I have been going to both Disney and Universal at least once a year every year for 15 years running. In that time, I have watched the trends at both parks carefully.
On my first trip, in August 1990, Disney was immaculate. Every bathroom was sterile enough to perform surgery (because there was one CM on duty per bathroom from open to close), there was never any trash on the streets (because there was an army of janitorial CMs wandering the parks), and every CM seemed to truly love their job and performed every task with a smile - I never saw even a less-than-outstanding performance from a CM, much less a poor performance.
During that same trip, Universal was still brand new, so it was still very clean and well maintained, and the TMs were excellent, though not as happy and jovial as Disney CMs. Bathroom cleanliness was less than Disney, but not terrible; certainly, Universal was far and away better than any amusement park I had ever seen except WDW. The biggest problems in those early years were ride downtime, because Jaws and Kong had been rushed to completion and broke down a lot.
Over the next 10 years, Universal's ride downtime decreased, but their TM performance went down a bit after the initial 2 or 3 years and the bathrooms got dirtier. Meanwhile, Disney maintained the same level of quality, cleanliness, and performance as always. It is during this period that Universal got the reputation as a "second-rate park". In every respect, Uni was inferior to Disney, but still a great experience and still far and away better than any other amusement park I visited.
However, 9/11 changed things dramatically. The tourism industry had already been somewhat depressed over the summer of 2001, but 9/11 put a huge depression on tourism throughout the US, and both Disney and Uni felt the hit, hard. Disney's response was to cut costs; they laid off thousands of janitorial and maintenance CMs, stretched maintenance budgets to the breaking point, and made a dramatic shift from full-time to part-time CMs, as well as raising prices and cutting perks. The Disney Club went bye-bye, gate prices went up, Annual Pass discounts shrunk, and Early Entry Surprise Mornings were replaced with the laughable Character Caravan. The parks got dirtier, paint faded, railings rusted, concrete cracked, and the bathrooms steadily turned from operating theaters to cesspools. This trend hit its zenith during my December 2003 trip, when I did not see a single bathroom in any of the 4 parks that was less than disgustingly filthy - worse than any Uni bathroom I had ever seen.
Universal, meanwhile, responded by improving their park experience. The bathrooms got cleaner, the TMs got friendlier, the parks got fresh coats of paint here and there, and they continued their aggressive pricing. For years Uni had offered a second-day-free deal, but following the opening of IOA they went with cheap multi-day passes instead. This trend has continued; my last trip to Uni, in December 2005, was the best experience I ever had there; every TM I encountered was friendly and happy, every bathroom I used was completely clean (not surgically clean, but darn close), and the parks were both clean, bright, scrubbed, and had no fading paint or stained carpet or cracked concrete. In addition, Uni's Annual Pass, priced at about $170, gives way better discounts than Disney's, including 20% off all merchandise in the in-park shops (including an addition 20% off all items that are already on sale! Who does that? Certainly not WDW!), and 20% off at all of the counter-service food places (Disney never had any kind of a program that offered discounts on counter-service food), discounts at the Uni resorts, and discounts on regular passes for the Passholder's friends. Uni even does bag checks better than Disney, by having a single bag check line at the main junction between the two parking structures, so that those who park hop don't have to sit through another bag check to get into the other park, and CityWalk is protected by the bag check in the process.
So don't tell me that Uni is dirty, cause I've been there a lot, and it ain't. And don't tell me that Uni TMs are inferior in any way to Disney CMs, cause I've dealt with hundreds of them, and they ain't. And don't tell me that Uni doesn't have theming, rides, shows, and resorts that are the equal of everything Disney has, cause I've visited every resort at both, I've ridden the rides, and I've seen the shows, and it just ain't so.
As with any comparison, there are individual areas where Disney beats the pants off Uni, and there are individual areas where Uni beats the pants off Disney, but for the most part, the two are pretty close to equal.
BTW, that 7 consecutive days is basically like a 7-day Annual Pass. You don't have to go all 7 days, but you have 7 days where you can go as much or as little as you want, which gives you complete freedom in your schedule to change plans on a whim, or enter the parks for partial days without feeling like you've wasted a day's admission.
and 
and 
smileys. Likewise when they offer free dining. 
) it means if you want to go for a few hours one day and ride Dueling Dragons, or you just want to have dinner at Mythos, or the kids want to just ride Pteranadon Flyers, where the line is always WAY too long for a normal park-touring day - you can do that. 
