Universal + Disney trip April 2015

[BelleQ]

We are planning a trip to Universal/Disney for the last week in April 2015. Never too early to plan right??

I need some advice from all you seasoned Universal visitors as we have never been to Universal before. We went to WDW when my kids were 6 & 8. Next year they will be 10 & 12 so I think they will enjoy some of the more thrilling rides at Disney.

So here's the plan...
We will arrive in Orlando Saturday 9 am and will leave the following Saturday at 6 p.m. We want 'just enough' time at both resorts (Universal & Disney). I was thinking we should do Disney first and save the new-to-us Universal for the last few days of the trip. We will be staying at Art of Animation at WDW and CabanaBay at Universal - so yes, we will be on site.

The big question is "How many days at Universal?"

We were planning on arriving at WDW on Saturday 4/25 at 9ish-am and leaving WDW on Thursday morning 4/30/15 - that would give us 5 full days at WDW - planning to visit MK, E, HS, Typhoon, DD, and only do a few things at AK (we aren't crazy about AK). Our last/first family trip to WDW we had 8 full days so we basically did most everything except a water park because we went in October. We did the Halloween party too, so we had an excellent trip

So what would you do? How many days should we really plan for Universal? I think Cabana Bay looks amazing and my kids would want at least a half-day for pool time there. I know that the last week of April/first of May is not the busiest time in Orlando and the crowds will be lower than normal so we won't spend all of our time in lines. I just can't decide how many days to plan for Universal & Islands.

I hope this hasn't been too confusing. Just need some suggestions on the time to plan for each resort. Thanks!

 

[PrincessJo]

We did that exact trip in 2012.

We stayed at Universal for 3 days. One day in each park and then the third day to hit everything we wanted to do again or in case we had missed something. We followed that with 5 days at Disney. We were exhausted at the end

We stayed at the HRH because it was close and we were able to walk everywhere. You won't get express passes at Cabana Bay, but that's it. Other than that, it looks awesome.

We LOVED Universal and I'm glad we went there first. It was all new to us, so we ran around like nuts for 3 days trying to do everything and we're glad we did. We LOVE the rides... ALL of them. Especially my older teenager who has basically outgrown 80% of Disney. He loved the Spiderman, the Mummy, Despicable Me, the Simpsons so much we did all of them at least twice... some 3 or 4 times. It was a cinch with the express pass. We were pooped by the time we hit Disney and at the end of our 5 days there, we were just exhausted and snarky. That trip was a bit too long for us

This year we're skipping WDW entirely and just heading to Universal. We're dying to see the addition to WWOHP.

You are going to have a fabulous time!!