Parking & Transportation At Universal Orlando

[rastahomie]

OK, the website makes it look like everybody parks at the main parking garage, and takes internal transportation to and fro. Is that the case? Or is there parking at the hotels (I'm looking at Cabana Bay, if it makes any difference)? Also, if you can park at the hotels, can you drive to the parks? Or do you have to take internal transportation.

If you can't park at the hotels, do you have to tote your luggage from the parking garage and onto internal transportation?

Thanks.

 

[damo]

If you are staying at a hotel, you park at the hotel.

There is transportation from the hotels to the parks or you can walk. Universal is not spread out like WDW, it is more like Disneyland.

 

[schumigirl]

You pay to park at the hotels.

If you then drive to the parks you would pay again. Everything is close by as damo has said. Cabana Bay is walkable and has its own designated buses, which I've heard are very frequent.

 

[rastahomie]

Thanks for the responses. I am not impressed with Universal's parking rates. On-site guests should get free parking, IMHO.

 

[damo]

Thanks for the responses. I am not impressed with Universal's parking rates. On-site guests should get free parking, IMHO.

Meh. Free parking doesn't exist. It is just added into room rates. Compare room rates for similar quality at WDW and you'll find that the hotels at Universal come out cheaper even with parking added in.

If you don't have a car, you don't pay for parking at Universal. If the cost of parking is added into a room, everyone pays for it whether they park or not. Seems very fair to me but everyone has an opinion on this topic.

Space is a commodity at Universal. There aren't acres and acres of open fields for parking lots.

 

[rastahomie]

Meh. Free parking doesn't exist. It is just added into room rates. Compare room rates for similar quality at WDW and you'll find that the hotels at Universal come out cheaper even with parking added in.

If you don't have a car, you don't pay for parking at Universal. If the cost of parking is added into a room, everyone pays for it whether they park or not. Seems very fair to me but everyone has an opinion on this topic.

Space is a commodity at Universal. There aren't acres and acres of open fields for parking lots.

I understand where you're coming from, and this topic spurs quite a bit of debate here on the DIS, lol.

 

[bumbershoot]

Also, if you can park at the hotels, can you drive to the parks?

Well, you could, but you're not saving yourself money (unless you have an AP with parking included) and you're definitely not saving yourself a walk. The walk from a parking space to the escalators to the security area to the walkwayS to citywalk then through citywalk to the parks themselves is longer than walking from a resort.

Meh. Free parking doesn't exist. It is just added into room rates. Compare room rates for similar quality at WDW and you'll find that the hotels at Universal come out cheaper even with parking added in.

If you don't have a car, you don't pay for parking at Universal. If the cost of parking is added into a room, everyone pays for it whether they park or not. Seems very fair to me but everyone has an opinion on this topic.

I agree completely.

We started staying onsite at Disneyland in '07. Back then parking was "free" but you paid a resort fee. Fine if you have a car, but super obnoxious if you don't. They finagled it a couple times, but now you pay IF you have a car. No resort fee. Much better.

At WDW they just charge everyone for parking and DME and all the buses etc, and it's just all rolled in. If they took all that out of the room costs it would be interesting to see how much it truly would be. But of course the infrastructure for all of that is huge (my trip to WDW with my city planner friend will forever make me see it through her eyes) and so they really have to roll it in and have everyone pay for everything.


We almost always have a car at Universal; it's fine to pay the parking fee when I do. When I don't, I don't want to help someone else pay their parking fee.

 

[perditax]

Any higher-end resort in a congested city (like that part of Orlando) charges daily parking. I was paying $30/night at a Hilton or something in downtown Charlotte NC a year or two ago just because I was in town for a concert. No theme park in sight. And there have been daily parking charges everywhere else I've been in the last couple of years (NY, DC, NOLA, etc).

WDW is the outlier, partially because they have so much land. But you just pay for it elsewhere.