The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Universal

[elaine amj]

Each park has its own money grabs. I find no difference in paying to shoot water at the water riders than paying to shoot targets at Frontierland.

Last time we were there, my teens were checking out the shooters - a TM walked over and handed them a bunch of coins so they could shoot away. They had a blast!

 

[johde]

I Agree and Disagree with many of the OP's comments. In some cases though, I also know the reasons behind them. I agree the fireworks at Disney are better. But, Universal is plopped into the middle of a residential area. Dr. Philips High School and Football field are literally right across the road from Dragon Challenge, Forbidden Journey, and Jurassic Park. There are Condo right behind MIB. The noise ordnance in the area effectively limits how many fireworks they can shoot off a night. It also has a bearing on how many nights a year the parks can stay open extremely late. Especially IOA and Dragon Challenge. That being said, Universal needs to come up with something unique in the night time entertainment area (preferable in both parks) to compete with Disney down the street.

With the parades, Universal Superstar Parade is not up to Festival of Fantasy quality. But, holds up well compared to other some of Disney's older parades like Stars in Motor Cars and Mickey Mania. I've not seen it personally, but I've heard the MadiGras parade is once of the best ever produced in Orlando. I have seen the Macy's Holiday Parade. And it's good especially from a nostalgic prospective having watched the parade in New York for years.

On the Ticket front, at Disney, almost everything is Disney with a some outsourcing. At Universal, it's a much more eclectic mix almost like Disneyland but more so. The theme parks are run by Universal but they've outsourced their onsite hotels to Lowes. In addition to those 2 companies, most packages are also purchasable with "good neighbor" off site hotels. Packages at the offsite hotel would get Early Entry and the Breakfasts. But their key cards look nothing like onsite guests. If you just book a room through those hotels, you don't get Early Entry.

I've been going to Universal since the middle of the "dark years". Universal was struggling at that time under Vivendi. Looking at what they've done during that time. Universal and Disney has spent their money in different places. Back in the day at Disney your meal plan was tickets you pulled out of a book. Now everything is on a Magic Band. But, the pace of new ride development has slowed dramatically in the last decade. At Universal, in the last decade, you have
Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit
High in the Sky Suess Trolly
Simpsons Ride*, Springfield, and Kodos and Kang
Forbidden Journey (and Hogsmead)
Transformers
Escape from Gringotts (and Diagon Alley)
Despicable Me Minion Mayhem*
(* Denotes complete retheming of existing attraction)
And opening this Summer Skull Island Reign of Kong.

At Disney you have.
Expedition Everest
Toystory Midway Mania
Seas with Nemo
Grand Fiesta Tour with the 3 Caballeros*
Test Track 2.0*
Doubled Dumbo*
Under the Seas with Ariel (And New Fantasy Land)
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train

Opening this Summer
Soarin' Around the World*
Frozen ride in Norway*

Most of the Disney list is 2006 or 2012+ and we're also looking at 4 parks instead of 2. I guess I'd rather carry a few more cards around and continually have great new attractions to ride.

 

[Kivara]

Also re-themed Hippogriff and Dragon Challenge...added Hogwarts Express

 

[keishashadow]

Always interesting to get another's take on comparisons between the two parks

Nobody had the Disney smile...it was genuine.

lol I've encountered wonderful workers in both parks, I'd venture it can be a thankless job at times

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.

I've always thought U less expensive than WDW as to souvenirs, food & tickets. PBH, RPH & HRH are all true deluxe properties with 'free' FOTL perc

I'm seeing Disney value resorts in area of $170 a night, often you can find wonderful discounts on the onsite Loews properties.

jmho but I've never had a package beat what I can find on my own @ U.

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.

not our experience at any of the 3 onsite hotels aforementioned over the years. If you need more time to offload your gear pull forward past the entrance, off to curb side, and unload.

many appreciate the fact that the hotels don't have a resort fee as do most in the area (excluding WDW where it's built into the room prices imo). A good portion of deluxe properties have both the resort & parking fee in Orlando and elsewhere

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.

in this day & age, I'm happy to see any sort of security in place. metal detectors at the coasters are to keep guests safe from other's stuff hitting them

 

[Jays2013]

*raises hand timidly*

Going to Universal for the first time as a family in less than two weeks. Looking forward to it!

So, why isn't it a good idea to book a package? Ours is already bought and paid for (tickets and RPR, did airfare separate) so it's not a big deal. Just curious. Is it just the price, or some other reason? (I will keep this in mind for next time.)

We have lanyards, but I'm trying to figure out how many cards we'll have to juggle. (We have the Photo Connect Star Cards, too.)

 

[paulengr]

Some things bear clarification here...

First, Disney fan boy? Not really. I don't work for a travel agent, never have. So I'm not into the whole U vs D bashing for sales thing. I could care less. My focus is on myself and my family. If one or the other offers something that appeals better, that's the decision maker. More on this in a bit in which I will do the only true "D vs. U" comparison. In fact this month I had to say "OK, it's time to schedule so we can get our ADR's" and my youngest daughter at age 8 said, "Can we just skip D and go to U instead?"" So that pretty much sums up how the pendulum has shifted after one trip. Maybe because it's a new experience or a recent experience.

My post was a combination of what was good and what was bad for Universal. Comparisons to Disney was mostly to point out either things they did better or things they did worse for context. Most people that have gone to one probably went to the other so we have common experience, especially when it's the "DIS" boards. The purpose of my post isn't a review so much as knowing that Universal reads these boards just as much as Disney does to point out some areas that need some definite improvement from a first-timer perspective. Some are small things, some are very good. The positives were also pointing out that this isn't a strictly "slam Universal" post. In fact quite the opposite although I reserved defending either Disney or Universal because that's not the point. But it's obviously been interpreted another way.

In some ways based on the responses I'd almost suspect they're from travel agents pushing for U vs. D and some even pointed out how fellow travel agents aren't allowed to discuss the other brand. Well I didn't go into details but I met one U part time employee that also works at D some of the time and has both U and D badges. Surprisingly he said that even with the thousands of employees at both, there are only a handful that he has run into that actually work at both companies routinely. He said that training, procedures, etc., are almost identical and that he's only once or twice accidentally pulled out the wrong badge at the gate. He was pretty neutral overall and liked them both for different reasons, and I think based on body language this was an honest opinion.

