Please help a Universal newbie!

[RWishbone]

For the past several years we have stayed at the BWV in Disney. Next January (2004) - I know it is far away but I love to plan - there will be 18 of us - 9 adults and 9 children - heading to Orlando. We want to try out Universal and/or IOA for 1 - 2 days before heading to Disney. We will likely be arriving on a Friday night and heading to Disney on Sunday afternoon. That will allow us to have 1 or 2 days at the Universal/IOA area. Does any one have any hints or suggestions on a nice hotel for our group? Alao any suggestions on a one day or two day pass for our group? Are there passes for both parks? If not, is there a particular park that you would choose? Thanks for any help...Rich

 

[damo]

Go on the universal resorts board. There is a lot of info about the on site hotels and their advantages. If you stay on site you will be able to easily do both parks in your time allotment.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

When in January will you be there? If it's after the NY holiday craziness you should be ok staying offsite, but it would still be easier to see most everything if you are staying onsite. It really takes at least 2 days to see most everything and get a feel for the parks. In one day you are rushing from attraction to attraction. We went August 2001 (stayed onsite at the Hard Rock Hotel) and stayed for 3 days and still didn't see everything, but we had a toddler so we needed to do baby swap a lot and it was still fairly busy in the parks.

What type of hotels do you like? What age range are your children? HRH is a 5-10 minute walk from the parks and the deluxe rooms fit 5 people. It's easy to go back to the hotel for naps, but you probably won't have a lot of time at the hotel. With the entertainment rate it's not an expensive place to stay.

We're going down spring break and staying at Royal Pacific. I've been to WDW 5 times and Universal once and this visit we are only going to Universal since we enjoyed it so much. It's very hard to wait in line at WDW when we'd experienced front-of-the-line passes when we'd stayed onsite at Universal.

T&B