Hagrid’s New Virtual Line System at Islands of Adventure

Universal Orlando is testing out a new Virtual Line system for Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Islands of Adventure. I’ve seen lots of people asking questions about this system, so I wanted to give some insights into it.

You can watch my quick video, or keep reading down below!

First of all, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure (I’ll call it Hagrid’s from now on) is an awesome ride located in the Hogsmeade area of Islands of Adventure. I won’t give any details or spoilers, but you need to ride it. It’s an outdoor coaster and it is sooo smooth, I could ride it again and again.

So what is a virtual line? A virtual line is a system that regulates how many people can enter a line at a time. Since Hagrid’s is so popular, this virtual line system is used to keep the queue from reaching capacity and wait times from being ridiculously long. In order to enter the standby line for Hagrid’s, you must have a virtual line time. There are team members standing by the entrance to check and scan a QR code on your phone.

To see how the old virtual line worked, check out my blog post here, or YouTube video here. Starting summer 2021, Universal Orlando began testing a different system for the virtual line.

The virtual line starts when the park opens. During Early Park Admission the standby line is just a standby line and you do not need a virtual line pass to enter.

To access this new virtual line system, go to vltest.universalorlando.com, enter your email and create a password. You will need to allow for the website to use your location. You will then be prompted to choose your party size. From there, you will see the attractions that have the virtual line in this system. Right now, it is just Hagrid’s in this new system.

Before the park opened, the virtual line was not available, and showed that the ride was delayed. That was inaccurate since a quick check of the Universal Florida app shoed the ride had a 75 minute wait during Early Park Admission. As soon as the clock struck 9am (when regular park hours started), I clicked on the Hagrid’s option. The ride still showed as closed, but then a button appeared that let me choose to reserve a spot 37 minutes from then.

After that was confirmed, I was then able to click “Reschedule” and use a slider to push my reservation time back to a time that was more convenient to me.

As we went about our morning, I kept checking this website (I saved it on the home screen of my phone for easy access) and noticed that our time kept getting moved up. This system takes into account no-shows and moves everyone’s reservations up accordingly.

I was able to reschedule each time using the slider again, but I had to reschedule over 5 times during the course of the morning. There was no notification at all of these time changes except for when I checked the website, so if I had waited until my original time without ever checking the website, I would have missed our return time.

One time I rescheduled and then while I still had the website up, not even a minute later, it changed my time up by 30 minutes, so I had to reschedule again.

As we were walking over to the ride when it was almost our time, I opened the website at 11:41 and it showed that our time had started at 11:39 and we now had 30 minutes from 11:39 to use our virtual line pass. There was no notification when it was our time either, other than a new window within the website that showed up with a QR code.

We then weaved our way through the crowds of people that didn’t know about the virtual line and showed our QR code to the Team Member with the scanner. They scanned our pass and then let us through to the queue.

Overall, I didn’t mind this system, other than the lack of notifications about the time changing. I preferred the old system where we picked a time and that time was set, but this system does ensure that more people might have the opportunity to ride, as times open up when they’re not used.

So to ride Hagrid’s, to guarantee a chance to ride, try for a virtual spot right at opening, or just check throughout the day in hopes that more times will open up as the day goes on. I have heard people say that new times open up every couple of hours, but this is not confirmed.