Quick RP Report

[Lissete]

We checked in on July 29th for 2 nights. Check in was smooth and the girl checking us in was very pleasant. I showed her our Loewes First card and she whipped out a form to fill in our requests. We did have the Ent. rate so I suppose that this is a hit or miss.

The room is nice but the location was not what I would like to get again. We were in room 3203. This room faces some kind of electrical boxes which kick in at 8:00AM and make some very loud, awful noises. On Tues. night we heard the entire Luau from our room til about 9:30. And as always we were blessed with a family of elephants upstairs and a bunch of door slammers in our hallway.

We received our Loewes First gift as scheduled on the first night and turn down service as requested each night (no chocolates though)

Boat service was rather slow, they only had one boat running at times. Many people would give up and just walk. The walk is not bad when the sun is not at it's peak. They should definitely have some kind of queue at the boat dock at RP. Let me get on my soapbox. We get to the dock and we are about the 3rd family there. Ok we are all there in a sort of line. People start arriving and just move on up to the front and to the sides to "look at the views and stuff". Needless to say the boat arrives and they all rush to the front, the boat gets full before we can board and have to wait for the next one . OK, off my soapbox now.

FOTL is the BEST and I hope they don't change it before we return in Oct. They are already swiping cards at Spidey and when I asked if they were going to start limiting the # of times you can ride, I was told "Eventually".

We had a really nice trip and FOTL made it so much easier.

I am curious about one thing though, does anyone know what that little light thing is outside the door to your room on the left side?

 

[dcookies]

Nice report!

I HATE it when there aren't defined areas or lines, and people push to the front. It seems like all it takes is one group to decide not to line up, and then everyone follows suit, and it becomes a free-for-all.

A few questions -

How were the crowds? Were the Express lines long?

When they swiped the cards at Spiderman, did you need one card per person? Or did they honor the "one card for 4 people" policy that I've read about? The reason I'm asking - my sister, who lives in FL, will be joining us at least one day, and I was counting on being able to bring her with us to the FOTL. I had hoped to either: give her my husband's room card (he's not coming with us every day) or just bring her under the "4-person" rule. Am I going to run into problems?

Did you get the Grade A kids program?

 

[Lissete]

DCOOKIES-
Sorry for taking so long to respond.

We always had all 4 cards out so I don't know if you can use just 2 for 4 or not.

As for the Grade A kids, I totally forgot their report cards and they would have definitely come in handy since the sodas cost $2.50 each. Not to mention the $7 bottle of water in your room.

 

[Paris]

Lissete, it's unfortunate to hear that the RPH dock is still a mess. We had a terrible time at RPH last month -- to the point of cancelling our second reservation there -- but that's in the Trip Reports section and beyond the scope of this post.

We've always had great stays at PB and HRH and never had a problem with the launch service. But no one at Loews or Universal has woken up to the fact that if you put 33%-50% more rooms into a hotel you have to add 33%-50% more capacity into the boat service. But, it doesn't work that way. They run two boats at all three hotels in peak times and just one in the off-peak time (which doesn't exist at RPH because the boats are always casting away full, leaving behind folks).

We had to wait through two cycles because of the lack of a proper queue twice -- and then they had to make the walkway to the parks about twice as long as it needed to be.

In short, add another boat at RPH to meet the demand or address the situation that an open loading dock is going to become a battle for the fittest who realize that folks will be left behind.

Rick