First this was our first time after making a trip to Mouse World eight years straight. We just went the weekend AFTER Easter. What was immediately obvious is...this isn't Disney. In all the wrong ways.
The good:
The food was excellent everywhere, even the kids options. No carrot ketchup in sight. Even counter service was pretty much a class act. And the food prices were what I expect outside a theme park. I can't say just how nice it is not to be juggling schedules with ADRs or having to go here or there for decent food...this was true everywhere. Even the "eye candy" my youngest loves cotton candy. At USF it was $4 in her choice of flavors in a huge bag. The mouse charges double that for about one third as much. That's on top of the food being just plain good. About the highest/worst was at our hotel (Royal Pacific) which was chic/pricey and heavy on the sushi. Even the odd stuff like Cowfish was pretty good.
Second, everything was way laid back, except security. After Disney we need relaxation time. Universal WAS relaxation. The pushiest people were teens instead of people pretending they didn't speak English. In fact I didn't feel I had to have the kids in direct line of sight 24/7 (ages 8 and 12), escorted to the bathrooms, etc. This alone should speak volumes.
Although a lot of the headliner rides were essentially exactly the same simulator rude with different video and static displays they were different enough to keep riding different ones. And I never laughed so hard after a ride like Simpsons and MIB. The mouse has nothing on these rides as a couple examples and some of the great rides (Alien Encounter) have been cheesed up into blah-who cares status.
Souvenirs are like the mouse used to be. Now I can do 99% of my shopping at the big store in Downtown Disney. Not so in Universal. All the shops are different.
The Blue Man Group show was...wow, I mean Cirque de Soleil is cool and roughly 200% more expensive, but I would see BMG again for the money.
The Terminator and ET rides were original but dare I say it still cool. Enough that now my kids want to see the movies. In comparison Carousel of Progress and Country Bear Jamboree are only good for the 4 minutes of air conditioning. They wanted to ride ET and T2 twice.
Employee morale overall seemed pretty good. Nobody had the Disney smile...it was genuine. Met a few employees that have worked both and one that does part time at both. Seems the preference is Universal though. We didn't even see any of the "smile police". They might be there...just not as obvious.
Theming overall is better at least to me. I mean it can be jarring with say Minions next to Shrek but overall its over the top. Royal Pacific was every bit as nice as the Hawaii themed counterpart other than the initial experience. When we walked in the immediate impression was...so this is what it should be like without all the dated and ugly theming. Sorry if its just my taste. And yes this was after the 2014/2015 makeover.
With Citywalk "right there" instead of a bus trip from hell that takes far longer than the Disney lovers would have you believe. Its right there, 5-10 minutes walk at most any time you need/want it. With Downtown Disney it becomes an end unto itself...something we do on a short Animal Kingdom or start/end day only. So we stopped more than once and even on last day after checking out took the boat down for lunch before leaving.
The bad:
OK it must be said that you can cover Disney in a Disney or due binge fest in maybe 4 days in an offseason. Universal is about half that. So the bad here is just wanting more.
Parks and many hotel restaurants and hotel pool all close simultaneously, leaving few ggood options. One night we waited in line about 30 minutes at the "fast" food places in Citywalk.By way of example Red Panda had like 4+ servers but only one cashier, so the cashier was the bottleneck. Had we known that then we would had tolerated 30 minute table service wait times. Another night was local pizza delivery which was from Rocco's. The chain is good in New Jersey but Orlando was terrible...not that this is Universals fault. Only thing we didn't try was room service which frankly isn't priced terribly bad.
The fireworks are a dud as are the parades. Skip them and use the time when the crowds clear.
It used to be that almost every Disney ride exited into a gift shop. Thankfully they don't do that as aggressively any more because there's no point in looking through any of them. Not so at Universal. That would be OK except for the "show rides" like T2 or Shrek where every 15 minutes the place gets mobbed. So you get run over if you loiter in gift shopping more than10 minutes. Makes us more tempted to just leave instead of shopping.
