Disney resort or Universal resort?

[tarheelmjfan]

I'm with those who suggest a split stay. BWV is a great resort, & you can't beat the location for touring WDW. However, you can beat it for touring UO. As others have suggested, I would switch to a Universal resort at the end of your stay. We like to stay at least 5 nights, but we're "lazy tourists". 3 nights are perfect for most people.

Our opinion on the UO resorts:

Portofino Bay Hotel - My DH & I prefer this one. In our opinion, only the Grand Floridian compares to it at WDW. We think it's nicer than their other resorts. Naturally, that is subject to personal preference at WDW.

Hard Rock Hotel - This is where we usually stay. Our DS thinks it's the greatest hotel anywhere, & my DH & I like it too mostly because of it's convenience to the parks & CW. It usually comes down to being the resort that we all agree on.

Royal Pacific Resort - This is where personal preference comes into play most on this forum. Our family has stayed there once, & didn't think it was even close to being in the same league as the other 2. We saw it as more of a moderate hotel where the other 2 are deluxe. We did have an incredible view from our room though. Then there's those on here who are very devoted to RPR, & won't stay anywhere else. That's one thing that's so great about the UO resorts. They're all completely different, & you are sure to like one of them.

Oh yeah! For those who think Disney's the only way to go........ You need to expand your horizons. There's a wonderful world outside Disney's that you're missing out on.

 

[CJN]

If we switch to a Universal hotel mid-way through the trip then how would we transport everything over there and also how would we get back to our hotel. I know the options - just wondering which is the best one? Thanks for your expert advice.

We just did exactly this only in our case we started out at PBH and ended up at Dolphin (I would've preferred the other way around but, hey, the boss paid for Dolphin so I wasn't going to argue . Anyway, we used a towncar service for a three-way trip and it worked great. I'm sure Magical Express is a wonderful thing but so is a private towncar. Our driver met us at baggage claim, we had the option of a grocery stop, then headed straight to the PBH. It was so quick and easy, as was the transfer over to Dolphin and, finally, back to MCO. If you still want to use Magical Express then you can just get a quote for the hotel-to-hotel leg of the trip.

It cost us $165 plus tip because we had a wheelchair which required a van. IIRC, a three-way trip for a towncar was around $135. We weighed that amount against renting a car, paying for parking, etc., and just decided to leave the driving to someone else.

 

[macraven]

i have been going to both parks since 1993 yearly. sometimes twice a year.

i start out with disney and try to hit it during value season. i find that what i pay there is an overcharge for what i get out of it. usually stay 10 nights at disney for most trips.

then i move over to universal and stay on site. hrh and pbh are the greatest. last year i stayed at rph for the first time.

i would say that hrh and pbh are superb to what i get at disney. just my personal taste. i get more for my money at the loews hotels.

i have to make UO the end of my vacation as i get totally spoiled by them.
once i am there, i really am on vacation. since UO is a smaller park than disney, 5 nights are good for us. i could do it all in 4 nights staying there.
more relaxed and no busses to mess with.

if you do a split stay, start with disney and end with universal. it's the only we i go for my trips.

universal offers more discounts than disney does.
you can use your AAA, AP, or MC for discounts in the park and merch stores besides the room.

you can get a lot of mummy dust at UO

 

[SydSim]

I have stayed at RPR and Pop, Port Orleans, Poly and AKL. I love them all. Splitting the stay is the ideal way to do it. US/IOA would be a shorter stay (probably two nights) and the rest of your time at Disney. For little ones, there is plenty to do at Universal - and RPR pool would be quite awesome for them as well.

 

[d4est]

Do both! We have done just Universal and just Disney. This time we are doing a split. Starting with Disney & ending with Universal. Animal Kingdom Lodge & then the Hard Rock Hotel--with peaceful, relaxing FOTL touring. We totally want the last few days to be relaxing so we are going club for the first time ever. Cannot wait!

We are using magical express to get to AKL, then a taxi to HRH & then to MCO.

 

[Lizziejane]

We recently stayed at the BWV and HH.

Problems with the split stay for us: we got really used to the larger room at BWV and the balcony. Felt a little "trapped" in our rooms when we moved to the HH when we'd had enough of the parks and pool. There's nothing like sipping a drink on the balcony and watching the world go by on the BW! The BWV seemed to have a better variety of casual eating places - perhaps we missed something at the HH, but other than Bolio's (or whatever it's called), we couldn't seem to find a place to pick up a sandwich.

The unbeatable advantage of the split stay is FOTL pass. Worked even better than we could have imagined! We were there Saturday through Monday. Even on the weekend, when there were a lot of locals (I'm assuming - teenage to young 20 year-olds), we never got held up more than a few minutes. On Monday, the park was dead and we quite literally never waited more than 10 seconds!

