to not want to spend about £1,000 on a day out? - Florida theme park

[Rhythmisadancer]

This seems a mad amount of money - but entry for 4 to Universal Studio for a day is just over $500. It's not like we'll be popping back if we don't get to do everything.
DS tells me that it's really essential to get the express passes as well or we'll spend all day queuing. These are $229 EACH!!
So if I get two can we take it turns to use them and go on different rides with the kids, or will they be attached to the same two tickets each time? so the same two people (presumably the kids) can get on quickly each time, and the other 2 just wait? Or might I be able to jump on a ride using one of the passes - I'd only want to do this once or twice tbh, and DH is more than happy not to go on any rides at all so it's definitely not worth getting passes for all 4 us. We did not just win the euromillions after all.
Just how bad are the queues for the rides? Should I just tell DS to suck it up and expect to wait like everyone else? Or is it worth it?
AIBU? - it's a once in a lifetime amazing experience and queuing is for losers?
Or AINBU - it's a ridiculous amount of money, the queues aren't that bad?

Yeah, ’were’ is unfortunately the key word here.

We've never paid for the passes but we go in October.
Best to go for the park opening as it's not too busy before 11am.
It's so expensive just to go for one or 2 days, the 7 or 14 day ticket is much better value

I've just googled fluoridation and they are now £800 for 14 days so not too much more!

Or do you mean the bit about Disney fast passes as yeah it is rubbish they are no longer free!

It depends when you go, I've been twice in November and queue times state 20 minutes. Longest I queued was Harry Potter and that would be about 30-45 minutes.
The mummy ride you could walk straight to the front of the queue, get off the ride, and then walk the queue again and be at the front.

@3WildOnes yeah Disney fast passes, almost no point in going anymore with the weird new (and expensive) system.

Stay at Royal pacific resort for a night, will be less than $500 and you get express passes for everyone for 2 days 😉 Check in at 7am, have breakfast then hit the early opening park, you get a text when the room is ready then come back mid afternoon for a dip in the lovely pool/hot tub, citywalk for food then back into a park in the evening.
You will get everything done in those 2 days, unless you want Volcano bay too.

We used to go to Florida a lot

Last time was 2017 and we paid about £300 for 3 people and didn't need fast passes

Get a multi day pass if you can, highly doubt you will get to see everything you want in 1 day without absolutely wearing yourselves out!

I did universal in florida in February 2015. I did every single ride in the park in a day, some twice as a single rider. If your kids are happy doing the rides solo then single rider lanes were amazing. Near the end of the day they get busier but for the bulk of the day the longest I waited for was 15 minutes.

Others probably have more recent experience though and wouldn't surprise me if people have got wise to it.

In 2019 we did a one day two park pass without express passes.

We were there for rope drop for one HP ride with no queue at all, we did probably 6 or 7 other rides looking down the list now, mostly the 3D rides, then queued 2.5h for the second HP ride. That was in early April and we were there open to close.

I loved Universal … we bought this great book, it told you the order to do the rides in at each theme park, to miss the queues

we went on everything, no fast passes required

I didn't go on a single ride & spent most of the day waiting around for people who were queueing.
I wouldn't go back again.
The universal water park was excellent though.

What will you do @Rhythmisadancer ?

Iv just come back from universal last month.

You need fast passes. 100%

We did this 20 minutes walk from the park we went for 2 hours at a time and used their pool it was lovely. We walked on to the rides. You can also visit volcano bay with the priority rides

You need fast passes. Was there in June. It was great. Stayed at the Royal Pacific for 4 nights the moved to a villa near disney. The kids loved universal. Paid about $5000 for a VIP experience and did all the best rides in one day with no queues but that's very spendy and wasn't paid for by me. I like the harry potter stuff.

We got the 2 week combo ticket for disney and universal. Cost £3300 for 2 weeks went to universal/ volcano bay 4 times, typhoon lagoon twice, epcot twice then each other disney park (3 of them) so cost £300 park day, each day was very long and that's the equivalent of £75 per person per park per day. Plus food and parking at disney , plus fast pass costs at disney.

The queues are too long. We accidentally stood in a non express queue and lost 40 mins to a Dr Seuss ride!

thanks for the input folks!
We've just got back so thought I'd feed back how it went.
It was a busy holiday - week in NY and other places in Florida, so multi-days/ multi parks wasn't an option.
We spent two nights at the Endless Summer resort - had a suite so teens had a double bed each, but not their own rooms, which was fine. Arrived teatime, went to pool, had dinner at City Walk but were up bright and early to enter park at 9am.
I just bought the express passes for the kids, but made HP the first thing we went on and all 4 queued - took about 40 mins. Then rest of the day the kids used the passes and I went single rider if I wanted to go anything - DH was not bothered, in fact we had to make him come on the Simpsons later, and that queue was a bit shit and hot. Did everything they wanted to do, and didn't spend long queuing - but as a PP said the single rider option was fab - I got through some rides quicker than they did, and saw plenty of people who went in as a pair or 3 get put together anyway - it was only the big rollercoaster where the kids particularly wanted to sit together.
Regretted not buying Volcano Bay tickets in advance for next day, as they sold out, but in the event it was very thunderstormy that day, and with lightening around I believe that a lot of the rides would have been suspended for half the day anyway.
Mummy ride was closed for maintenance which we were all disappointed about, but other than that had a long tiring but fun day - stayed in park till 8, then dinner at city walk again - were quite happy to then just spend the next (last) day just hanging by the pool.

Fwiw, didn't do it, but did get the impression that I could have used DD's express pass if I'd wanted to, as it got scanned but not cross referenced with her ticket, and her finger wasn't scanned for the rides.
Great day, but bloody hell it was expensive!