If you are actually reading my posts and trying to make up your mind about D vs. U, then let me make this easy for you. There are three reasons that D should be considered over U. First is the easy one. If you have little kids, especially girls, say tweens or younger, D wins hands down. They have much more of the little kid franchise. Fiona and Marge Simpson aren't going to hold a candle to the legions of princesses D has to offer. Try what you want dads but trust me, you won't win this battle until you find yourself reading Harry Potter at bed time over Ariel and her fishy friends. Second is size. If you only have 3 or even 4 days, I'd strongly discourage you from going to D at all especially if its your first time unless you cut down on the number of parks or opt for Disneyland. The place is that big. If you want an "all inclusive" theme park experience, D is it. In fact you can get some really good golf and some of the most fun bass fishing I've ever had anywhere done while you are at it if you can convince the girls to let you get away for a couple hours or to come with. You can comfortably do almost everything in a week but you will have to pick and choose if it's less than that. But for U, 2 to 3 days is about right. After that, you're going to be looking for something else to do. At D this kicks in at around 7 days and growing. Third is cost. After about 2 days like most other theme parks, U deeply discounts their tickets or makes them outright free. The goal here is to get you to come back for a little more shopping and eating and make a little more money off that since they've already "paid" for the park, rides, etc., on the first couple days. D does exactly the same thing except they start deeply discounting starting around day 4 or 5 to the point where the ticket prices for say 6 vs. 7 days is often under $20 last time I checked (they have been creeping up over time). So as the length of your vacation grows you will be finding as we have that when you compare the cost of say going to D vs. going to U and somewhere else for a week, D wins. Somewhere in these with higher prices on everything at some point I'm sure that even if tickets were free after day 4, D will still price themselves out of the market but this hasn't happened yet. There, that's the three arguments in favor of D.

About 15+ years ago, Disney was a lot more like Universal of today in a lot of ways. Back then we lived in southern Georgia. If you drive to Florida then you know that happy feeling that you have FINALLY gotten through Georgia and its not much further now? Well that was us except that we didn't have the feeling of dread driving down I-75 and knowing that we had almost half a day of Georgia to drive across. We could easily get rooms at reasonable rates and shoot down there for a long weekend multiple times a year. We knew every corner of the parks, even knew how to go in/out through the northern parts of the park where the water handling equipment is at to get to 535 instead of driving through the crowded Downtown Disney area, way before GPS was as common as it is. If you didn't have ADR's, you would expect to wait about 30-40 minutes during peaks or 10-20 during non-peaks, same as it is outside Disney. Fast Pass as I recall was just being tested and only on the most popular rides. So you had a "virtual queue" for just those rides. That's all gone now. There were many other parallels but suffice to say that I almost want to say that Universal is very much how Disney WAS a couple decades ago. They've made lots of improvements but slowly a little bit of the fun has disappeared.

So lets bring it up to present day and the last big vacation that we just took. My wife's work dragged their feet on approving vacation time so much that we had 2 weeks notice. So ADR's, FastPass plus scheduling, etc., was all going to be things like priority seating for an unpopular parade that you normally just stopped and watched if you were there. On top of that looking at crowd levels on the crowd calendars of 10/10 for the entire Spring break week meant that we'd spend most of our quality time standing in line listening to the kids bellyaching about how much fun we weren't having as compared to when they are used to going in late August or September when we have the place almost to ourselves and even without Fastpasses they can pretty much ride again and again as much as they want in single rider with no lines until they get bored. So if it was a choice between Disney and anything else, or even nothing at all and staying home at this point, Disney was automatically out, no matter how many princess autographs we would miss (and without ADR's that was going to be a lot). That meant considering other options. If you want to call this a "Universal vs. Virgin Islands" rant, then so be it because that's a lot more accurate than U vs. D.

I didn't bring up Express Pass as a "good" because I'm ambivalent about it. I've seen Disney Fast Pass on the very first year it was implemented on a select few rides. It was almost the same as it was 10 years later (except with more rides on it) and overall never achieved a good balance of fast pass vs. normal pass. At least from my perspective I've seen parks with this system that basically only let express pass holders on the rides so when it gets crowded you literally have to pay extra to play. I don't know the ratio of express-to-standard lines Universal is using (it looked like 1:1) but I've been on both sides of the line before and overall while I appreciate what the parks are doing with these things I found it pretty unfair to basically double the cost to "legally" cut in line. We were basically shut out before at Dollywood because of this at certain times of the day and certain rides so its nice to have but I'm not a fan overall. I paid for it because I didn't want a repeat Dollywood style experience. Its bad enough when you get people cutting in line in various schemes and makes people get irritable spending that much time standing in line. The express pass system only seems to make it worse. So without knowing Universal all that well and with the huge amount of "you really, really, really need an express pass" it seemed like this was another "shutout" situation so I booked RPR for that one reason only. Frankly if the park is THAT crowded you can barely move around anywhere else, restaurants and shops are essentially overloaded, and the whole experience overall is just plain not that much fun. So I may be in the 0.1% minority of people but I just don't like the things at all. Not for the price but for the fact that to make the system actually work as intended we'd need express pass rides, shopping, restaurants, etc. Disney approaches this with ADR's and Fast Pass Plus but come on, you're on vacation. Do you want your ENTIRE day in your cell phone or day planner and have event after event scheduled as if you're at work or be able to just ignore the schedule for the most part and be able to just hang out and have fun doing what you want, when you want, where you want, which is supposed to be the point of a theme park experience vs. say all the activities down on International Blvd.? So maybe its just me and yes they're convenient when it gets THAT crowded to get in a couple more rides but when it does, its also time to go to another area, out to Citywalk for a bite or do a little shopping, or take the "train" over to the other park. Express pass just creates "tiered" queues but queues none the less, and Fast Pass creates virtual queues with time slots, but the overall effect is to split the lines down into smaller ones so that you can pack that many more happy people into the same park at the same time, paradoxically increasing crowd levels and making it that much less enjoyable in the rest of the park.

As to the whole "horrors, never, never, never, ever get a package, especially at Universal", do your shopping because I did. It's not true that packages NEVER make sense at Universal. I didn't just look at Universal's web site, and I definitely didn't look at only packages. Actually getting packages and package information was such a pain that at first I didn't even try to go that route. Most travel sites all specifically tell you not to bother with the packages in MOST cases for Universal and even the most popular D site outside of DIS (Mousesavers) specifically states that in most cases D packages are a waste of money. With U, they try to tack on a hotel night on both ends of the package, making say 2 nights/3 days into 4 nights/3 days. In our particular case we needed to stay for 4 nights and be in the parks for 3 days because when going in spring break week we knew the best time to get on rides was early in the morning. I priced the hotel and tickets separate and I checked all the obvious sources including Undercover Tourist, etc. Universal kicked in two breakfasts at the two restaurants in each of the Harry Potter lands. The bill for each one if I had paid for it was about $50 so it's not a big cost but I didn't pay more for the package. I could have squeezed out staying only 2 nights instead of 4 but we were travelling over there from Tampa from earlier in the week and driving home without going in the parks on the last day so we were going to stay in a hotel somewhere and yes it would have been cheaper to switch hotels but if you have a wife and two kids and all their luggage for an 8 day vacation, trust me the fewer times you go in/out of a hotel the better. I had already been looking at off site non-partner hotels as well as on sites and I've been to Orlando plenty of times in years past at various meetings and conventions that never involved a theme park so I have a pretty good "lay of the land". I have pretty much decided that if we go again we're not doing 4 nights/3 days so the package won't make sense but I'll compare it to other options every time. I'm an engineer. I end up with a spreadsheet with like a dozen columns when I do these things and my wife can sit there and crank out twice that many theories and ideas so I need the spreadsheet just so that I can work with her on it.

