Hi phantom!!
Brief recap: FOTL was worth paying for Royal Pacific, especially since I got a good deal through Hotel Kingdom! Got a $159 rate. They were selling the Universal Express Plus for $20 per person, so for the 4 of us, if we had purchased that, it would have been $80 per day! So we figure the room was only costing us $79!
With FOTL, we did everything we wanted to do, and many things twice. We got the 5 consecutive days for the price of 2 (and only used 4 of the days, due to our early Saturday flight departure). The only attraction we did not do was Fear Factor Live -- we are definitely not reality TV fans, and instead, chose to do MiB again!!
As for the rides, all of us are now tall enough for even the big coasters, so we finally all rode Hulk and Dueling Dragons - twice each. Twice was enough. My head was spinning afterward, although my son Mark wanted to do them again. We thought Jimmy Neutron was a nice update from Funtastic World of Hanna Barbera. Shrek 4D was also good, and gave a needed update from Alfred Hitchcock. Not that we didn't like those classics; I think it's just that few people these days know (or care) about the Hanna-Barbera cartoons or the Hitchcock classics. I fear the "Lucy, A Tribute" may be the next to go. . .
Also LOVED the Mummy!! What a great ride, and fantastic visuals!! Very short, though.
Ate at Emeril's Tchoup Chop -- easily one of the best meals I've ever had!! And relatively reasonable prices -- entrees in the $20's. Even has a childrens' menu. Also ate at Mythos -- it is a beautifully themed restaurant and a very well done menu as well!! It was booked for a private event later that night, so we had to eat early, and were like the only ones in the place!
Our reseravtion for Lombard's Landing was bumped - another private event that closed the restaurant down (what is it with Universal shutting their full service restaurants for private events all the time?), but the manager took us to Finnegan's and bought us a free appetizer for our inconvience.
Finally, the room. Royal Pacific has a beautiful lobby, but left a bit to be desired for the room. First of all, we checked in early and got our FOTL cards, and were promised our room by 4 pm. Well, after several phone calls and even coming back to the hotel by 3:45, we still had no room. Our room is finally open to us at 4:10.
We were in Tower 1, 5th floor. We noticed some damage/wear and tear that would have been fixed at Disney -- a busted out light fixture in the hall, marks and streaks on the walls of our room, and the AC went out one night (hotel-wide), with the temp in the room reaching 78 degrees!!! But the biggest problem we had were ANTS CRAWLING OUT OF THE COFFEE POT!!! I think they were attracted by the sugar/creamer packets, but it was so disgusting!!!
We were also booked in the middle of a huge wireless communication convention, but we didn't care too much about having conventioneers everywhere (I know some DIS'ers tend to complain about them).
So, in summary, we thought the attractions (especially if you have kids 10 and up) were a THUMBS UP, but the hotel, at least in our experience, just didn't have that Disney Magic.
