Originally Posted by
COFan
You are correct, after customs, you exit and bare to the left. there will be a CO counter to recheck the bags. A priorty luggage tag will be put on at ZHR and at EWR if it has fallen off. But it wont help you through Passport or Customs.
On my flight from BRS last week our bags with the elite tags were among the first 10 on the belt. We were in row 7 on the 752 and walked off the plane and directly to an Immigration officer; there were no lines at all. We cleared that rapidly and had to wait 2-3 minutes for bags but with the EliteAccess tags ours were off first and there were no lines for re-check after clearing customs, though we were terminating in EWR. We did walk upstairs to the train and the security lines were ~10 minutes at that point.
A 1:25 connection is doable if you can clear immigration, but there is no way to really know your chances on that until you get there and see what the lines are. The good news is that there are plenty more EWR-MCO flights for the OP and they shouldn't have troubles getting booked on a later one if necessary.