Second was buying BMG tickets separately. It saved me all of about $10 to add them onto the ticket purchase compared to elsewhere and with these in particular since it was a true add-on, I looked and this as the SLIGHTLY cheaper way to go. If I had known that the web site DROPPED park tickets when I added BMG+park tickets and then dropped park-only tickets, I might have tried to do it differently. Again...I've never gone to Universal before so there is definitely a learning curve here.

And I know exactly how much those little kiosks, RFID reader heads, etc., cost because I'm in the automation business and I know who built them personally because I do business with a lot of the same companies that they do business with. I saw some of the stuff before they were installed although the way D does things we didn't know exactly what they were for. First and foremost we're talking about 2 different technologies whose only purpose is identification: RFID and magstripe. Magstripe is older but they are both very inexpensive. The format for both is fairly standard among a wide variety of manufacturers. Both types of systems have some kind of unique serial number in the device as well as a small amount of data storage. A Magstripe typically has 4 "stripes" of data on the 1/4" band you see and the format is almost universal with all magstripe reader/writers. The stripe itself is magnetic tape, same as VHS or cassette tape. RFID is slightly more complicated only because it has a big antenna that provides power and signals to the chip. The chip itself is very tiny and low power. The RFID "reader" first blasts it with radio waves to power it up, then runs through a quick sequence to ensure that it is only talking to one RFID chip at a time, then either reads or writes data to it, and very few users write unlike magstripe. The size and shape of the antenna makes it work at different distances and frequencies and makes the difference between something that costs about $0.01 and perhaps $1.00. You can see a lot of them for yourself. Download an RFID reader for most phones that can read them and walk around a Walmart store for a while and you'd be amazed as what you find out. NFC is by the way a simplified version of the existing RFID standards. The other half of the system is that there is always a database that is connected to the "readers". The database stores any kind of data you want such as how many quick service credits you have at Disney World, or whether or not you are scheduled for the 9 PM Blue Man Group show, or whether your hotel room key is still valid. This information isn't usually stored on the card itself to avoid cheating (writers are cheap too). You don't create new serial numbers as long as you can control whether or not the serial number is unique, as long as the data is in the database. So Universal can easily read Loews key cards with their magstripe readers and vice versa.

I'm not suggesting Universal should change everything to RFID and issue "universal bands". Ultimately in the long term RFID probably makes sense to go to for both Universal and Loews because it is as cheap or cheaper than magstripe, holds up longer, and has fewer "reader" error issues to deal with. In the mean time there's no reason to abort/dump magstripe cards. All I'm suggesting is to fix the way they handle the database either separately or collectively. I'm suggesting going to a single card per guest or perhaps two (one for each company). As described by others typically you'd have just 3 (park pass, express pass, room key) but this quickly grows if you have extra tickets and options as we did. I had to carry the ones for the breakfasts on those days, Blue Man when we went there, the "Citywalk" cards for the bars/dance halls if we went there after hours. And since we don't want to keep these all in the hotel room and with being able to change our plans at any time, we had to basically carry ALL of them. That's why we had 7 cards per person, and since my kids are younger and my wife wanted to wear something without pockets, daddy has to carry all of these little cards and keep them sorted and pull out the ones for the "train" ride and gates, and different ones for each of the other rides, and pull out the ones for breakfast, then for going to a dance, etc., etc. At least now I understand why you see all those lanyards in D where it makes almost no sense to have one while in U it's almost a requirement.

As to finding your way around RPR, yes you walk in the front door and you can go left or right. There is not a sign right there and there isn't one over the front desk at least when I was there. I know because I looked, walked back out and came back through again figuring I just missed it somewhere along the way, and I actually even asked my wife to look because I thought maybe I just missed something and she didn't spot anything either. I'm not a road warrior but I travel a lot and believe me some of the higher end hotel front desks can be pretty hidden on the far side of a giant fountain or on a different floor of the building, and lately even the mid grades have been built with the lobby somewhere down the side of the building instead of out front. As I went right, I sort of stumbled into the restaurant so I knew to turn around and go left. On the left side I THOUGHT it was the front desk but again no sign so hard to tell whether it was just concierge or something else so I walked past and asked what turned out to be concierge (that was marked). It's obvious now, just pointing out how that one tastefully decorated sign over the desk or a small one on the counter would save some grief for someone that's listened to hours of moaning over sun burns, soreness, boredom, bathroom breaks, how hungry they are, etc.

 

[damo]

*raises hand timidly*

Going to Universal for the first time as a family in less than two weeks. Looking forward to it!

So, why isn't it a good idea to book a package? Ours is already bought and paid for (tickets and RPR, did airfare separate) so it's not a big deal. Just curious. Is it just the price, or some other reason? (I will keep this in mind for next time.)

We have lanyards, but I'm trying to figure out how many cards we'll have to juggle. (We have the Photo Connect Star Cards, too.)

There are a few reasons we don't usually suggest packages here and it comes from experience. First off are the fees that are charged if you want to make any changes. With a hotel only booking, there are no fees to make changes until the week before you actually arrive. Secondly, you can usually get your tickets considerably cheaper through a third party such as undercover tourist. Hotel prices will be the same whether you book with a package or through the website.

 

[Jays2013]

Ah! OK. Now I know. DH is very fond of going through AAA. (There was a long-ago disaster on a trip for his family and they handled it.) So we usually go that.

Thanks.

 

[schumigirl]

Some things bear clarification here...

First, Disney fan boy? Not really. I don't work for a travel agent, never have. So I'm not into the whole U vs D bashing for sales thing. I could care less. My focus is on myself and my family. If one or the other offers something that appeals better, that's the decision maker. More on this in a bit in which I will do the only true "D vs. U" comparison. In fact this month I had to say "OK, it's time to schedule so we can get our ADR's" and my youngest daughter at age 8 said, "Can we just skip D and go to U instead?"" So that pretty much sums up how the pendulum has shifted after one trip. Maybe because it's a new experience or a recent experience.

My post was a combination of what was good and what was bad for Universal. Comparisons to Disney was mostly to point out either things they did better or things they did worse for context. Most people that have gone to one probably went to the other so we have common experience, especially when it's the "DIS" boards. The purpose of my post isn't a review so much as knowing that Universal reads these boards just as much as Disney does to point out some areas that need some definite improvement from a first-timer perspective. Some are small things, some are very good. The positives were also pointing out that this isn't a strictly "slam Universal" post. In fact quite the opposite although I reserved defending either Disney or Universal because that's not the point. But it's obviously been interpreted another way.

In some ways based on the responses I'd almost suspect they're from travel agents pushing for U vs. D and some even pointed out how fellow travel agents aren't allowed to discuss the other brand. Well I didn't go into details but I met one U part time employee that also works at D some of the time and has both U and D badges. Surprisingly he said that even with the thousands of employees at both, there are only a handful that he has run into that actually work at both companies routinely. He said that training, procedures, etc., are almost identical and that he's only once or twice accidentally pulled out the wrong badge at the gate. He was pretty neutral overall and liked them both for different reasons, and I think based on body language this was an honest opinion.

