Skip to main content
Park Queue TimesPQT

Universal Islands Of Adventure cheat sheet

worked out from 60 days of our own wait data18 rides

Arrive for 09:00 and ride Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure™, Jurassic World VelociCoaster and Flight of the Hippogriff™ first. Leave Skull Island: Reign of Kong until after 9pm, when its queue drops to about 5 minutes. The park's queues peak around 18:00 at 23 minutes and are lowest around 09:00.

Before you go

When to go

The days and months this park's rides run quietest

Quietest weekday
Wednesday
Busiest weekday
Sunday
Quietest month
September
Busiest month
February

Each ride's own quietest and busiest day, tallied and weighted by how long its queue runs. For a dated answer use the crowd calendar, which scores every day of the year.

The shape of the day

Average queue across the park, hour by hour

  1. 09:0014mquietest
  2. 10:0017m
  3. 11:0020m
  4. 12:0021m
  5. 13:0020m
  6. 14:0020m
  7. 15:0019m
  8. 16:0019m
  9. 17:0021m
  10. 18:0023mpeak
  11. 19:0021m

Arrive for 09:00. Queues climb to their peak around 18:00 and fall back through the afternoon; the last hour or two is the quietest the headliners get all day.

Ride these first

The headliners: longest queues, worst by late morning

  1. 1Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure™ ~73 min typical · up to 100 at peak · worst around 8pm73m
  2. 2Jurassic World VelociCoaster ~52 min typical · up to 66 at peak · worst around 7pm52m
  3. 3Flight of the Hippogriff™ ~40 min typical · up to 49 at peak · worst around 11am40m

Straight to these from the gate, in this order. Every minute before the park fills is worth three later.

Leave these until later

Rides whose queues collapse late in the day

  1. 1Skull Island: Reign of Kong~18 min typical · about 5 min after 9pm5m
  2. 2Hogwarts Express™ - Hogsmeade™ Station~18 min typical · about 7 min after 6pm7m
  3. 3Doctor Doom's Fearfall®~13 min typical · about 5 min after 9pm5m

Save them for the last two hours, when the coach parties have gone and the queue is a fraction of the afternoon's.

Watch-outs

Rides that spend the most of the day not running

  1. 1Hogwarts Express™ - Hogsmeade™ Stationrunning 82% of the park's open hours82%

If one of these is the reason you came, ride it the first time you see it running rather than saving it. The full picture is on the reliability page.

On the day

Your day-of sheet

The same park, for one date: the forecast, the hours, and your ride order

Plus members get this sheet for a date: the crowd forecast for the day, its published hours, a ride order worked out against that day's wait curve, and a printable version to take in.

PlusThe day-of sheet is part of Plus

Here, that is a ride order for your date, the forecast and the hours, printable.

  • Your rides, in order

    Sequenced against the wait curve, so the headliners land in their quiet windows.

  • quiet till 111pm · 66m

    Your date, hour by hour

    How the wait climbs on the day you picked, and the window it stays low.

£4.99for a park dayor £24.99 a year for every park day, cancel any time.

Everything above is each ride's own recorded queue over recent weeks, sampled every few minutes through the park's opening hours - not an opinion. A ride with too little history is left out.