Souvenirs are much more expensive which I guess makes up for reasonable food. In fact the whole package price for 3.5 days is about what we pay for Disney for a week, and we usually stay at moderates. I would have here too but it was still a spring break week so felt we needed real express passes (unlimited), and we did after 11 AM until late in the day, and the insane prices of over $100/person/day more than covers the deluxe hotel price difference.
Not that Disney has a good web site but there is like 100+ options grouped by categories you'd never use. Like...they offer 1 day, 1 day+free day, 2 day, 2 day+free day, and 3 day passes. Huh? Why? Now all of these are also available as express passes (but we booked their deluxe hotel so this is automatic) and the same passes again with various Blue Man Group combinations. Then there is a huge list of combo tickets mixed with everyone else. The list is only slightly longer than Disney but pretty easy to order the wrong things. In fact even if you get it right...more on this in the ugly. The web site would be a lot easier to navigate if it only gave out combinations that worked or showed things like BMG or express passes as sub options. It was also very confusing that each of the breakfasts on the Harry Potter package showed up twice.
Second, I use either the most popular or second most popular web browser (Chrome). Every time I tried to book, it kept hanging on a "searching" screen (but page loading stopped) or nothing available. After a couple reloads it would sometimes work. Tried Firefox and wow...there it is.
Last when you drive up to a deluxe mouse house, they pretty much unload all your stuff right there, offer either self park or valet (no pushiness) and escort you to the desk, and unload it all while you check in. At a moderate its the same approach except you get herded into a big check in and issued your stuff, then drive to your room building. At Royal Pacific the valet thing was a lot more aggressive and they hit me up for $22/day self park...same as parking at the garages if we went off site. And good luck finding the front desk at Royal Pacific...signage is absent here. So the experience was ho him from the start.
Security was kind of annoying. You get wander airport style at every entrance to City walk including the hotel water taxis, and metal detectors at some of the roller coasters even after hotel wanding. Never in mouseland. Maybe its the crowd but its just not good. Handling of unruly guest situations was good/bad. The attendants at the Transformers ride when it was down totally lost control over the crowd. Training really needed here.
The ugly:
The ticket thing is crazy and expensive for Universal too. To start with you don't get your tickets at the front desk. You get them at a ticket booth attendant that directs you to use an automated dispenser. Then for your express (fast) pass over to another one. There is also a concierge here but don't waste your time...again, not Disney. But at least they didn't pitch a time share either like Doubletree (mouse lite). Because we asked where are the Blue Man and park tickets...no clue, never ran into this at the other place. If your job is concierge you need to know the system forwards and backwards and be capable and have the power to take care of any scheduling/ticketing. Even the time share hocking concierges do that much.
It turns out the BMG tickets were SUPPOSED to be at the BMG office along with the park tickets. They didn't have park tickets and directed us to guest services. The one in city walk said they are a satellite and to check with the hotel or park, after a couple phone calls, supervisors, etc. The hotel again...no clue. So with our early entry clock ticking off to guest services at a park. Well, turns out guest services at the parks is incapable of fixing an obvious screw up either so they finally comped us in and said to come back later. It was the same routine again later that day until finally somebody from the real guest services could fix it. Look if you don't trust your guest services people, fire them and get new ones. Because it directly reflects on poor management if you hire someone to do a job but don't empower them to do it.
This brings me to the last point. I had a "simple" package without even a meal plan but by the time it was all said and done, I had to carry and track 28 cards, four copies of park tickets, BMG tickets, Citypass cover charge tickets, 2 sets of breakfast tickets (Harry Potter package), express pass tickets, and room keys. And we got special express passes to any riude when one of the Harry Potter rides broke down but Disney does that, too. Sometimes our group or others held up lines just searching through a bill fold of tickets to find the right ones. And they just feed them to a card reader and a computer anyways to prevent cheating. The mouse has just one or two per person ever, even before they started with RFID bracelets. At probably $0.10/ticket our tickets cost $2.80 just to print. A single magstripe card per person would drop it to maybe $1.00 total that the hotel is already printing and the hotel could just eliminate the ticket counter/concierge and be a lot more seamless. The existing system would work for everyone else. Or you could one up the mouse and link it to a credit card like airport check in a if people volunteered for that and one up the Mouse again.
Just my observations. Universal is already a good park. With some relatively small improvements, it could be a great one.
