First of all congratulations on your upcoming wedding in September 2016. My first suggestion is to go to universal Orlando website. It is so easy to navigate. At the bottom of the page it has a map you can click on that will give you the maps of both parks and City Walk. Universal has 2 parks. Universal and Islands of Adventure. You are able to pull up pictures of the resorts and restaurants as well as menus and prices.
Depending on what you want to do I would suggest a split stay between the Disney and Universal. This way you can enjoy the parks at your leisure.
There are 4 resorts at present. Hard Rock Hotel, Royal Pacific and Portofino Bay Hotel. Their new budget resort is Cabana Bay. They have a new resort opening summer of 2016 Sapphire Falls.
By staying onsite at HRH, RPR and PBH you get what is called a express pass included in the with your stay. The EP allows you basically front of the line access on almost all rides in the park. When you look at the maps it will show you all the rides EP is available on. The EP is a pass that you print out at a kiosk in the lobby of the hotel you check in at. You are able to do this after check in. Cabana Bay does not have EP included, but does include early entry.
All onsite resort guests are able to enter the park one hour before general public. It is usually either IOA or UO.
I don't usually encourage packages. Because by the time you cost out everything it's cheaper to buy your tickets and set up your resort arrangements yourself.
I think you will love Universal so much you will want to come back. I would suggest getting the AP and with that benefit will come discount on your Resort Room, merchandise and food. There is a one free ticket per preimier pass holder to
HHN for one evening. There are 3 levels of annual passes they are listed under tickets with the cost and perks that go with them all.
HHN is a different ticket event than your ticket to the park for the day. Go to Universal Orlando site and you can pull up the HHN site on the days that HHN are held. There are different events for HHN like RIP tours, AP event, behind the scenes tours etc. These are all listed on the site and the prices.
If you are Harry Potter fan Hogsmeade is in IOA and Diagon Alley is in Universal. The parks are very close to each other and you can walk out of one park (IOA) into the other (UO) easily. If you choose not to go the AP route for the discounts then you would need the park to park ticket to be able to ride the Hogwarts Express train between Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley.
The Three broomsticks is a good meal in Hogsmeade. Mythos is a very nice meal in IOA. You can make reservations for Mythos 30 Days out on the Universal site under dining. HRH, RPR and PBH all have nice dining options as well as the restaurants in City Walk. Hope this helps. Ask more as you need to. Everyone here is very helpful
We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and loved it, mostly because of The Kitchen. YUM. We ate dinner there one night for a character meal and got to meet a minion. He had us laughing so hard, we had tons of fun.
