I may be clueless but what is the reasoning for excluding the express line benefit for patrons staying here?
the CB will be more of a value hotel not a deluxe one.
either peeps stay onsite or stay offsite for an UO vacation.
when you stay off site you then have to deal with transportation to the parks.
at CB, that won't be an issue. it will be walkable.
the onsite hotels are deluxe and have the amenities.
the hotel perks are one thing that draws people to stay onsite.
it also helps to keep their occupancy level in the range they need it to be.
the value onsite hotel will have lower rates, larger rooms for more families but not all the hotel perks.
i think it is a good thing Universal is doing more to bring guests into the parks with the new hotel. More families will be able to come and enjoy the fun things in the parks then.
a person can stay onsite at the motherland or offsite.
those onsite are able to take in more of the disney activities.
those staying offsite do not get all the amenities but still do the motherland and have a ball.
staying off site at either resorts can be cheaper but take longer to get to.
Like Mac said, It's one way for Universal to Differenciate between the perks/amenties of staying at one of their existing "Deluxe" level hotels, and this new cheaper Value/Moderate level hotel.
There is also a very simple and valid logistical reason too....
With the current 3 deluxe hotels, You have approximately 2400 rooms, with a theoretical capacity of 9600 people. (a few more however if you put 5 in some of the rooms which will allow 5 people per room).
The New hotel, by itself, is going to have 1800 rooms, or 3/4 of the total existing room numbers of the 3 existing onsite hotel. 1/2 of those rooms will be "Family Suites" that will accommodate 6 people per room. So the total capacity of the new resort is approximately 9000 people.
Or in simpler terms... You would almost be doubling the number of guests the Express system would need to support if you gave the same benefit to the guests of the new hotel. Based off the way the Express benefit is currently designed and operated, It's highly likely that if they added that many new express users to the system the system would become overloaded and either negatively impact the standby lines or remove the benefit of using the Express benefit. So the decision to not offer the new guests the Express Benefit was probabley made (or highly influenced) by the simple desire to keep the Express system working as it is now and to not ruin the good thing they have run successfully for years.
And going into purely speculative mode:
With the 1800 onsite room increase, I'm actually thinking that once this resort comes fully online, that we will see Universal phase out the existing Partner Hotel system. The Early entry benefit offered at the new hotel is similar to the one given to Partner Hotel Packages, so removing the Partner Hotels could result in not much impact to the early entry numbers after the new hotel opens.
Universal would also, with it's price point, be able to move a large number of those guests from offsite "partner" locations to the new onsite location, where Universal would stand to make much more of a profit off those guests thru getting all the nightly stay revenue (instead of just the partner hotel kickback), as well as having them in a better position to spend money in the parks (hotel package delivery), spend money at a late night at Citywalk (easier to get from the hotel to the entertainment/restaurants at Citywalk), and making it easier to keep the guests completely onsite for their meals (parks, resorts, and citywalk). There is also the branding advantages of being able to control more of the guest's "Universal Vacation Experience" at an onsite hotel, instead of having a large part of it out of their control when the guest is dealing with the Holiday Inn.