? about Universal hotel w/6 people

[Moomduck1]

Hi,
We are planning a trip to Florida for this June. We will be staying at Disney hotels for most of the trip, but for our last night we wanted to stay at a Universal hotel so that we could take advantage of the lesser wait times. We did this on our last trip (Dec 2005) and it worked out great. However, last time we went with 5 people. This trip we will have 6...2 adults and 4 teenagers. For the Disney stay, we will be staying at the cheaper hotel (one of the All Stars or Pop Century) and getting 2 rooms. I looked into doing this at one of the Universal hotels, and wow, was it expensive! I couldn't find a way to make it worth it for 1 night with 6 people. Does anyone have any suggestions? We will only be at Universal for 1 day. Probably doing the 2 parks in 1 day option. I guess we could consider going to Universal for 2 days and staying 2 nights there, but not at the prices that I saw online! Thanks!
Chris

 

[t-and-a]

Hi,
We are planning a trip to Florida for this June. We will be staying at Disney hotels for most of the trip, but for our last night we wanted to stay at a Universal hotel so that we could take advantage of the lesser wait times. We did this on our last trip (Dec 2005) and it worked out great. However, last time we went with 5 people. This trip we will have 6...2 adults and 4 teenagers. For the Disney stay, we will be staying at the cheaper hotel (one of the All Stars or Pop Century) and getting 2 rooms. I looked into doing this at one of the Universal hotels, and wow, was it expensive! I couldn't find a way to make it worth it for 1 night with 6 people. Does anyone have any suggestions? We will only be at Universal for 1 day. Probably doing the 2 parks in 1 day option. I guess we could consider going to Universal for 2 days and staying 2 nights there, but not at the prices that I saw online! Thanks!
Chris

The most that you are allowed to have in a room at any of the Universal hotels is 5 people. The only suggestion I have would be 2 rooms. There is a chance that there will be a AAA rate available, but I don't think AAA rates are available yet for June. I'm not sure what it would cost you to become a AAA member, but it could be worth it.

 

[Moomduck1]

Thanks. I already belong to AAA so that wouldn't be an issue. I'm not sure that it will be worth it though to get 2 rooms for 1 or 2 nights. I'll have to think some more.

 

[robvia]

This is a tuff one. The only rooms that allow 5-7 people are the hospitality suites, and that would be expensive. The problem with only 1 day at Universal, is you won't "feel" like you visited.

I'll throw a few ideas out there.

You could rent a house, people from the UK do that, but then you wouldn't "feel" like you're a part of Disney.
You could stay at Disney the entire time, and drive up to Universal on 2 mornings. If you arrive the parking garage at 8am when it opens, and you're first to the gate, you can take a lap of walk on rides before the crowd arrives at 11am. The reason this can happen, is because Universal doesn't do the rope drop thing like Disney. When you go thru the gate, you're in, and the rides in Marvel Island are always running at the park open.

Are you renting a car? That would help, otherwise you'd need a limo service two times.

If you don't wake up early, then you could drive up and buy the express booklets. But I would recommend 2 days.

 

[Moomduck1]

hmmm. We will have a car there. We are driving down. I will have to think about that...thanks for the comments. I didn't realize that Universal wasn't as crowded in the mornings. And I will check out the express booklets. I hadn't considered that. Thank you!