Thanks all for your wise counsel re downtown check in, I think we'll do that
Knackered after 2 days at universal/Islands. We stayed at the Royal Pacific hotel for one night. We arrived just before 7.30 and our rooms were ready so we dropped our bags in. We picked up express passes from a kiosk in the hotel (already had park passes) and headed for hogsmeade in Islands, which is the only part that opens early. By the way, use the loos opposite the Owl post - they feature a character! We got to the ride about 8.15/8.20 and there was a 30 min queue. Forbidden journey is amazing! This morning we did that and then took the Hogwarts express over to universal. It was brilliant, just fantastic what they've done with that train ride, I wish we'd had the time and energy to do the return!
Diagon alley is even more amazing than hogsmeade, lots of attention to detail and little areas to explore. Don't forget Bourgin and Burke in knock turn alley if you have any fans of the dark arts. We had lunch in the leaky caldron, and I didn't think it was all that. My $11 "banger sandwich" had one sausage in it! Compared to the $12 roast beef sandwich in BOG which was divine, I didn't think it was good value, but the ploughman's looked decent.
"Escape from gringotts" was spectacular. Our alleged 45 min wait turned out to be 1.5 hours because they kept stopping the ride, and there is a fair amount of "faffing" - you have photos taken at one point in the q, then there's a little video/show with Bill, then a lift, then back up some stairs but the ride is well worth it. I say that as someone who queued for 1.5 hours with 3 small kids who weren't even going on the ride!
Overall the universal app doesn't seem to be as accurate on wait times as "my Disney experience"
We made good use of our express passes. Minion Mayhem is great fun - recommend that if you have despicable me fans.
Overall, I think the 2 days of early access and express passes means you can do both parks in 2 days (we did some favourite rides more than once) so is good value.