Love it. I laughed by butt off.
Now, on to my opionion on the subject. Since It seems Dis and Universal is being compared here, I would like to add my two cents. First, I would like to say that I grew up in California going to
Disneyland on a regular basis. We lived real close to it. We moved to Florida and visited Disneyworld for the first time. I was married with little kids and Dis seemed the way to go for the kids. So, I was a Disney girl. We visited Universal in Florida too and liked it. It was much more relaxed. I was starting to like universal a tad bit better. As an adult though I needed a vacation to recoup from my vacation at Disney. We use to always stay offsite when we went to both of these parks. A couple years ago we decided to go to both Dis and Universal. We decided to stay onsite at both. We have a large family and this trip we decided to take our two little girls so we were able to afford staying onsite. We stayed at pop century at Dis and RPR at Universal. One of the reasons I wanted to stay onsite at Dis is because I read posts saying you could go back and rest the kids mid-day and go back. I found that to be impossible to do. If it was just me doing so then it was no big deal to go back to the hotel(I had to once, but that's another story in itself.LOL). It would just take way too much time to take the kids back to the hotel and then back to the parks. So, that idea doesn't work, atleast not for my family.
This is my review and comparisom between the two. Pop century was great. The kids had a blast. I enjoyed having the Dis atmosphere all around us and having the store/restaurant right there(sorry, i can't remember the name of the store/restaurant) The room was clean. The service was great. The added attention from the housekeeping with placing their stuffed animals in the curtains and so forth was nice. Will we go back to pop century? Yes we will. But only because we enjoyed the resort. What we didn't enjoy was the transportation to the parks. We drove to Dis so we had the option of the busses or driving ourselves to each park. We did both. This is where Universal wins hands down. It took so much time just getting to the parks. Then, when you got to the parks you had to fight through the crowds which got down right scary at times. In planning our Dis trip, I used Tourguide Mike, which helped out tremendously. I had every detail of our day planned out so that we didn't have to wait in lines forever and were able to make the best of our time. Even with the excellant tips from him, it got scary trying to get to some of the rides. You have to get there early and know all the tricks and still get trampled when attempting to get a fastpass just to be able to ride a popular ride. At the end of the day we would be exhausted. I like the fact that there are multiple parks but they are so far apart. That exact fact is what i love about Universal. We stayed at RPR the first trip. We ended up extending our tickets to annual passes and went back and stayed at HRH. It was so much more relaxing. I wish they had more parks like Disney but would that then cause the same problem with getting to the parks taking so long like at dis?
Our second trip at the HRH was great. We had some issues with the hotel itself but the perks of being so close to the parks and the fotl access is worth it. I wish the hotel wasn't so expensive but again, the perks for the parks makes me want to stay onsite. It's so awesome to walk over to the park just to eat(we had the meal deal), watch the night time fireworks show and then walk back and crash is so cool.
Our little ones were 6 and 8 yrs old when we did both dis and universal. We asked what they like better? They liked both places but when we said we were going to Universal this year they were and still are so excited. They keep watching their height to see how tall they are getting so they can go on some of the bigger rides. A quick note: We have family in Florida and when we did our two trips we seperated the trips with our kids. The first trip was with the youngins. The second trip we left the youngins with family and took our two teenage girls and stayed at the HRH. So, the older ones never stayed at the RPR and the little ones never stayed at the HRH. I think the little ones are going to love the HRH.
My bottom line opinion on Universal Studios and DisneyWorld is this:
1.If you want to stay in a resort with the Disney theme all around you and you don't mind the transportation issues and your kids are younger then Disney is probably more for you. Keep in mind the crowd and the time of year you are going. Disney is a kind of vacation that you really need to take enough time to see it all. That means more vacation days. Don't try to cram it all in too quickly. You'll enjoy it more if you have enough days to really spread it out.
2. If you want to be close to the parks and be able to walk to them and take a mid-day break and go back to the hotel to rest or whatever you please, then Universal onsite resorts should be your choice(especially HRH).
I realize you can do this at some of the deluxe resorts at disney but it wouldn't work with all of the dis parks.
3. The fotl access at Universal blows away Dis fastpass. And I mastered the fastpass system at Dis.
4. We don't have to get up bright and early in the morning at Universal to beat the crowds and long lines. Even though i'm always too excited to sleep in much. But, the option is there. It's funny and i never thought i would complaign about this
but i did find myself griping about having to walk so long through the express line on rides at Universal that i was getting wiped out and out of breath by the time i got to the front of the line.
I was with kids mind you and they wanted to rush up to the front of the line so i had to keep up. I do wish they would adjust the ropes in the express line when there's such a short line. It seems silly to walk so far. And yes, i did just go under some ropes to shorten the walk.
So my 2cents here is that each park has something to offer for everyone. It's just like every other theme park out there(just the most famous). Everyone has their own preferences in what they want in a vacation. Some people can financially afford to stay at deluxe resorts and stay at only the deluxe resorts at Dis. Some people can only afford to stay at the value resorts(that's us). We saved for a long time to stay onsite at universal. For us, the perks of staying onsite at universal made the expense of the hotel worth it. We still try to find the best deal at Universal onsite hotels.
I think the problem here is that even though it's convenient to have both a Dis board and a Universal board on the same forum website, these two parks are in competition with eachother. They are the two big theme parks in Orlando that compete for business. I'm not including Sea World cuz it's a theme park of a different kind(i hope that made sense). You have die hard Dis fans and die hard Universal fans. I actually like both parks and resorts and have dislikes about both. I'm kinda on the fence on the subject i guess. But, the one thing that really urks me big time is when someone wants to come to a board and vent on an issue that occurred with their vacation, alot of people seem to attack them. Sometimes all you want to do is just vent. Or sometimes you want the thoughts and advice of seasoned park visitors who could help you on what to do about the situation. But the last thing the poster needs is to be attacked because they had a bad experience and feel the need to vent. I've been posting on forums for a very long time and i have noticed that it's become difficult to say anything that may press the wrong button and then your just attacked. I'm not referring to any specific board. I'm talking about forums in general. It's really too bad that it has come to this. Why can't people just have the right to say what they want to as long as it's not vulgar or against board rules? Anyhow, that's my vent and now i'm done. Thank you for sticking with reading this post if you made it this far. Feel free to reply or move this post if it's in the wrong place. I apologize if it's in the wrong place.
Did you enjoy the parks?
At least the food and lobby got a good review 
we stayed at HRH last year for the first time and the HRH was the highlight of our trip. We usually stay in a 1-bdrm at DVC with full kitchen and living room. the room at HRH with two queen beds was great, even for our family of 4, service was as good or better than at disney resorts and in our opinion the pool at HRH was better than stormalong bay at the beach club, And the fact that they have wait staff at the pool who bring everything from full meals to a never ending supply of margaritas didn't hurt either
, both locations are top rate in my book.