If you are actually reading my posts and trying to make up your mind about D vs. U, then let me make this easy for you. There are three reasons that D should be considered over U. First is the easy one. If you have little kids, especially girls, say tweens or younger, D wins hands down. They have much more of the little kid franchise. Fiona and Marge Simpson aren't going to hold a candle to the legions of princesses D has to offer. Try what you want dads but trust me, you won't win this battle until you find yourself reading Harry Potter at bed time over Ariel and her fishy friends. Second is size. If you only have 3 or even 4 days, I'd strongly discourage you from going to D at all especially if its your first time unless you cut down on the number of parks or opt for Disneyland. The place is that big. If you want an "all inclusive" theme park experience, D is it. In fact you can get some really good golf and some of the most fun bass fishing I've ever had anywhere done while you are at it if you can convince the girls to let you get away for a couple hours or to come with. You can comfortably do almost everything in a week but you will have to pick and choose if it's less than that. But for U, 2 to 3 days is about right. After that, you're going to be looking for something else to do. At D this kicks in at around 7 days and growing. Third is cost. After about 2 days like most other theme parks, U deeply discounts their tickets or makes them outright free. The goal here is to get you to come back for a little more shopping and eating and make a little more money off that since they've already "paid" for the park, rides, etc., on the first couple days. D does exactly the same thing except they start deeply discounting starting around day 4 or 5 to the point where the ticket prices for say 6 vs. 7 days is often under $20 last time I checked (they have been creeping up over time). So as the length of your vacation grows you will be finding as we have that when you compare the cost of say going to D vs. going to U and somewhere else for a week, D wins. Somewhere in these with higher prices on everything at some point I'm sure that even if tickets were free after day 4, D will still price themselves out of the market but this hasn't happened yet. There, that's the three arguments in favor of D.

About 15+ years ago, Disney was a lot more like Universal of today in a lot of ways. Back then we lived in southern Georgia. If you drive to Florida then you know that happy feeling that you have FINALLY gotten through Georgia and its not much further now? Well that was us except that we didn't have the feeling of dread driving down I-75 and knowing that we had almost half a day of Georgia to drive across. We could easily get rooms at reasonable rates and shoot down there for a long weekend multiple times a year. We knew every corner of the parks, even knew how to go in/out through the northern parts of the park where the water handling equipment is at to get to 535 instead of driving through the crowded Downtown Disney area, way before GPS was as common as it is. If you didn't have ADR's, you would expect to wait about 30-40 minutes during peaks or 10-20 during non-peaks, same as it is outside Disney. Fast Pass as I recall was just being tested and only on the most popular rides. So you had a "virtual queue" for just those rides. That's all gone now. There were many other parallels but suffice to say that I almost want to say that Universal is very much how Disney WAS a couple decades ago. They've made lots of improvements but slowly a little bit of the fun has disappeared.

So lets bring it up to present day and the last big vacation that we just took. My wife's work dragged their feet on approving vacation time so much that we had 2 weeks notice. So ADR's, FastPass plus scheduling, etc., was all going to be things like priority seating for an unpopular parade that you normally just stopped and watched if you were there. On top of that looking at crowd levels on the crowd calendars of 10/10 for the entire Spring break week meant that we'd spend most of our quality time standing in line listening to the kids bellyaching about how much fun we weren't having as compared to when they are used to going in late August or September when we have the place almost to ourselves and even without Fastpasses they can pretty much ride again and again as much as they want in single rider with no lines until they get bored. So if it was a choice between Disney and anything else, or even nothing at all and staying home at this point, Disney was automatically out, no matter how many princess autographs we would miss (and without ADR's that was going to be a lot). That meant considering other options. If you want to call this a "Universal vs. Virgin Islands" rant, then so be it because that's a lot more accurate than U vs. D.

I didn't bring up Express Pass as a "good" because I'm ambivalent about it. I've seen Disney Fast Pass on the very first year it was implemented on a select few rides. It was almost the same as it was 10 years later (except with more rides on it) and overall never achieved a good balance of fast pass vs. normal pass. At least from my perspective I've seen parks with this system that basically only let express pass holders on the rides so when it gets crowded you literally have to pay extra to play. I don't know the ratio of express-to-standard lines Universal is using (it looked like 1:1) but I've been on both sides of the line before and overall while I appreciate what the parks are doing with these things I found it pretty unfair to basically double the cost to "legally" cut in line. We were basically shut out before at Dollywood because of this at certain times of the day and certain rides so its nice to have but I'm not a fan overall. I paid for it because I didn't want a repeat Dollywood style experience. Its bad enough when you get people cutting in line in various schemes and makes people get irritable spending that much time standing in line. The express pass system only seems to make it worse. So without knowing Universal all that well and with the huge amount of "you really, really, really need an express pass" it seemed like this was another "shutout" situation so I booked RPR for that one reason only. Frankly if the park is THAT crowded you can barely move around anywhere else, restaurants and shops are essentially overloaded, and the whole experience overall is just plain not that much fun. So I may be in the 0.1% minority of people but I just don't like the things at all. Not for the price but for the fact that to make the system actually work as intended we'd need express pass rides, shopping, restaurants, etc. Disney approaches this with ADR's and Fast Pass Plus but come on, you're on vacation. Do you want your ENTIRE day in your cell phone or day planner and have event after event scheduled as if you're at work or be able to just ignore the schedule for the most part and be able to just hang out and have fun doing what you want, when you want, where you want, which is supposed to be the point of a theme park experience vs. say all the activities down on International Blvd.? So maybe its just me and yes they're convenient when it gets THAT crowded to get in a couple more rides but when it does, its also time to go to another area, out to Citywalk for a bite or do a little shopping, or take the "train" over to the other park. Express pass just creates "tiered" queues but queues none the less, and Fast Pass creates virtual queues with time slots, but the overall effect is to split the lines down into smaller ones so that you can pack that many more happy people into the same park at the same time, paradoxically increasing crowd levels and making it that much less enjoyable in the rest of the park.

As to the whole "horrors, never, never, never, ever get a package, especially at Universal", do your shopping because I did. It's not true that packages NEVER make sense at Universal. I didn't just look at Universal's web site, and I definitely didn't look at only packages. Actually getting packages and package information was such a pain that at first I didn't even try to go that route. Most travel sites all specifically tell you not to bother with the packages in MOST cases for Universal and even the most popular D site outside of DIS (Mousesavers) specifically states that in most cases D packages are a waste of money. With U, they try to tack on a hotel night on both ends of the package, making say 2 nights/3 days into 4 nights/3 days. In our particular case we needed to stay for 4 nights and be in the parks for 3 days because when going in spring break week we knew the best time to get on rides was early in the morning. I priced the hotel and tickets separate and I checked all the obvious sources including Undercover Tourist, etc. Universal kicked in two breakfasts at the two restaurants in each of the Harry Potter lands. The bill for each one if I had paid for it was about $50 so it's not a big cost but I didn't pay more for the package. I could have squeezed out staying only 2 nights instead of 4 but we were travelling over there from Tampa from earlier in the week and driving home without going in the parks on the last day so we were going to stay in a hotel somewhere and yes it would have been cheaper to switch hotels but if you have a wife and two kids and all their luggage for an 8 day vacation, trust me the fewer times you go in/out of a hotel the better. I had already been looking at off site non-partner hotels as well as on sites and I've been to Orlando plenty of times in years past at various meetings and conventions that never involved a theme park so I have a pretty good "lay of the land". I have pretty much decided that if we go again we're not doing 4 nights/3 days so the package won't make sense but I'll compare it to other options every time. I'm an engineer. I end up with a spreadsheet with like a dozen columns when I do these things and my wife can sit there and crank out twice that many theories and ideas so I need the spreadsheet just so that I can work with her on it.