The good:
The food was excellent everywhere, even the kids options. No carrot ketchup in sight. Even counter service was pretty much a class act. And the food prices were what I expect outside a theme park. I can't say just how nice it is not to be juggling schedules with ADRs or having to go here or there for decent food...this was true everywhere. Even the "eye candy" my youngest loves cotton candy. At USF it was $4 in her choice of flavors in a huge bag. The mouse charges double that for about one third as much. That's on top of the food being just plain good. About the highest/worst was at our hotel (Royal Pacific) which was chic/pricey and heavy on the sushi. Even the odd stuff like Cowfish was pretty good.
Second, everything was way laid back, except security. After Disney we need relaxation time. Universal WAS relaxation. The pushiest people were teens instead of people pretending they didn't speak English. In fact I didn't feel I had to have the kids in direct line of sight 24/7 (ages 8 and 12), escorted to the bathrooms, etc. This alone should speak volumes.
Although a lot of the headliner rides were essentially exactly the same simulator rude with different video and static displays they were different enough to keep riding different ones. And I never laughed so hard after a ride like Simpsons and MIB. The mouse has nothing on these rides as a couple examples and some of the great rides (Alien Encounter) have been cheesed up into blah-who cares status.
Souvenirs are like the mouse used to be. Now I can do 99% of my shopping at the big store in Downtown Disney. Not so in Universal. All the shops are different.
The Blue Man Group show was...wow, I mean Cirque de Soleil is cool and roughly 200% more expensive, but I would see BMG again for the money.
The Terminator and ET rides were original but dare I say it still cool. Enough that now my kids want to see the movies. In comparison Carousel of Progress and Country Bear Jamboree are only good for the 4 minutes of air conditioning. They wanted to ride ET and T2 twice.
Employee morale overall seemed pretty good. Nobody had the Disney smile...it was genuine. Met a few employees that have worked both and one that does part time at both. Seems the preference is Universal though. We didn't even see any of the "smile police". They might be there...just not as obvious.
Theming overall is better at least to me. I mean it can be jarring with say Minions next to Shrek but overall its over the top. Royal Pacific was every bit as nice as the Hawaii themed counterpart other than the initial experience. When we walked in the immediate impression was...so this is what it should be like without all the dated and ugly theming. Sorry if its just my taste. And yes this was after the 2014/2015 makeover.
With Citywalk "right there" instead of a bus trip from hell that takes far longer than the Disney lovers would have you believe. Its right there, 5-10 minutes walk at most any time you need/want it. With Downtown Disney it becomes an end unto itself...something we do on a short Animal Kingdom or start/end day only. So we stopped more than once and even on last day after checking out took the boat down for lunch before leaving.
The bad:
OK it must be said that you can cover Disney in a Disney or due binge fest in maybe 4 days in an offseason. Universal is about half that. So the bad here is just wanting more.
Parks and many hotel restaurants and hotel pool all close simultaneously, leaving few ggood options. One night we waited in line about 30 minutes at the "fast" food places in Citywalk.By way of example Red Panda had like 4+ servers but only one cashier, so the cashier was the bottleneck. Had we known that then we would had tolerated 30 minute table service wait times. Another night was local pizza delivery which was from Rocco's. The chain is good in New Jersey but Orlando was terrible...not that this is Universals fault. Only thing we didn't try was room service which frankly isn't priced terribly bad.
The fireworks are a dud as are the parades. Skip them and use the time when the crowds clear.
It used to be that almost every Disney ride exited into a gift shop. Thankfully they don't do that as aggressively any more because there's no point in looking through any of them. Not so at Universal. That would be OK except for the "show rides" like T2 or Shrek where every 15 minutes the place gets mobbed. So you get run over if you loiter in gift shopping more than10 minutes. Makes us more tempted to just leave instead of shopping.
Souvenirs are much more expensive which I guess makes up for reasonable food. In fact the whole package price for 3.5 days is about what we pay for Disney for a week, and we usually stay at moderates. I would have here too but it was still a spring break week so felt we needed real express passes (unlimited), and we did after 11 AM until late in the day, and the insane prices of over $100/person/day more than covers the deluxe hotel price difference.
