Dining at Universal

[BYC]

I hate to admit it, but I have been so busy planning the Disney portion of our vacation, I have completley ignored the Universal part. We will be 7 nights at Disney, and then moving to Royal Pacific for 2 nights (Fri. and Sat. Dec 15 and 16.) Is it necessary to make dinner reservations in advance like you have to do at Disney? If so...what are the best? Thanks!

 

[patster734]

The only 2 restaurants that require a reservation for dinner are Emeril's in Citywalk and Tchoup Chop at RPR. Reservations can be made by calling the restaurants or booking at opentable.com. The other restaurants can take a priority seating request, if you feel the need to have one, but usually just showing your room key, when you arrive at the restaurant, will get you priority seating. The exception to this might be Bubba Gump because it just recently opened. Having a priority seating there might help.

 

[nibby]

You can't get priority seating at Bubba Gump. Apparently it's their company policy to only do walk-ins. Hence we waited 1 hour to get seated last week as it was the only place my son wanted to eat and it was his birthday. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how good the food was and would definitely eat there again. Service excellent also

 

[patster734]

You can't get priority seating at Bubba Gump. Apparently it's their company policy to only do walk-ins. Hence we waited 1 hour to get seated last week as it was the only place my son wanted to eat and it was his birthday. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how good the food was and would definitely eat there again. Service excellent also

Thanks for the info. Were you staying on property? I'm wondering if they give priority seating to people who have a room key. We're staying at the Royal Pacific in October and were thinking of eating there one night.

 

[robvia]

Well, even if you have a room key, you can still end up waiting half an hour if it's prime time (8pm). It's really no big deal, we walked around Citywalk taking pictures. The girls went into the gift shops while I went for a drink. For Margaritaville, they'll give you a beeper.

If you don't want to wait, then go to lunch at 11:30am, and dinner at 05:30pm.
Otherwise, you'll have to wait if there is a crowd. At 8pm, Margaritaville is full, which can be fun if you want that party athmosphere. They have stilt walkers getting the crowd to sing when the volcano goes off.

 

[nibby]

Thanks for the info. Were you staying on property? I'm wondering if they give priority seating to people who have a room key. We're staying at the Royal Pacific in October and were thinking of eating there one night.

Yes, we were staying at the RPR and they told us there's no priority seating for anyone - and they don't take bookings. However, we did make the mistake of turning up for dinner just after 8 pm when Universal was just closing and IOA had closed an hour earlier

 

[gschmerl]

Thanks for the info. Were you staying on property? I'm wondering if they give priority seating to people who have a room key. We're staying at the Royal Pacific in October and were thinking of eating there one night.

Most of the restaurants at City Walk and the parks do give next available seating to on site guests. We have been seated at Hard Rock Cafe in five minutes when the regular line was around the building.All we had to do was walk up and show our room key.
However, there may be many other on site guests there before you which would cause you to wait.
Bubba Gumps is not yet offering the perk for on site guests.