Second was buying BMG tickets separately. It saved me all of about $10 to add them onto the ticket purchase compared to elsewhere and with these in particular since it was a true add-on, I looked and this as the SLIGHTLY cheaper way to go. If I had known that the web site DROPPED park tickets when I added BMG+park tickets and then dropped park-only tickets, I might have tried to do it differently. Again...I've never gone to Universal before so there is definitely a learning curve here.

And I know exactly how much those little kiosks, RFID reader heads, etc., cost because I'm in the automation business and I know who built them personally because I do business with a lot of the same companies that they do business with. I saw some of the stuff before they were installed although the way D does things we didn't know exactly what they were for. First and foremost we're talking about 2 different technologies whose only purpose is identification: RFID and magstripe. Magstripe is older but they are both very inexpensive. The format for both is fairly standard among a wide variety of manufacturers. Both types of systems have some kind of unique serial number in the device as well as a small amount of data storage. A Magstripe typically has 4 "stripes" of data on the 1/4" band you see and the format is almost universal with all magstripe reader/writers. The stripe itself is magnetic tape, same as VHS or cassette tape. RFID is slightly more complicated only because it has a big antenna that provides power and signals to the chip. The chip itself is very tiny and low power. The RFID "reader" first blasts it with radio waves to power it up, then runs through a quick sequence to ensure that it is only talking to one RFID chip at a time, then either reads or writes data to it, and very few users write unlike magstripe. The size and shape of the antenna makes it work at different distances and frequencies and makes the difference between something that costs about $0.01 and perhaps $1.00. You can see a lot of them for yourself. Download an RFID reader for most phones that can read them and walk around a Walmart store for a while and you'd be amazed as what you find out. NFC is by the way a simplified version of the existing RFID standards. The other half of the system is that there is always a database that is connected to the "readers". The database stores any kind of data you want such as how many quick service credits you have at Disney World, or whether or not you are scheduled for the 9 PM Blue Man Group show, or whether your hotel room key is still valid. This information isn't usually stored on the card itself to avoid cheating (writers are cheap too). You don't create new serial numbers as long as you can control whether or not the serial number is unique, as long as the data is in the database. So Universal can easily read Loews key cards with their magstripe readers and vice versa.

I'm not suggesting Universal should change everything to RFID and issue "universal bands". Ultimately in the long term RFID probably makes sense to go to for both Universal and Loews because it is as cheap or cheaper than magstripe, holds up longer, and has fewer "reader" error issues to deal with. In the mean time there's no reason to abort/dump magstripe cards. All I'm suggesting is to fix the way they handle the database either separately or collectively. I'm suggesting going to a single card per guest or perhaps two (one for each company). As described by others typically you'd have just 3 (park pass, express pass, room key) but this quickly grows if you have extra tickets and options as we did. I had to carry the ones for the breakfasts on those days, Blue Man when we went there, the "Citywalk" cards for the bars/dance halls if we went there after hours. And since we don't want to keep these all in the hotel room and with being able to change our plans at any time, we had to basically carry ALL of them. That's why we had 7 cards per person, and since my kids are younger and my wife wanted to wear something without pockets, daddy has to carry all of these little cards and keep them sorted and pull out the ones for the "train" ride and gates, and different ones for each of the other rides, and pull out the ones for breakfast, then for going to a dance, etc., etc. At least now I understand why you see all those lanyards in D where it makes almost no sense to have one while in U it's almost a requirement.

As to finding your way around RPR, yes you walk in the front door and you can go left or right. There is not a sign right there and there isn't one over the front desk at least when I was there. I know because I looked, walked back out and came back through again figuring I just missed it somewhere along the way, and I actually even asked my wife to look because I thought maybe I just missed something and she didn't spot anything either. I'm not a road warrior but I travel a lot and believe me some of the higher end hotel front desks can be pretty hidden on the far side of a giant fountain or on a different floor of the building, and lately even the mid grades have been built with the lobby somewhere down the side of the building instead of out front. As I went right, I sort of stumbled into the restaurant so I knew to turn around and go left. On the left side I THOUGHT it was the front desk but again no sign so hard to tell whether it was just concierge or something else so I walked past and asked what turned out to be concierge (that was marked). It's obvious now, just pointing out how that one tastefully decorated sign over the desk or a small one on the counter would save some grief for someone that's listened to hours of moaning over sun burns, soreness, boredom, bathroom breaks, how hungry they are, etc.

Thank you for the clip notes. And the lesson on RFID?.............you certainly seem very knowledgable on those.

Don't see much clarification really..........I would stil disagree with most of your opinions as in aggressive valet, no food options after pool closes, and the positioning of the lobby.......there are signs.............I honestly struggle to see how one person could not see where the lobby is positioned. Even so, the concierge desk is what........10 steps away from check in??

There are many points you mention that I fail to see the point in covering..........but, I'll just say I glad you did enjoy some of what universal has to offer. Shame you weren't impressed with more.

 

[Kivara]

*raises hand timidly*

Going to Universal for the first time as a family in less than two weeks. Looking forward to it!

So, why isn't it a good idea to book a package? Ours is already bought and paid for (tickets and RPR, did airfare separate) so it's not a big deal. Just curious. Is it just the price, or some other reason? (I will keep this in mind for next time.)

We have lanyards, but I'm trying to figure out how many cards we'll have to juggle. (We have the Photo Connect Star Cards, too.)

USUALLY you end up paying more for a package than if you price out things on their own. We have done packages before (for our first two trips, it just made things easier), I priced it out & found I could have saved a bit, but to me it was worth a little extra the first 2 times, until I got my "bearings" at Universal.

You will get a seperate lanyard for your photo card. Other cards you will carry: park pass, Express Pass, hotel room key card. We keep the room key card in the midle, and have the other 2 facing out on ether side for quick scanning (EP at every ride that takes it, park pass for Hogwarts Express & entry)

The only extra cards you might have that I can think of is if you do a meal deal, if you carry your CityWalk pass (we don't as they are for cover charges at clubs in evenings and we don't go to them ) and if you carry a discount card (AMEX/AAA)

EDIT: I see damo beat me to post

 

[paulengr]

"I'm seeing Disney value resorts in area of $170 a night, often you can find wonderful discounts on the onsite Loews properties."

There's no comparison here. That would be like comparing RPR to a nice Super 8. The amenities at the value resorts pale in comparison. Really should be comparing it to say the Swan/Dolphin. The Magic Kingdom deluxes are similar but don't have the restaurant selection to match.

 

[Annchristine65]

Been to Disney a couple of times, and been to Universal a couple of times. Love them both. I have never gone to Universal expecting it be like Disney and vice versa. And I've never seen either advertising as such. I have never understood people trying to compare them. They are separate entities. It's like comparing apples and oranges, both fruits but 2 completely different fruits. Don't want to offend anyone, but this topic drives me coo-coo.

