Universal Pulls Hagrid's, Its Longest-Wait Ride, From Express Pass, Sending Everyone to Standby
If your Universal Orlando plan involved buying Express Pass to skip the long line at Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, you will want to rethink it. As of Wednesday, July 1, 2026, the wildly popular Islands of Adventure coaster no longer accepts Universal Express, which means every rider, including guests who paid for the premium skip-the-line service, now waits in the standby line.
Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure is now standby only. Photo: AllEars.Net
What Universal said
Universal framed the change as a behind-the-scenes tweak to keep the line moving.
We are implementing an operational update to Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure. Effective July 1, 2026, the attraction will no longer be included in the Universal Express program, allowing us to improve the flow of the experience for all of our Guests.
Why this ride, and why now
The reason is no mystery to anyone who has waited for Hagrid's. According to wait-time trackers, it is by a wide margin the single longest wait of any ride at Universal's two original Orlando parks, routinely averaging more than two hours and running roughly double the next-longest attraction, Jurassic World VelociCoaster. Interestingly, Express was only added to Hagrid's in 2025. The ride opened in 2019 and had never been an Express attraction before that. Layering Express access onto a slow-loading, downtime-prone coaster reportedly made the standby line unpredictable, since Express riders were prioritized. Pulling Express back is Universal's way of steadying the standby wait.
Hagrid's routinely posts the longest wait at Universal's original parks. Photo: UOFan / Universal Orlando
How to plan around it
Express Pass still works on the other Wizarding World rides, including Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Flight of the Hippogriff, and Hogwarts Express (which needs a park-to-park ticket). But for Hagrid's, your best bets are now the old-fashioned ones: ride first thing at rope drop, try late in the evening, or be ready to commit to a long midday wait. Universal's own statement did not mention the single-rider line, but early coverage indicates single rider is still available, and it may become the go-to option now that Express is gone.
Sources
Image credits: AllEars.Net and UOFan.
