Express Passes through Hotel in January?

[greypilgrim76]

Hi all--my family of four is planning to take a Universal Orlando from January 8th to 12th. In pricing hotels, it looks like there's a difference of $600 for the duration of the trip between the Cabana Bay hotel and the Royal Pacific hotel. Since the Royal Pacific comes with the Unlimited Express Pass for each family member for the duration of the trip, that comes out to each of us paying an extra $150 apiece for 4 days of Express Pass use. (Which is far below the cost of us paying for one in-park each day, which would be around $400 apiece.) However, given that January is the off-season, do you think we'd get enough use out of the Express Passes to warrant the extra cost, even at the considerable savings I mentioned? I know that most lines aren't going to be three hours long in January, but would we still notice an improvement with the Express Passes? This will be our first real family vacation in years, and probably the last before our older daughter heads off to college, so it would be nice to maximize our time in the parks, but I'm also not generally a fan of wasting money, so any tips would be appreciated!

 

[damo]

Early January is still surprisingly busy. Lots of international visitors during that time.

 

[TommyJK]

You'll still see waits for the headlining attractions of ~30-45 min through the middle of the day (lower in the mornings until about 11ish, and then lower again later in the evenings). But the times fluctuate as well throughout the days and if you continually watch the app, you'll find attractions go up and down timewise like a yo-yo as people move around. So it can be manageable.

That being said, when rides are in the 30-45 minute range, the EP wait will be like 5-10 minutes.

So if you can afford it, I'd recommend EP for the following reason. With it, and having the much lower attraction wait times, it could afford you more time for other things like doing mid-day breaks back at the resort to enjoy the pools etc. You won't feel like you need to stay at the parks to open to close each day.

But overall, at that time you year you can get by without it.

 

[damo]

You also have to remember that parks aren't going to have the long summer hours. The amount of time you have each day will be less.

 

[bchbetha]

With several days to play with, I think I would go with saving money and stay at Cabana Bay. Express Passes would be lovely but I think with good planning you won't have killer wait times without EPs. If you want to never have to worry about lines then go with Royal Pacific. If you don't mind some medium sized lines, stick with CB. I think the theming in the lines is cool so don't always want to rush through anyway. Good point re. park hours though. They tend to close pretty early so good to factor in. I like the early closing since you can just have a late dinner at CityWalk or hotel AND still have pool time or mini golf time.

 

[schumigirl]

You also have to remember that parks aren't going to have the long summer hours. The amount of time you have each day will be less.

Yep, I’d go for EP every time and twice on a Sunday!

It can get busy and you wouldn’t find the cost a waste for the benefit you’ll receive........

 

[greypilgrim76]

So it sounds like the consensus is to go for the Express Passes. Cool. One final question--if it is a light crowd day and most of the lines are, say, 10-15 minutes, would an Express Pass holder still get on the ride in less time, or does it all even out at that point?

 

[schumigirl]

So it sounds like the consensus is to go for the Express Passes. Cool. One final question--if it is a light crowd day and most of the lines are, say, 10-15 minutes, would an Express Pass holder still get on the ride in less time, or does it all even out at that point?

You mostly would walk straight in.........

I’ve walked to the front of an empty EP line when the regular line for a ride was maybe 15/20 minutes and only had to wait the length of time it took the TM to walk over and let us on once the others had been stopped.

We have many times walked on to many rides without stopping or had a tiny wait.

EP really is worth its weight in gold.......even in quiet times we love it and still use it! We hate queueing.

 

[greypilgrim76]

Great to know! Since this is sort of a once-in-a-lifetime thing for our family, I'm more than happy to pay the extra as long as there are visible benefits. Sounds like the only situation it wouldn't benefit is one where there's zero wait time for the normal line. (And I suspect that, even in January, that's rare.)

 

[Squirlz]

EP really is worth its weight in gold.......

5 grams of gold is currently about $198, so yeah, pretty close!

 

[kip0992]

You'll miss a lot of the regular queues if you use the EP's. Some of those queues are fairly detailed (the HP stuff) or explain what is going on in the ride (Transformers). If the lines are short you may want to wait in the regular queue to get the "full experience". With 5 days you should have plenty of time to see both parks.

You can also do a split stay (half the nights at Royal Pacific, the other half at CB). You get the hotel EP's for the check-in day and the next day for a 1-night stay.

 

[Bren3]

There are other reasons for staying at the Royal as well. It's much easier to get to the parks. Just a quick 10 minute walk or hop on the boats right at the hotel. At the Cabana you have to get on buses to get to the park or walk across traffic to get over to the Sapphire to use their boats to get to the parks. Which I hear get pretty crowded because of this. All around with the Express Passes included the Royal is a much more relaxed stay if you ask me. We stayed there in February and are staying there again in December.

 

[ruthies12]

I'll be there almost the exact time as you! My trip is 1/9 to 1/13. I'm still debating on which hotel I'm doing. I've been around this time before and there are a lot of foreign visitors, the parks were surprisingly more crowded than I had expected. Right now I have two nights booked at Aventura and then two nights booked at Royal Pacific. However, we might scrap that and just stay at Holiday Inn across the street which is what we usually do. My trip is just two adults and we are fine with using regular ques when it isn't long and using single rider when needed. Or we might stick with what we have since the two nights at royal pacific will give us 3 days of express pass on the busy weekend time. And because we kinda want to check out Aventura, I'm all for a hotel that has a bar in the lobby!

since we were able to book passholder rates at Aventura and royal pacific our price difference between those four nights and four nights at holiday inn was only $264 more which means we'll be spending $132 per person for 3 days of express pass. Have you tried booking a passholder rate? You are there long enough to make a seasonal pass for one person a good choice if you are able to score the discount on the hotel room.

 

[greypilgrim76]

Cool! I've actually already booked everything, and we got what seems (to me at least) to be a pretty good deal. Airfare for four from Indiana and a room at the RP for less than $2k. Then I picked up four of the 2-day 2-park park-to-park tickets with 2 bonus days (so 4 days total) from Ares Travel, who had the best prices. Total for the trip, not counting food and Ubering to/from the airport is less than $3k (which is why we're going in January instead of Spring Break)!

That's still waaaaay more than we'd normally spend on a vacation, but we're really treating this as our last good chance for a full family vacation, so we're splurging a bit.