Thank you! Do you know when do they start letting people in through that entrance? Also, can we get to the Stranger Things S&S area through there? I am taking 3 people that have never been, so trying to be strategic on how I plan our night.
So unfortunately this year there is very little to no value at all for using the hotel entrance, at least compared to the way it worked previous years. (I apologize, I am going to go on a rant here but skip the next four salty paragraphs if you just want an answer to your question, lol)
Last year was the first (and sadly I suspect, only) time it functioned effectively as a Stay and Scream. This year you are held outside the former Blue Man theater, under Rockit, until the main park releases after the opening scaremonies. You are released at the same time as regular park entry guests, and while this was the way it always functioned until this point, the fact that they decided to hold the line back under Rockit means:
1. You don't get to even see the scaremonies from behind, you barely hear them from the other side of the Universal Store (at least in the past you were held up near the edge of Despicable Me, so you could see something).
2. This creates a massive pinch point where people are funneling through, and so by the time you are into the park proper, a ton of general gate guests already have flooded past.
3. There is a massive cluster of people trying to turn left immediately into BloodMoon standby on the right hand lane, crossing the stream of people trying to use express to get into BloodMoon's left lane, and fighting the people who even still don't want to do BloodMoon and want to just get into the park.
Theory Time: I suspect they had already cast Evil Dead Rise last year with the intention of opening it as a S&S house, and when they pivoted themes, the cast was still already available for the S&S call time, so they figured why not open it too. This year they may not have cast BloodMoon with that earlier call time in mind, so they can only open the house at 6.
Suggestion Time: Even if they cannot open the house and start letting people in until 6, they should at least crack open the chainlink and offer the hotel entrance guests the option to queue for the house or opt to stay outside and enter into the parks when the GP releases (if they didn't care to do BloodMoon). The BloodMoon queue more than any other has a massive amount of switchbacks inside a soundstage, which are never full. This would allow people the option of getting out of the heat, reduce some of the massive pinch point at the hotel entry gate beneath Rockit, smooth out the awkward cluster trying to enter the house fighting upstream, and give the hotel guests something actually resembling a benefit.
Sorry, I am just salty when I purposefully booked a Universal hotel at a higher cost than I could have stayed elsewhere having been assured the hotel entrance was a thing, only to find out it didn't function beneficially as it has in the past.
Suggestions for Planning Your Night Starting at the Hotel Entrance:
Ok, now that that is out of the way, haha, I would still suggest entering BloodMoon first, but make sure you try and position yourself toward the front of the hotel entrance waiting herd, and I would suggest peeling off to the right sidewalk once you are through the gates themselves. This will be a wider U-turn into BloodMoon, but assuming you don't have express it will save you the hassle of fighting through the line of people trying to get into the express line there.
From BloodMoon it is up to you how you want to maximize your night. These are my observations when it comes to true queue times vs posted times:
-Whenever walking past, take a look at the Exorcist line in Music Plaza. If you see 2 or fewer switchbacks visible across Music Plaza, generally that will be <25 minutes.
-Continuing across the park, if you head through NY toward San Fran, check Chucky on your way through. If you can see no visible switch backs spilling out of the F&F ride building, you are also looking at a <25 min. wait.
-For Darkest Deal and Twisted Origins you will be able to see each of their lines from each other's queues, so this will also be a good barometer of whether you should swap which one you are doing first, or stick to them. If Origins wraps around back of MIB, you are looking at a true 40 or so minute wait (if the line ends up about halfway across the back of the building). If Darkest Deal is about even with where Oddfellow's merge point it (and filling in all the switchbacks on the raised platforms) you are probably looking at < 30.
-For Monsters Unmasked, if you round the corner after passing through the house portal and the line is backed up just to the point of reaching ET, that is about an hour wait, solid. From there, cut that line distance in half, that's half an hour, down the line.
-Moving back to the front of the parks, Yeti and Dragons are similar to Oddfellow in that you can see both lines from either queue. If Dragons has 2 or fewer full switch backs, you are looking at <25 min. If Yeti's line is just about to enter the little switchback area on the other side of the Marquee Soundstage, you are probably also looking at <25 min.
-Stranger Things and Last of Us unfortunately are kind of a toss up. You get a decent look at the Last of Us queue while exiting Monsters, but it doesn't really help, as the waits for both of these do not really waver until the end of the night and by the time you make it over to TLoU from Monsters, a flood of people could have also had the same thought.
-I would suggest waiting until the last hour and a half and saving one of them for last, choosing to sacrifice more of a wait earlier in the night if you really want to be sure you get them both.
Sorry about the Great American Novel here, lol, just had a lot of thoughts brewing after this weekend, haha.