I'm waiting for the rates to come out next week and then I'll start planning like crazy for a trip in the fall next year. I've always gone in the summer so cooler temps and smaller crowds is going to be a whole new experience. Plus add onto that it will be the first vacation that my boyfriend and I will be taking just the two of us. Pretty amazing when I think about it seeing as how we've been together for 10 years.
Gringotts looked pretty cool from the videos I saw in you tube. Still not enough for me to go for a day or two when I could be spending it with the mouse. Maybe in a couple of years I'll take a couple of days at US before we head over to disney.
Let me tell you...
I was there on July 4th. I was expecting wall-to-wall people. Since we stayed at a Universal resort, we could get in for WWOHP at 8. The Forbidden Journey was a 40 minute wait, even that early. 5 minute wait for Hippogriff's Flight. We waited about 20 minutes to go through Ollivander's at Hogsmeade. I walked on the Dragon Challenge. We went back to Forbidden Journey and did the single rider line -- on and off within 15 minutes.
We had park-to-park tickets. By that time the Hogwarts Express was open and practically walk-on. Rode over to Universal. Men-in-Black had a 10 minute wait. Simpsons - 10. ET - 5. Grabbed lunch. Rode Shrek (15 minute wait). Rode Despicable Me (60 minute), Terminator (10), Twister (10), The Mummy (15), Simpsons again (10), Transformers (60), saw a show, then spent enough time roaming Diagon Alley that if we had gone back to IoA, we could have rode everything we wanted to there.
As it was, we went back to IoA the next day. We waited until 10 or so before we went to the park (at least 9:30, anyway). Rode the Cat in the Hat and the Suess Trolley (walk-ons), Poseidon's Fury (20), Forbidden Journey (single rider line...maybe 10 minutes?), Popeye's Bilge-Rat Barge (40), a couple other things, we were done by 2. Rode Hogwarts Express back to US, did a bit more before we left the park around 5 for Blue Man Group at 6.
We are considering doing a Universal day during next year's trip, but it will definitely only be a day, we will get park-to-park tickets, and I expect to do pretty much everything we'd want to do in that one day.