Universal Studios
This was much more impressive than I was expecting! We liked it enough to have annual passes there for the last 3 years! There are 2 parks, and you really need the park-hopper option because there is a Harry Potter land in each park, connected by the big steam engine that you see in all of the Universal ads. Without the park hopper, you can’t take the train and you’d have to walk all the way around. Ugh. You could see most of both parks with just a 1-day hopper ticket. In 2 days, you could probably ride just about everything one time, and see some of the side shows. 3 days would probably be too much in one vacation. Universal has a lot of “guy” rides (we have 4 girls and 1 guy in our family), with tons of action scenes and 3D glasses. The Universal parks are put together very, very well and they are much better than Universal Studios Hollywood. However, there is no backlot experiences, and there is little emphasis on movie production like in Hollywood, CA.
Here’s what I would strongly suggest: Get a 1-day park hopper ticket for each person in your group. Go that first day with the ticket, and if you really want to come back, upgrade that ticket to a 2-day ticket at Guest Relations before park closing. You could also upgrade the ticket to a season pass, which is what we did when we realized we wanted to come back before the 12 months are up (and Universal often offers a 15 month annual pass). The annual passes are usually less than the price of a 3-day ticket. They also have strict capacity limits, but they don’t have a reservation system. They’ll just close the park when they reach capacity, so get there early if you plan on going! Overall, I strongly suggest giving the Universal parks a try at least once, and likely you’ll want more than 1 day there.