 

[thegajone]

I don't see why they can't be compared? They're both top-tier amusement parks that are within a few miles of each other. I can't understand why they shouldn't be compared at all.

 

[fivikse]

We have been to Disney twice before and did our first trip to Universal last year - I don't consider us super fans of either park, but we do enjoy both. In my opinion, OP has some valid complaints. I thought both of Op's posts were pretty balanced and did not seem to be attacking Universal or glorifying Disney.

While we didn't experience all of the same issues as OP, we did have some that were similar. It was unusually difficult trying to unload our bags and then self park at RPR, but we didn't have trouble finding the front desk. We had some problems keeping up with the various tickets and passes, and had a big issue similar to his BMG ticket issue (ours wasn't for BMG) where the hotel to sent us to one place who sent us to another who sent us to guest services. Which took up a good two hours and left us pretty unhappy with Universal that day.

Unlike OP, we encountered some horribly rude workers (along with some nice ones). That doesn't mean I think his account of super friendly workers is wrong, just that we had different experiences in that area.

I agree that most people who have been to both (and DLR) are going to compare them. They are competitors - of course you want to know which aspects of each were better or worse.

It seems like OP has been jumped on for what appeared to be a fair assessment. Your experience may be different, but that doesn't invalidate his experiences.

I find this board very helpful for information, but sometimes anything critical of Universal is denied or made light of by the "regulars." I know I intentionally did not post a trip report when we got back last year because of some negative experiences that I thought would not be well-received. Which is unfortunate because then the new people who come for information are left with only one side.

Not to say we had a terrible time! We are planning a split WDW/Uni trip for this summer. However, if the girls were not such huge Harry Potter fans, I'm not sure we would be in such a rush to return. But we also do not rush back to Disney year after year

 

[schumigirl]

We have been to Disney twice before and did our first trip to Universal last year - I don't consider us super fans of either park, but we do enjoy both. In my opinion, OP has some valid complaints. I thought both of Op's posts were pretty balanced and did not seem to be attacking Universal or glorifying Disney.

While we didn't experience all of the same issues as OP, we did have some that were similar. It was unusually difficult trying to unload our bags and then self park at RPR, but we didn't have trouble finding the front desk. We had some problems keeping up with the various tickets and passes, and had a big issue similar to his BMG ticket issue (ours wasn't for BMG) where the hotel to sent us to one place who sent us to another who sent us to guest services. Which took up a good two hours and left us pretty unhappy with Universal that day.

Unlike OP, we encountered some horribly rude workers (along with some nice ones). That doesn't mean I think his account of super friendly workers is wrong, just that we had different experiences in that area.

I agree that most people who have been to both (and DLR) are going to compare them. They are competitors - of course you want to know which aspects of each were better or worse.

It seems like OP has been jumped on for what appeared to be a fair assessment. Your experience may be different, but that doesn't invalidate his experiences.

I find this board very helpful for information, but sometimes anything critical of Universal is denied or made light of by the "regulars." I know I intentionally did not post a trip report when we got back last year because of some negative experiences that I thought would not be well-received. Which is unfortunate because then the new people who come for information are left with only one side.

Not to say we had a terrible time! We are planning a split WDW/Uni trip for this summer. However, if the girls were not such huge Harry Potter fans, I'm not sure we would be in such a rush to return. But we also do not rush back to Disney year after year

He may have felt his points were valid, I picked up on some things that were not accurate.........just for one, his comments he couldn't get food after the pool closes. Totally inaccurate. I don't think he was jumped on........several things were clarified.

Someone who hasn't been before shouldn't be reading something that isn't accurate.

I tend to think more of a review, negative or otherwise if the poster isn't constantly telling us how well Disney does things. Every so often folks come here to post how bad Universal is how they can do the whole of a universal in an afternoon and they won't be back and so on.

I don't go to Disney, but don't feel the need to go announce it on the Disney side of the boards.........who would really care??

You're right everyone has an opinion..........criticism is fine if valid.........but bias sometimes is very evident in people's posts and I do wonder about people's agenda sometimes.

 

[Annchristine65]

I don't see why they can't be compared? They're both top-tier amusement parks that are within a few miles of each other. I can't understand why they shouldn't be compared at all.

Sure y

I don't see why they can't be compared? They're both top-tier amusement parks that are within a few miles of each other. I can't understand why they shouldn't be compared at all.

Just don't see the point.

 

[keishashadow]

Ah! OK. Now I know. DH is very fond of going through AAA. (There was a long-ago disaster on a trip for his family and they handled it.) So we usually go that.

Thanks.

damo said it well. Bottom-line is if you are happy with the package you booked, then you got a 'good deal'. Life is too short for vacation regrets...enjoy your trip!

 

[keishashadow]

"I'm seeing Disney value resorts in area of $170 a night, often you can find wonderful discounts on the onsite Loews properties."

There's no comparison here. That would be like comparing RPR to a nice Super 8. The amenities at the value resorts pale in comparison. Really should be comparing it to say the Swan/Dolphin. The Magic Kingdom deluxes are similar but don't have the restaurant selection to match.

lol I wasn't making a comparison as to equal value What i said was Universal deluxe rooms are often in same ballpark as WDW. It's apples and oranges, but both costing the same $.

people who haven't stayed at the onsite resorts consistently tend to under-estimate how nice the properties truly are, when combined with the FOTL = heavenly.

 

[keishashadow]

Some things bear clarification here...

First, Disney fan boy? Not really. I don't work for a travel agent, never have. So I'm not into the whole U vs D bashing for sales thing. I could care less. My focus is on myself and my family. If one or the other offers something that appeals better, that's the decision maker. More on this in a bit in which I will do the only true "D vs. U" comparison. In fact this month I had to say "OK, it's time to schedule so we can get our ADR's" and my youngest daughter at age 8 said, "Can we just skip D and go to U instead?"" So that pretty much sums up how the pendulum has shifted after one trip. Maybe because it's a new experience or a recent experience.

My post was a combination of what was good and what was bad for Universal. Comparisons to Disney was mostly to point out either things they did better or things they did worse for context. Most people that have gone to one probably went to the other so we have common experience, especially when it's the "DIS" boards. The purpose of my post isn't a review so much as knowing that Universal reads these boards just as much as Disney does to point out some areas that need some definite improvement from a first-timer perspective. Some are small things, some are very good. The positives were also pointing out that this isn't a strictly "slam Universal" post. In fact quite the opposite although I reserved defending either Disney or Universal because that's not the point. But it's obviously been interpreted another way.

In some ways based on the responses I'd almost suspect they're from travel agents pushing for U vs. D and some even pointed out how fellow travel agents aren't allowed to discuss the other brand. Well I didn't go into details but I met one U part time employee that also works at D some of the time and has both U and D badges. Surprisingly he said that even with the thousands of employees at both, there are only a handful that he has run into that actually work at both companies routinely. He said that training, procedures, etc., are almost identical and that he's only once or twice accidentally pulled out the wrong badge at the gate. He was pretty neutral overall and liked them both for different reasons, and I think based on body language this was an honest opinion.

