows. Below are a few things we did:
Would I do it again? Absolutely! We were able to do what would take 2-3 days in less than 8 hours. The carefree way we could just enjoy everything with no wait and no stress was priceless, especially around Christmas time when wait times can be high in the standby lines. That allowed us to really enjoy the other 2 days after and really explore and take our time and relax.
Here is our experience, hope this helps if you are considering a private tour…. (warning TL;DR)!
How much is it? What do you get?
We did the 1 day, 2-park private tour - ensure you have already purchased your park-to-park tickets for the day (these are not included as part of the tour price). Prices for the tour in December 2023 started around $3500 and went up for a 2 park tour depending on the day. In addition to the tour itself you get unlimited express passes for everyone for the rest of the day, free valet parking (which we didn’t need as we were staying on site), photo package, 10% discount on purchases (including CityWalk), & breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Arrival/Check-in
Our tour started at 9am (and finished at 5pm) and were advised to show up ahead of time to get checked in and eat breakfast. The check-in is through Universal Studios arches to the right. We arrived about 8:15am and little before 8:30am we were let in, checked in, given our VIP lanyards/passes, and met our tour guide Brittany. Ensure you have your reservation number with you and ID.
Breakfast
Our guide walked us over to the Café La Bamba for breakfast. Being in the first tour of the day all of food was hot and fresh and everything we ate tasted great! They also give you bottled water to take with you from breakfast. While we ate, our guide joined us, and we talked about what we wanted to accomplish. Since it’s a private tour we got to decide what we wanted to do. Our top things were Hagrid’s as many times as possible (due to no express pass line), backstage stuff, and as many rides as we could fit in. I am the only big roller coaster person in our group, so I saved Hulk, Rip Ride, and VelociCoaster for our other days since we had express passes included with our hotel stay.
Lunch and Dinner
For lunch and dinner, we were given a list of choices of the nicer restaurants and were able to make our selections before we arrived so they could make our reservations. For lunch we chose Mythos and dinner Toothsome. You can also choose to eat at other places not listed like the Leaky Cauldron, 3 Broomsticks, etc. if you want just let them know. There is an hour’s break for lunch regardless of where or if you eat. At Mythos my favs are Spanakopita Dip, Souvlaki Couscous Bowl (chicken), and Fork, Knife and Spoon Grilled Cheese! Note: for each meal you get an appetizer, meal, dessert, and drink (non-alcoholic) included.
Rides
We were able to do 23 rides (some of those were repeats) over the course of our day between the 2 parks. Your guide can ride with you (which ours did) OR they can hold your bags, etc. You enter through the exit and are basically walked directly to the front and onto the ride or pre-show. You can request any seat you want except on Hagrid’s because the moving conveyor belt and small load area won’t allow for you to wait. Since the photo package is included, our guide went and got our photos after each ride that offered them. Below is a list of every ride we did:
- IOA - Hogwarts Express (2x), High in the Sky Trolley, The Cat in the Hat, Flight of Hippogriff, Forbidden Journey, Kong Skull Island, Spiderman, Jurassic Park, and Hagrid’s (6 times!!) – this ride was never under a 60-80 minute wait that day, so it saved us over 6 hours of wait time!!!
- Studios - Gringotts, Transformers, Race Through NY, The Mummy (3x), E.T., and MIB.
There was also the ability to see some backlot and behind the scenes areas, do meet and greets, and see shows. Below are a few things we did:
- IOA Entry bridge – we got to go up on top and look around and take pictures.
- Meet the Grinch – we got a meet the Grinch without waiting, our guide was able to schedule us a time. This is not a guarantee due to demand but ask your guide you never know!
- Race Through NY – we went up on the balcony that overlooks the plaza and got to meet Hashtag.
- Christmas Parade – you get a special roped off area in front of La Bamba to watch the parade (same day only, we finished at 5pm and parade started at 5:30pm).
- Mummy – we got to go in a back door to see under the Mummy ride tracks (so cool!!).
- Backlot – we were taken through the backlot between both parks and got to go through some of the production offices and filming areas – learned so much here!
- MIB – I have done this before so we didn’t ask to do it, but you can go down to the control floor area and take pictures with Idikiukup and Bob.
- Shows – since we had 2 more days, we didn’t do any shows on our tour day but were offered reservations for Bourne, Horror Makeup Show, and Wholiday.
Would I do it again? Absolutely! We were able to do what would take 2-3 days in less than 8 hours. The carefree way we could just enjoy everything with no wait and no stress was priceless, especially around Christmas time when wait times can be high in the standby lines. That allowed us to really enjoy the other 2 days after and really explore and take our time and relax.
