Is Express Pass worth it for Camp Jurassic?
The short answer
Is Express Pass worth it for Camp Jurassic? Express Pass does not cover this ride. At Universal Islands of Adventure, Camp Jurassic is not included in universal express pass, with a typical peak standby wait of under 30 min. Universal Express does not cover Camp Jurassic and never could, because there is no line and no ride vehicle — it is a large multi-level play structure built into the rockwork between the Jurassic Park River Adventure and the Pteranodon Flyers, with rope bridges, lava-tube tunnels, net climbs, a slide and a set of amber mines that make noises when you touch them. Nobody is checking a height at the entrance and nobody is dispatching anything. The reason it belongs in a planning conversation anyway is that it is the highest-value forty minutes in Islands of Adventure for a family with a six-to-ten-year-old, and the easiest thing on the map to lose one in: it is genuinely three-dimensional, it has several exits at different levels, and sightlines from the ground into the upper structure are poor. Use it deliberately rather than stumbling into it. The strongest play is to park the younger half of the group here while the taller half rides VelociCoaster or the River Adventure with Express — one adult at the base, the other in the queue — which turns the single-rider problem that wrecks most Jurassic Park visits into a non-issue. Before anyone climbs, agree on one exit as the meeting point and make the children repeat it back; the number-one way this goes wrong is a child leaving by a different level than the one they went up. Go in the heat of the afternoon rather than the morning: most of the structure is shaded, it costs you nothing in Express value, and it is the cheapest possible way to buy an hour when standby waits across the park are at their worst. Bring water, take the hats off before the slide, and do not let a tired group attempt it at the end of a long day.
Why we say “express pass does not cover this ride”
Universal Express does not cover Camp Jurassic and never could, because there is no line and no ride vehicle — it is a large multi-level play structure built into the rockwork between the Jurassic Park River Adventure and the Pteranodon Flyers, with rope bridges, lava-tube tunnels, net climbs, a slide and a set of amber mines that make noises when you touch them. Nobody is checking a height at the entrance and nobody is dispatching anything. The reason it belongs in a planning conversation anyway is that it is the highest-value forty minutes in Islands of Adventure for a family with a six-to-ten-year-old, and the easiest thing on the map to lose one in: it is genuinely three-dimensional, it has several exits at different levels, and sightlines from the ground into the upper structure are poor.
Use it deliberately rather than stumbling into it. The strongest play is to park the younger half of the group here while the taller half rides VelociCoaster or the River Adventure with Express — one adult at the base, the other in the queue — which turns the single-rider problem that wrecks most Jurassic Park visits into a non-issue. Before anyone climbs, agree on one exit as the meeting point and make the children repeat it back; the number-one way this goes wrong is a child leaving by a different level than the one they went up. Go in the heat of the afternoon rather than the morning: most of the structure is shaded, it costs you nothing in Express value, and it is the cheapest possible way to buy an hour when standby waits across the park are at their worst. Bring water, take the hats off before the slide, and do not let a tired group attempt it at the end of a long day.
Universal sells Express Pass as a date-priced day product, not per ride — the same date can swing hundreds of dollars between a January weekday and a holiday week, and the Unlimited tier costs more than the one-ride-each tier. You pay Universal directly and we never mark it up. What a guide actually does is work out whether your specific day needs Express at all, and if it does, which park to spend it in — because buying it for the wrong park is the most common way families waste money at Universal Orlando.
Planning Disney in the same trip? Universal's Express Pass and Disney's Lightning Lane work nothing alike, and the strategies do not transfer. Our Universal Orlando guide covers how the two fit into one itinerary.
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