If you are actually reading my posts and trying to make up your mind about D vs. U, then let me make this easy for you. There are three reasons that D should be considered over U. First is the easy one. If you have little kids, especially girls, say tweens or younger, D wins hands down. They have much more of the little kid franchise. Fiona and Marge Simpson aren't going to hold a candle to the legions of princesses D has to offer. Try what you want dads but trust me, you won't win this battle until you find yourself reading Harry Potter at bed time over Ariel and her fishy friends. Second is size. If you only have 3 or even 4 days, I'd strongly discourage you from going to D at all especially if its your first time unless you cut down on the number of parks or opt for Disneyland. The place is that big. If you want an "all inclusive" theme park experience, D is it. In fact you can get some really good golf and some of the most fun bass fishing I've ever had anywhere done while you are at it if you can convince the girls to let you get away for a couple hours or to come with. You can comfortably do almost everything in a week but you will have to pick and choose if it's less than that. But for U, 2 to 3 days is about right. After that, you're going to be looking for something else to do. At D this kicks in at around 7 days and growing. Third is cost. After about 2 days like most other theme parks, U deeply discounts their tickets or makes them outright free. The goal here is to get you to come back for a little more shopping and eating and make a little more money off that since they've already "paid" for the park, rides, etc., on the first couple days. D does exactly the same thing except they start deeply discounting starting around day 4 or 5 to the point where the ticket prices for say 6 vs. 7 days is often under $20 last time I checked (they have been creeping up over time). So as the length of your vacation grows you will be finding as we have that when you compare the cost of say going to D vs. going to U and somewhere else for a week, D wins. Somewhere in these with higher prices on everything at some point I'm sure that even if tickets were free after day 4, D will still price themselves out of the market but this hasn't happened yet. There, that's the three arguments in favor of D.

About 15+ years ago, Disney was a lot more like Universal of today in a lot of ways. Back then we lived in southern Georgia. If you drive to Florida then you know that happy feeling that you have FINALLY gotten through Georgia and its not much further now? Well that was us except that we didn't have the feeling of dread driving down I-75 and knowing that we had almost half a day of Georgia to drive across. We could easily get rooms at reasonable rates and shoot down there for a long weekend multiple times a year. We knew every corner of the parks, even knew how to go in/out through the northern parts of the park where the water handling equipment is at to get to 535 instead of driving through the crowded Downtown Disney area, way before GPS was as common as it is. If you didn't have ADR's, you would expect to wait about 30-40 minutes during peaks or 10-20 during non-peaks, same as it is outside Disney. Fast Pass as I recall was just being tested and only on the most popular rides. So you had a "virtual queue" for just those rides. That's all gone now. There were many other parallels but suffice to say that I almost want to say that Universal is very much how Disney WAS a couple decades ago. They've made lots of improvements but slowly a little bit of the fun has disappeared.

So lets bring it up to present day and the last big vacation that we just took. My wife's work dragged their feet on approving vacation time so much that we had 2 weeks notice. So ADR's, FastPass plus scheduling, etc., was all going to be things like priority seating for an unpopular parade that you normally just stopped and watched if you were there. On top of that looking at crowd levels on the crowd calendars of 10/10 for the entire Spring break week meant that we'd spend most of our quality time standing in line listening to the kids bellyaching about how much fun we weren't having as compared to when they are used to going in late August or September when we have the place almost to ourselves and even without Fastpasses they can pretty much ride again and again as much as they want in single rider with no lines until they get bored. So if it was a choice between Disney and anything else, or even nothing at all and staying home at this point, Disney was automatically out, no matter how many princess autographs we would miss (and without ADR's that was going to be a lot). That meant considering other options. If you want to call this a "Universal vs. Virgin Islands" rant, then so be it because that's a lot more accurate than U vs. D.

I didn't bring up Express Pass as a "good" because I'm ambivalent about it. I've seen Disney Fast Pass on the very first year it was implemented on a select few rides. It was almost the same as it was 10 years later (except with more rides on it) and overall never achieved a good balance of fast pass vs. normal pass. At least from my perspective I've seen parks with this system that basically only let express pass holders on the rides so when it gets crowded you literally have to pay extra to play. I don't know the ratio of express-to-standard lines Universal is using (it looked like 1:1) but I've been on both sides of the line before and overall while I appreciate what the parks are doing with these things I found it pretty unfair to basically double the cost to "legally" cut in line. We were basically shut out before at Dollywood because of this at certain times of the day and certain rides so its nice to have but I'm not a fan overall. I paid for it because I didn't want a repeat Dollywood style experience. Its bad enough when you get people cutting in line in various schemes and makes people get irritable spending that much time standing in line. The express pass system only seems to make it worse. So without knowing Universal all that well and with the huge amount of "you really, really, really need an express pass" it seemed like this was another "shutout" situation so I booked RPR for that one reason only. Frankly if the park is THAT crowded you can barely move around anywhere else, restaurants and shops are essentially overloaded, and the whole experience overall is just plain not that much fun. So I may be in the 0.1% minority of people but I just don't like the things at all. Not for the price but for the fact that to make the system actually work as intended we'd need express pass rides, shopping, restaurants, etc. Disney approaches this with ADR's and Fast Pass Plus but come on, you're on vacation. Do you want your ENTIRE day in your cell phone or day planner and have event after event scheduled as if you're at work or be able to just ignore the schedule for the most part and be able to just hang out and have fun doing what you want, when you want, where you want, which is supposed to be the point of a theme park experience vs. say all the activities down on International Blvd.? So maybe its just me and yes they're convenient when it gets THAT crowded to get in a couple more rides but when it does, its also time to go to another area, out to Citywalk for a bite or do a little shopping, or take the "train" over to the other park. Express pass just creates "tiered" queues but queues none the less, and Fast Pass creates virtual queues with time slots, but the overall effect is to split the lines down into smaller ones so that you can pack that many more happy people into the same park at the same time, paradoxically increasing crowd levels and making it that much less enjoyable in the rest of the park.

As to the whole "horrors, never, never, never, ever get a package, especially at Universal", do your shopping because I did. It's not true that packages NEVER make sense at Universal. I didn't just look at Universal's web site, and I definitely didn't look at only packages. Actually getting packages and package information was such a pain that at first I didn't even try to go that route. Most travel sites all specifically tell you not to bother with the packages in MOST cases for Universal and even the most popular D site outside of DIS (Mousesavers) specifically states that in most cases D packages are a waste of money. With U, they try to tack on a hotel night on both ends of the package, making say 2 nights/3 days into 4 nights/3 days. In our particular case we needed to stay for 4 nights and be in the parks for 3 days because when going in spring break week we knew the best time to get on rides was early in the morning. I priced the hotel and tickets separate and I checked all the obvious sources including Undercover Tourist, etc. Universal kicked in two breakfasts at the two restaurants in each of the Harry Potter lands. The bill for each one if I had paid for it was about $50 so it's not a big cost but I didn't pay more for the package. I could have squeezed out staying only 2 nights instead of 4 but we were travelling over there from Tampa from earlier in the week and driving home without going in the parks on the last day so we were going to stay in a hotel somewhere and yes it would have been cheaper to switch hotels but if you have a wife and two kids and all their luggage for an 8 day vacation, trust me the fewer times you go in/out of a hotel the better. I had already been looking at off site non-partner hotels as well as on sites and I've been to Orlando plenty of times in years past at various meetings and conventions that never involved a theme park so I have a pretty good "lay of the land". I have pretty much decided that if we go again we're not doing 4 nights/3 days so the package won't make sense but I'll compare it to other options every time. I'm an engineer. I end up with a spreadsheet with like a dozen columns when I do these things and my wife can sit there and crank out twice that many theories and ideas so I need the spreadsheet just so that I can work with her on it.