 

[macraven]

We recently stayed at the BWV and HH.

Problems with the split stay for us: we got really used to the larger room at BWV and the balcony. Felt a little "trapped" in our rooms when we moved to the HH when we'd had enough of the parks and pool. There's nothing like sipping a drink on the balcony and watching the world go by on the BW! The BWV seemed to have a better variety of casual eating places - perhaps we missed something at the HH, but other than Bolio's (or whatever it's called), we couldn't seem to find a place to pick up a sandwich.

The unbeatable advantage of the split stay is FOTL pass. Worked even better than we could have imagined! We were there Saturday through Monday. Even on the weekend, when there were a lot of locals (I'm assuming - teenage to young 20 year-olds), we never got held up more than a few minutes. On Monday, the park was dead and we quite literally never waited more than 10 seconds!

when you say the HH, do you mean a hilton hotel or one of the loews on site? i'm guessing you might have stayed at hrh so if i am wrong, give me a heads up.

the largest rooms of the on site hotels are at pbh.
i have stayed at all selection of rooms at hrh and feel the suites and deluxe rooms have sufficient room for us. don't know if you stayed in a standard room or not on your split stay. if you stayed standard, i can understand the trapped in feeling based on comparison to the bwv. not sure but i thought from what i remember bwv's can be 1 or 2 bedroom quarters.
if so, that is a lot of room. people that stay at them really love them !


once i am on my vacation, i rarely spend much time in my room. at disney, only in my room to sleep and shower. when at UO on site, spend more time in my room and the hotel. with the hotels on site, i have no down time to get to them. walk out the hotel and within 5 minutes at the park.

split stays can run into your park time so many don't do that switching.

when i leave disney, it is early.
i check into the UO hotel by 7:30 am and at the parks there before opening time. this way i don't lose my park time ......
sometimes i get lucky and get a room assigned when i check in early, other times i store the luggage and move to the room when i return from the parks.

 

[Lizziejane]

Sorry, yes I meant the Hard Rock!

 

[macraven]

Sorry, yes I meant the Hard Rock!

if you get a standard room at hrh, i think the size of it is 340 sq ft.
that would be smaller than the one bedrooms with a balcony at bwv.

but for us, it is do-able. i get an upgrade most of the time and have the larger deluxe or suites at loews. but, i can remember getting standard rooms.

 

[Ub_Iwerks]

Wow...first time posting to a Universal Thread

Is there any time of year when the FOTL privledge doesn't work well because the hotels are full to capacity...like during Christmas...etc?

We were at Universal right after Christmas this year, and I'd say that's the time of year that FOTL works the best. We also did Disney and the FOTL lines were even shorter than the Disney fastpass lines. We also loved the RPR resort, even more than the Disney deluxes. I do like the Disney parks better overall, but the RPR was such a nice resort we were very happy to just hang out there. Everything is also much more compact at US. It was so easy to walk from the resort to the all the CityWalk restaurants and to the parks. The only down side was our RPR room was a bit too small. Next time I'll look into getting a suite.

 

[macraven]

Wow...first time posting to a Universal Thread

Is there any time of year when the FOTL privledge doesn't work well because the hotels are full to capacity...like during Christmas...etc?

i over looked your question before.
i think we all have had different experiences one time or another using fotl when staying on site at universal.
i have not been at the holiday time but have been in 3rd week of june when everyone is on vacation there..........whew!

i found the fotl saved us from becoming frustrated in the heat and lines.
we had no restrictions doing repeats after we got off a ride by using the fotl lane again.
for our family, the fotl moved quite well on a weekend that was packed.


for the past poster that mentioned town service cost. the last 2 years the company i used cost $112. for a 3 legged trip. mco to wdw, wdw to hrh, hrh to mco....
i guess it depends on the company you use.

 

[Motherfletcher]

We have used FOTL on New Year's Day and found it a Godsend! As an engineer I have to do the math. PBH has 1000 rooms HRH has 650. RPR has 750. At a high average of 3.5/room you have 8400 from the resorts and maybe 2000 have purchased the express passes. On the busiest days that would be at most a quarter of the people in the parks in the FOTL lines which would get you to the attraction 3 times faster.

We have stayed at both with WL, AKL and Poly our favorites at WDW. We have stayed at all 3 in Universal. We have split stays between the 2 and internal at both. My kids love HRH but if you remind them of our AKL stays they like those too. My wife thinks the Villa Suite at PBH is the best hotel room we have ever received. On one split stay my mother in law chose WL as her favorite over PBH deluxe joining rooms. Our last stay was last month at AKL and it wasn't that memorable. My favorite (and it changes) is PBH. Without FOTL I'd likely switch to WL. We can go to WL or AKL and not even visit the parks and I'm going to try that in August at PBH.