When to go
January is the cheapest and quietest month of the Universal year once the first week clears, and the price you pay for it is short operating hours, the heaviest refurbishment season on the calendar, and a Hollywood park sitting in the wettest stretch Los Angeles gets.
From the second week onward this is the best-value month at both resorts. You trade long days and a complete ride list for low crowds and low prices, which is a trade most visitors should take.
Expected — not yet announced · Checked July 2026
Crowd and cost shapes describe multi-year patterns at both resorts rather than a forecast for any single January. Weather figures are climate normals for Orlando and for the San Fernando Valley and do not decay. The dates on which the holiday overlays are struck and on which Mardi Gras opens are not published far ahead and are deliberately described as windows.
Low crowds
Climate normals for each resort. These are averages over a long reference period, not a forecast — the only figures on this site that do not decay.
| Resort | Avg high | Avg low | Rain days | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Universal Orlando (Orlando) | 71°F | 50°F | 7 | Climate normals for Orlando, not a forecast. The most comfortable park weather of the Universal Orlando year and the month most likely to be genuinely cold: overnight lows near 50 mean a morning in the low 50s is normal, and a cold front can drop that into the 30s for a couple of days. Pack layers rather than a coat, and remember that the water rides at Islands of Adventure are miserable below about 65 degrees and often close outright. |
| Universal Hollywood (Los Angeles) | 68°F | 45°F | 6 | Climate normals for the San Fernando Valley around Universal City, not a forecast. January is the wettest month of the Los Angeles year, and while six rain days out of thirty-one still means most days are dry, the Studio Tour is an open tram and the Lower Lot is reached by open escalators. Evenings drop into the 40s, which is colder than most visitors packing for California expect. |
Low cost
Each of these has its own page with pricing, strategy, and a verdict.
Included overlay
Everything Universal Orlando does at Christmas is included with regular admission, which makes it the best-value season on the resort's calendar and the only one with no ticket to buy. It is also split across separate parks, so the ticket type you choose decides how much of it you actually see.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Included overlay
The best value in the Universal Studios Hollywood year, because none of it costs anything beyond a regular ticket: a live Grinch show, a redressed Upper Lot, and the Wizarding World's castle projection after dark. It is also the season that makes this park worth a day with young children, which it otherwise is not.
Expected — not yet announcedNo extra ticket
Both resorts strip their holiday layer within the first fortnight, and the exact date is not published far ahead. Holidays at Universal Orlando and Grinchmas at Universal Hollywood have both historically run into the first week of January and then stopped, which means a trip booked for the third week gets January prices and no seasonal content at all.
That is usually the right trade. The overlays are worth a fare difference in December and they are not worth the first week's crowd levels in January. But book with your eyes open: if the seasonal shows are why your family is going, you need the first week and you need to pay for it.
Mardi Gras at Universal Orlando picks up where the holidays leave off, and it starts later than most people assume — early February in recent cycles rather than January. Treat the whole of January after the first week as a genuinely bare month for events at both resorts and plan the trip around rides.
More attractions are down in January and February than in any other window, at both resorts, because this is the only stretch of the year with attendance low enough to absorb it. Universal typically posts closures a few weeks out rather than months, so a trip booked in October cannot be planned around them.
The practical response is to build the trip around a park rather than around a ride. Islands of Adventure and Epic Universe both have enough headliners that losing one is an inconvenience; Universal Studios Hollywood is a single park where losing the Studio Tour for maintenance would change the day entirely.
Check the operator's own maintenance list in the fortnight before you travel, and check it again the morning you go. Our closure trackers carry only what we can verify, which in most Januaries is less than what is actually down.
Both resorts run their shortest operating days of the year in January, and Universal Hollywood in particular can close in the late afternoon on a midweek date. A shorter day compresses everything: the same number of visitors arrive through a narrower window, so the middle of the day still queues even in a low month.
Express Pass is cheapest this month and least necessary this month, and those two facts do not cancel out. On a quiet Orlando weekday it is genuinely skippable, and the money is better spent on a park-to-park ticket. On a January Saturday at Universal Hollywood, where a compact park meets a local crowd inside a seven-hour day, it is closer to essential than the low season implies.
The rule that holds at both resorts: buy Express Pass for the day, not for the trip. Universal prices it per date and the spread within a single January is large enough that buying it for your busiest day and skipping it on the others is almost always the right shape.
Los Angeles gets most of its annual rain between December and March, and January is the wettest of those months. The park stays open, and a wet January Tuesday is the emptiest Universal Studios Hollywood ever gets, so this is an opportunity rather than a write-off — provided you have packed for it.
What rain actually affects: the Studio Tour tram is open-sided, the Starway escalators between Upper and Lower Lot are exposed, and the outdoor queue space is limited enough that a downpour pushes everybody into the same few indoor buildings. A poncho and waterproof shoes convert the day from unpleasant to excellent value.
If your dates are fixed and you have two candidate days, watch the forecast and take the wet one for the park and the dry one for the rest of Los Angeles. That is the opposite of most people's instinct and it is the right way round.
Height requirements, ride mechanics, accessibility detail, and permanent dining live on our evergreen guide, our year-round sister site. They do not change with the season, so we do not repeat them here.