Second was buying BMG tickets separately. It saved me all of about $10 to add them onto the ticket purchase compared to elsewhere and with these in particular since it was a true add-on, I looked and this as the SLIGHTLY cheaper way to go. If I had known that the web site DROPPED park tickets when I added BMG+park tickets and then dropped park-only tickets, I might have tried to do it differently. Again...I've never gone to Universal before so there is definitely a learning curve here.

And I know exactly how much those little kiosks, RFID reader heads, etc., cost because I'm in the automation business and I know who built them personally because I do business with a lot of the same companies that they do business with. I saw some of the stuff before they were installed although the way D does things we didn't know exactly what they were for. First and foremost we're talking about 2 different technologies whose only purpose is identification: RFID and magstripe. Magstripe is older but they are both very inexpensive. The format for both is fairly standard among a wide variety of manufacturers. Both types of systems have some kind of unique serial number in the device as well as a small amount of data storage. A Magstripe typically has 4 "stripes" of data on the 1/4" band you see and the format is almost universal with all magstripe reader/writers. The stripe itself is magnetic tape, same as VHS or cassette tape. RFID is slightly more complicated only because it has a big antenna that provides power and signals to the chip. The chip itself is very tiny and low power. The RFID "reader" first blasts it with radio waves to power it up, then runs through a quick sequence to ensure that it is only talking to one RFID chip at a time, then either reads or writes data to it, and very few users write unlike magstripe. The size and shape of the antenna makes it work at different distances and frequencies and makes the difference between something that costs about $0.01 and perhaps $1.00. You can see a lot of them for yourself. Download an RFID reader for most phones that can read them and walk around a Walmart store for a while and you'd be amazed as what you find out. NFC is by the way a simplified version of the existing RFID standards. The other half of the system is that there is always a database that is connected to the "readers". The database stores any kind of data you want such as how many quick service credits you have at Disney World, or whether or not you are scheduled for the 9 PM Blue Man Group show, or whether your hotel room key is still valid. This information isn't usually stored on the card itself to avoid cheating (writers are cheap too). You don't create new serial numbers as long as you can control whether or not the serial number is unique, as long as the data is in the database. So Universal can easily read Loews key cards with their magstripe readers and vice versa.

I'm not suggesting Universal should change everything to RFID and issue "universal bands". Ultimately in the long term RFID probably makes sense to go to for both Universal and Loews because it is as cheap or cheaper than magstripe, holds up longer, and has fewer "reader" error issues to deal with. In the mean time there's no reason to abort/dump magstripe cards. All I'm suggesting is to fix the way they handle the database either separately or collectively. I'm suggesting going to a single card per guest or perhaps two (one for each company). As described by others typically you'd have just 3 (park pass, express pass, room key) but this quickly grows if you have extra tickets and options as we did. I had to carry the ones for the breakfasts on those days, Blue Man when we went there, the "Citywalk" cards for the bars/dance halls if we went there after hours. And since we don't want to keep these all in the hotel room and with being able to change our plans at any time, we had to basically carry ALL of them. That's why we had 7 cards per person, and since my kids are younger and my wife wanted to wear something without pockets, daddy has to carry all of these little cards and keep them sorted and pull out the ones for the "train" ride and gates, and different ones for each of the other rides, and pull out the ones for breakfast, then for going to a dance, etc., etc. At least now I understand why you see all those lanyards in D where it makes almost no sense to have one while in U it's almost a requirement.

As to finding your way around RPR, yes you walk in the front door and you can go left or right. There is not a sign right there and there isn't one over the front desk at least when I was there. I know because I looked, walked back out and came back through again figuring I just missed it somewhere along the way, and I actually even asked my wife to look because I thought maybe I just missed something and she didn't spot anything either. I'm not a road warrior but I travel a lot and believe me some of the higher end hotel front desks can be pretty hidden on the far side of a giant fountain or on a different floor of the building, and lately even the mid grades have been built with the lobby somewhere down the side of the building instead of out front. As I went right, I sort of stumbled into the restaurant so I knew to turn around and go left. On the left side I THOUGHT it was the front desk but again no sign so hard to tell whether it was just concierge or something else so I walked past and asked what turned out to be concierge (that was marked). It's obvious now, just pointing out how that one tastefully decorated sign over the desk or a small one on the counter would save some grief for someone that's listened to hours of moaning over sun burns, soreness, boredom, bathroom breaks, how hungry they are, etc.

longest post i've seen in a long time, you've put a great deal of thought into this and are certainly entitled to state your personal (first time? I believe) experience @ Universal. We play nice here, having different opinions is encouraged by the management.

Not catching your comment re questioning whether posters are TAs posting here? fyi, as far as know we are all plain old Universal fans who enjoy sharing their love of the park as well as hints to help others here. Full disclosure: will state that I drink the Disney Kool-aid (the mouse owns its pound of my flesh via DVC lol) and enjoy Sea World, Discovery Cove & even make the drive down to BG now & again when in Orando. All are great options with their own special charms and ways of doing things. Many here always do split trips.

imo you cannot favoraby compare a free, virtually unlimited FOTL pass that guests receive to WDW's FP system. There is something to be said for just rolling out bed 'whenever', not making any advance ride reservations, and being able to pick & choose (other than HP, etc.) No issue with the cards for us, they fit handily in a small zipped lanyard that can be attached to a belt loop or worn around neck, etc.

Re the RPR lobby - it is stunning. Surprised you say you couldn't see the checkin area via looking thru the glass walls surrounding the courtyard, but it's all in one's perspective I suppose. On a positive note, since you didn't mention seeing a long line in front of the checkin counter, at least you had a short experience there.

 

[cbsnyber1]

That being said, I am truly sorry for the OP - because Uni is different. Packages aren't the way to go, we on this side of the boards know that, but a WDW convert doesn't.

Now slightly freaking out. I did a Uni package because it seemed simple - rooms, park tix, BMG tix, all in one bundle. I may not have the best price (other than the rooms which are booked under Stay More Save More) but I liked the convenience. We get our park tix at check in at the hotel, and retrieve our BMG tix at the box office the night of the show. Easy - peasy, right? So, is price the main reason for not doing a Uni package?

For our group the convenience was more important that the final cost - I just didn't want to mess with all the price comparison issues. I just called Uni and booked away! I have used Undercover Tourist in the past but this time there were complications: wanted the 14 day unlimited tix which UT doesn't seem to handle, and wanted BMG tix added to the package. Uni reservations handled everything.