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.
The deluxe I've stayed at, BW (if you're not counting DVC villas in deluxe), couldn't just unload our bags. One person unloaded them, one person took the cart, then handed it over to a THIRD person. Then they put the bags in back. Which then required us to have a fourth person bring them to the room. And each person wanted a tip.
At RPR it's just 3 people doing that. I feel that that's nicer than 4.
And I have never been escorted to the front desk anywhere. Thankfully that's not a service I would EVER want.
Did you perhaps pull up to the Valet area, and that's why you felt pressured to do Valet? Were they just telling you "this is valet that is not", but because it was spring break and (was it you? I was getting lost) you had 2 weeks to plan this and it was a bit of a whirlwind that there was a misunderstanding?
I've never even been ASKED if we wanted Valet. The one time we did we sought it out.
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.
I do hope you knew the parking price before you pulled in.
And good luck finding the front desk at Royal Pacific...signage is absent here.
Huh. Perhaps someone had spilled something on the sign and they were cleaning it. Pretty sure there has been a sign when we've stayed there. But if not, it's easy to find. Look right; no front desk. Look left, ah, front desk.
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.
You explained later why you carried all of that all the time, but I can't quite imagine.
But...from our Disney days before the current "now I get to carry MORE with me!" magicband days, we have lots of lanyards and a fabulous Witz brand waterproof hard plastic pouch. DS has one too; it's red and has WDW branding on it because we bought it at BW. For all the tickets and FPs and etc Disney used to make you carry.
Disneyland still does.
I actually prefer it.
But we don't go to citypass clubs so we wouldn't want the cover charge tickets, the breakfast tickets would be carried on 2 days, BMG group tickets carried for one day, right? In my family everyone carries their own lanyard and pouch. Express pass facing one way through the clearest side of the pouch, and for me my AP on the other side, with room key, CC, ID, and cash sandwiched in between! DS has just the three cards. DH actually prefers a wallet. Crazy dude.
Sometimes our group or others held up lines just searching through a bill fold of tickets to find the right ones
What a bummer. Lanyards and Witz brand "see it safe lockers" are fabulous! I love my Ravenclaw house tie lanyard, personally. Totally overtook all the Disney lanyards I have in my drawer.
No carrot ketchup in sight.
What does that mean?
Taking the bus is never a good idea, unlike Disney, the three hotels are designed to be walked to or take the very convenient boats.......takes minutes either way. The buses are ideal if you are going between resorts and there's maybe lightning when boats stop. That's the only time I would ever recommend using them. I'm surprised you did.
I do think he was referring to the Disney Springs buses, not the bus at Universal.
No, it's not Disney and most of us hope it never will be.
Heck yeah.
Charging $5 to use a drier after they soak you on the Popeye ride.
But Disney has NOTHING to dry you off if they soak you. Like the time my cousin and her husband went on Splash in the first row with me (pre weight loss) and DH (a big guy) sat behind them. They were wet the rest of the day. Or at DisneyLAND on Splash when my husband sat behind my trim marathoner brother. Wet to the underpants all day long. They would have paid a lot for one of those dryers.
That said, DH used the one outside Bluto's Barges, and it did very little with cotton clothing.
But again, Disney has NOTHING that serves this purpose, so actually Universal wins this round, because they have *something*, which is better than the nothing WDW provides.
There are no rides at disney where you have to buy a special ticket such as a park hopper to ride. The basic ticket accesses all rides.
Disneyland. Monorail. Cannot ride if you don't have a park ticket.
I can't imagine not wanting to park hop, personally. Thanks, AP!
There are no machines outside kali river rapids looking for five dollar bills.
There are no machines at all there. You have no choice but to drip dry.
We had 4 Universal and did 2 half day in each park +
HHN RIP package and it was wayyyy too much. Half day is enough in each of the parks in my opinion
Makes me sad, HappyGrape.
Our first Uni trip was 4 days; 2 were partial, 2 were full. The last day we had to be dragged out of the parks to go back to WDW, and it was just b/c the parks closed early (December) and we were hungry (ADR at Sanaa). We longed for more. We were loathe to go back to WDW.
Our longest Uni trip was 8 nights. ALAS my son and I got mega-awful sick while at WDW, stayed sick during our days in Daytona, were starting to recuperate when we got to Universal. I had lost so much weight from the illness that my skinny jeans were hanging off of me and my husband got a scared look on his face when we picked him up from the airport on our way from Daytona to Universal. One long day was spent watching The Life of Pi in our room at Portofino...my son put it on and watched the whole thing...he was something like 9 at the time...oh boy was he sick. So our 8 nights there didn't quite go as planned, but if ya gotta be sick while at a hotel, might as well make it Portofino club level! (the wine they let me take back to the room each night, along with the cookies, helped me gain back the scary weight I had dropped) (and helped me cope with my son having been so ill...and I'd been so ill I never once thought "get a face mask and let's catch a plane home")
Someday we'll do the 8 nighter again and NOT get sick. (knock wood) I look forward to that trip.
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.
Ayep.
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.
Huh.
Longtime posters trying to help you with what feel like mistakes you made in the short time you had to plan, trying to help OTHER newbies to not make those mistakes...not sure why you are saying people are travel agents for Universal? Odd response.
And I don't know what "some even pointed out how fellow travel agents aren't allowed to discuss the other brand" means? Would you like to explain? Perhaps while explaining "carrot ketchup"?
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.?
And that is EXACTLY what unlimited Express Pass does for me. Ahhhhhh.
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.
Were you going to Disney 3+ years ago? If you were, you know perfectly well that the lanyards are sold there because they were needed. Lanyards led to pin trading and pins lead to lanyards. The point of the lanyards, though, was to hold all of your cards.
Still VERY needed at WDW if you're going to be responsible about it. An ID and insurance card, in case your day ends in an ER. A credit card in case charging back to the room (via card or MB) fails. Some extra cash in case some kid suckers you into a balloon. Those things should be brought with you at all times at a themepark, so lanyards and good pouches are still VERY much needed at WDW unless you fall for the MB marketing scheme... Hope there are no MB charging failures, or you don't get carded while trying to get a Lapu Lapu there!
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
Big LONG desk with spots to stand in front of and employees there, and a box to put keycards in for quick checkout? To me that screams checkin/front desk...
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.
Agreed.
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.
Why *should they* be compared? Let's accept each place for what it is, LEARN what each place is and what to expect, and enjoy them instead.
Someone who hasn't been before shouldn't be reading something that isn't accurate.
Totally agree. Accuracy is KEY. On the WDW side, too.
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.
Agreed.
I don't think the OP was jumped on at all.
Agreed. Helped, yes.
Carrot ketchup? I assume I could google, but frankly I'm afraid of urban dictionary having an opinion on those words together.