Not that Disney has a good web site but there is like 100+ options grouped by categories you'd never use. Like...they offer 1 day, 1 day+free day, 2 day, 2 day+free day, and 3 day passes. Huh? Why? Now all of these are also available as express passes (but we booked their deluxe hotel so this is automatic) and the same passes again with various Blue Man Group combinations. Then there is a huge list of combo tickets mixed with everyone else. The list is only slightly longer than Disney but pretty easy to order the wrong things. In fact even if you get it right...more on this in the ugly. The web site would be a lot easier to navigate if it only gave out combinations that worked or showed things like BMG or express passes as sub options. It was also very confusing that each of the breakfasts on the Harry Potter package showed up twice.
Second, I use either the most popular or second most popular web browser (Chrome). Every time I tried to book, it kept hanging on a "searching" screen (but page loading stopped) or nothing available. After a couple reloads it would sometimes work. Tried Firefox and wow...there it is.
Last when you drive up to a deluxe mouse house, they pretty much unload all your stuff right there, offer either self park or valet (no pushiness) and escort you to the desk, and unload it all while you check in. At a moderate its the same approach except you get herded into a big check in and issued your stuff, then drive to your room building. At Royal Pacific the valet thing was a lot more aggressive and they hit me up for $22/day self park...same as parking at the garages if we went off site. And good luck finding the front desk at Royal Pacific...signage is absent here. So the experience was ho him from the start.
Security was kind of annoying. You get wander airport style at every entrance to City walk including the hotel water taxis, and metal detectors at some of the roller coasters even after hotel wanding. Never in mouseland. Maybe its the crowd but its just not good. Handling of unruly guest situations was good/bad. The attendants at the Transformers ride when it was down totally lost control over the crowd. Training really needed here.
The ugly:
The ticket thing is crazy and expensive for Universal too. To start with you don't get your tickets at the front desk. You get them at a ticket booth attendant that directs you to use an automated dispenser. Then for your express (fast) pass over to another one. There is also a concierge here but don't waste your time...again, not Disney. But at least they didn't pitch a time share either like Doubletree (mouse lite). Because we asked where are the Blue Man and park tickets...no clue, never ran into this at the other place. If your job is concierge you need to know the system forwards and backwards and be capable and have the power to take care of any scheduling/ticketing. Even the time share hocking concierges do that much.
It turns out the BMG tickets were SUPPOSED to be at the BMG office along with the park tickets. They didn't have park tickets and directed us to guest services. The one in city walk said they are a satellite and to check with the hotel or park, after a couple phone calls, supervisors, etc. The hotel again...no clue. So with our early entry clock ticking off to guest services at a park. Well, turns out guest services at the parks is incapable of fixing an obvious screw up either so they finally comped us in and said to come back later. It was the same routine again later that day until finally somebody from the real guest services could fix it. Look if you don't trust your guest services people, fire them and get new ones. Because it directly reflects on poor management if you hire someone to do a job but don't empower them to do it.
This brings me to the last point. I had a "simple" package without even a meal plan but by the time it was all said and done, I had to carry and track 28 cards, four copies of park tickets, BMG tickets, Citypass cover charge tickets, 2 sets of breakfast tickets (Harry Potter package), express pass tickets, and room keys. And we got special express passes to any riude when one of the Harry Potter rides broke down but Disney does that, too. Sometimes our group or others held up lines just searching through a bill fold of tickets to find the right ones. And they just feed them to a card reader and a computer anyways to prevent cheating. The mouse has just one or two per person ever, even before they started with RFID bracelets. At probably $0.10/ticket our tickets cost $2.80 just to print. A single magstripe card per person would drop it to maybe $1.00 total that the hotel is already printing and the hotel could just eliminate the ticket counter/concierge and be a lot more seamless. The existing system would work for everyone else. Or you could one up the mouse and link it to a credit card like airport check in a if people volunteered for that and one up the Mouse again.
Just my observations. Universal is already a good park. With some relatively small improvements, it could be a great one.
personally, I can't stand Disney and much prefer Universal; but I know there are others who are just the opposite.
