I have no experience with the front of the park package pickup, I DO however have loads of experience with the on-site room delivery, which is essentially the same thing, just one step further. (IE. The packages are sent directly to your hotel room, when staying on Universal property.)
I once asked someone (forget exactly why) and the way they said it works to me was, they build up the packages for a few hours and then have them all sent to the stores at the front of the park in lumps every few hours or so. Then the ones that are supposed to be picked up in-park stay there and the ones that are supposed to goto hotel rooms (as in my case) get shipped off to their appropriate hotels around park closing. They're usually delivered to the room the following morning.
I've had 90% good experiences with this. Use it pretty much every time we go to Orlando for one thing or another, mostly the merchandise I want to buy but see no reason to carry around the park. The only two complaints I have, and they're relatively minor...
1st is... I'm a comic book geek, so I tend to buy the occasional comic book or action figure from Marvel Superhero Island. That said, when they arrive at the room the next day... sometimes... I'm a little less than happy with the way they were packed for delivery. They staple everything shut in bags, and sometimes the cards of the action figures will be bent slightly due to the tightly clamped bag pressing down on them. Alternately, the comic books will sometimes be kind of haphazardly sagging in a non-rigid bag, which can lead to irritating bends and creases which are usually enough to make any comic book nerd cringe. However, MOST of the time... things arrive in fairly fine shape. I assume since this is a themepark and not a comic book store, employees are just less sensitive about these things than comic book nerds tend to be, and are only as careful as they would be with any other children's toy or magazine. Anyway, I feel like I'm giving them a bad wrap, which isn't what I want to do. I've NEVER had anything arrive severely damaged. I'm basically just nitpicking here. I'm still completely willing to use this process on comics or toys. Like I said, it's just a minor gripe.
My second minor gripe... isssss... once or twice I've had something arrive to my room late. Like I said, usually they estimate delivery as the morning of the following day, but sometimes... rarely... that estimate does not come to fruition. I've never had anything take more than 48 hours though. The only time it was ever a real issue was when one of my packages hadn't arrived by checkout time on checkout day, and I had to go to the front desk and have them track it down for me so I could like... leave... lol. Apparently it didn't make it out of the park in the final load the day before. (Which it really should have, since I bought it early in the day. More than enough time for it to make it through "the process") Anyway, someone ran it over to the hotel, handed it to me, apologized and I was on my merry way. And even if it HADN'T been tracked down, every package you leave with them requires your name and address, so supposedly, inevitably, they would have mailed it, lol. So in any event, your risk a similar situation if you do it the day before checkout, but any other day is fine. It should arrive in a relatively short time.
Anyway, like I said, my experience is really only relevent to the in-room delivery, but that's really just the same thing with one extra step. And that said, I'd highly recommend it. If your merch is never even leaving the park, I can't see how it could be any worse for the wear than my stuff.
I'll definetly use this next time we go there!
