JLTraveling,
Sorry I did not respond right away. I was celebrating my Anniversary.
Your are right I should have been more forth coming with the details with our last Universal visit and I mean our last. So here they are.
First - parking what a nightmare there was no-one directing traffic people where just driving a parking where ever. We saw several people almost run over. Just mass confusion.
2nd- The ride times where no where near what the wait was longer buy about 20 to 30 min.
3rd - We went to eat The service was poor at best. Quailty of the food was well I would have prefered McDonalds to the fare that was served. Basicly no taste or presentation. The tables looked as if they had no been wiped down in weeks, the floor was so filthy the your shoes were sticking to the floor. The garbage can where over flowing, trays piled up. We actually watch a counter service person walk out grab some trays and walk back behing the counter and reuse them they had not been washed.
4th- Trash every where we went on the ground, in the rides, in the water just every where.
5th- The restroom where disgusting, filthy does not describe them, one was so bad that I would not use it. Unflused stalls, toliet tissue and paper towels on the floor. Diaper's on the floor, because the trash can where over flowing with trash, I could go on but..
6th - We had dinning reservations at Margaritaville, What a joke, We waited for about 45 mins past our reservation time, when we where seated it was a table for 2 that they put 2 more chairs at. Well that was the last straw. We all just turned and walked out.
These are just the highlights of our day.
But We went to DTD, and found the magic, Thank God for pixie dust
I'm sorry to sound like a doubting Thomas, but, I have doubts. Serious doubts.
I've had bad experiences of all kinds, from bad janitorial and maintanence standards to surly employees to no parking to broken stuff in my resort rooms to waiters disapearing for 20 minutes at a time when there were no other customers in the restaurant, at both WDW and Universal. But I've never had a trip to either place that was as consitently bad as what you described above.
I've been to Universal once or twice a year since 1990, and I have never seen ANY of the issues you listed go to the extremes you described. I've never seen anything even close to any of those extremes. My most recent experiences at Uni were in 2008; I went to Uni twice - once in May for 4 days, and once in December for 1 day. All of my following observations were fully valid as of December 2008:
* Parking has never been a problem for me at Uni, even when there are no TMs directing each car into place. I've never seen "mass confusion", though I have seen a few individual vehicles whose drivers seemed confused by the arrows that direct you where to go.
I have seen a few morons walking in front of incoming vehicles in the Uni garages, instead of walking in front of the parked cars as they should. But I've seen also that at every WDW park on every visit, every time I go, even with CMs yelling "PLEASE WALK IN FRONT OF THE PARKED CARS FOR SAFETY!" So I don't count that as a way that WDW is better than Uni.
* I've never experienced Uni wait times longer than the times on the boards. In fact, they're usually shorter. To be fair, I have never seen longer waits than the boards say at WDW, either, and the waits at WDW are also usually shorter than the boards say. So it's a wash.
* Where did you eat? What did you order? How crowded was it? What about it makes you say that it had no taste or presentation? I rarely eat at TS places in Uni, except Lombards or Mythos, but I've never seen any food in Uni - CS or TS - that I would have traded for a McDonalds meal. And in fact, all of my meals at both Lombards and Mythos have been nothing short of perfect.
Nor have I ever seen any eatery or restaurant, in either the Uni parks or resorts, that was as dirty as you describe. I have seen dirty tables in CS places, here and there, during busy periods, and floors that weren't clean enough to eat off of. But I rate the cleanliness of Universal in-park eateries and restaurants equal to WDW, and the resort and CityWalk restaurants are pristine. Stick to the floors? NEVER. And on all of my visits to Mythos and Lombards, both places were spotless, shiny, and darn near operating room sterile.
I've seen trash cans fill up and trays pile up sometimes in the CS eateries. But I've seen that at WDW CS eateries, too. Neither place has ever let it go to the extreme that you described, at least not in my nearly 20 years of visits.
If I ever saw a Uni TM or a Disney CM take dirty trays behind the counter and re-use them without at least wiping them down first, I'd be up in the manager's face immediately. I worked in fast food for many years in my youth, and I have very high standards when it comes to food prep and dining area cleanliness, and service, and I won't eat somewhere that I feel is not up to those standards. The worst CS place I've ever seen in the parks was actually at WDW - Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe, in MK. I once sat at a table next to a wall, and the crevices in the wall nearly made me vomit.
* I see trash everywhere in both Uni and WDW. Briefly. Until a TM or CM comes along and picks it up. Trash doesn't last long in the World Showcase Lagoon or the IOA Lagoon, and it never builds up on the streets, walkways, planters, or anyplace else.
* Universal Orlando restrooms are as clean or cleaner than WDW on a consistent basis. I'm picky about restrooms, and the cleanliness and shininess of WDW's restrooms were one of the first things that charmed me on my first trip back in 1990. In those early days, Uni didn't match WDW's standards; but they do now, and they have since about 2003 or 2004.
* I've only eaten at the Uni Margarittaville once, in May 2008. I had about a 30 minute wait with no reservation. In busier times of the year, I can see what happened to you being believable, because I had the same thing happen to me at 'Ohana in December 2007; I showed up for my 1-person ADR 20 minutes early, and was not seated until 45 minutes AFTER my ADR time. I missed the shuttle launch - the only one ever scheduled during one of my 20+ Orlando trips - because I was sitting in the Tambu lounge waiting. But I didn't lose sight of the Magic.
All in all, the experience you described sounds very much like my last visit to King's Dominion in Virginia. Which is why I refuse to ever return to King's Dominion, a park which I visited almost every summer when I was growing up, and of which I have a lot of fond, warm memories. But I kicked KD to the curb when it went to pot, and would do the same to either Universal Orlando or WDW if they turned to junk in the same manner.
And he was spot-on. I HAD forgotten my water and was thrilled to get it. It's all the little stuff like that that makes the big difference.
She stated that they travel a lot to different destinations and Disney was not for them. 
We ski, hike, lay on the beach, go East coast, West coast and in between, but when we are at Disney World our family is at our best and the happiest! 
