If you are staying at one of the Universal hotels, you can use your room key for restaurants just like the rides! We went to HRC the day after thanksgiving 2002, and there was a line with an hour and a half wait for a table! We showed our room key, and were ushered in through a different line! We were seated in about 15 minutes...the only ones ahead of us were other people staying onsite! FOTL made our trip! We would never have seen and done all we did w/o it! Well worth the price of the onsite hotels....and we got the entertainment rate! So the cost was not all that bad!