We decided to make a quick trip to Universal before my wife starts back to her teaching job. We made the decision 2 weeks out.
Hotel: When I looked for AP room rates, the premier resorts only had super expensive rooms - like $1400/night presidential suites. Nothing at Cabana Bay, Dockside was $134/night. Both Surfside and Aventura were $109. We chose Aventura if for no other reason than we hadn't stayed there before.
Park Plans: We also decided to do a day at Volcano Bay - we've never been there before. I haven't been to a water park in probably 35 years... and that was to Wet N Wild. I'm not a huge swimming or beach fan but VB looks like it will be fun. We also decided to get premium seating so that we were assured some kind of covered seating. It was much more than I wanted to spend ($200!!), but I would have been miserable if we ended up in uncovered seats either being blasted by the sun or us and our stuff getting soaked by the inevitable afternoon shower.
Our plan is to leave early Tuesday morning and make it to Orlando around lunch time. We'll check into the hotel(s) (more on that in a bit) and head to US/IOA for the rest of the day. We'll spend Wednesday in US/IOA - probably using Early Entry for IOA and hitting Velocicoaster and/or Hagrids as often as we can/want.
Thursday is VB day, and we'll play Friday by ear. We may spend a few hours in US/IOA before heading home... or maybe not.
Food: We've never pre-planned dinners on our Universal trips. We had longer than normal waits on our trip in October and, reading some recent reports, it seems like it hasn't improved much. We grabbed times for NBC Grill and Vivo for the park days. On the VB day, we'll just figure it out as we go since we have no idea how long we'll stay there.
No express pass?? This would be our first trip to Universal without EP. On our first trip, we bought them as add-ons. Since then, we've stayed at a premier hotel to get the EP benefit (we typically arrive late at night and stay somewhere cheap, then move over to a premier the next morning).
We looked at the add-on EPs and they are $250 each per day so that was a no go. We were okay with having to tour without EP. We figured we'd use some single rider lines if things got too long. However, I kept checking the hotel AP rates to see if something popped up at the premiers.
Yesterday afternoon, a Club Level room opened up at Royal Pacific for $465. We debated grabbing that for Tuesday night and keeping Aventura for the rest of the nights, but felt it was a little too steep. We wouldn't get any benefit out of the Club, so we decided to pass.
Later this evening, I looked again and saw a Deluxe room at Portofino for $359 - now we're talking. I called and I couldn't remove the Aventura reservation for Tuesday night without losing the AP discount for the rest of the nights (bumping the nightly price up to $189), so we decided to double book that night. That will give us EP for our two long park days, and we'll still have the lower priced room the rest of the nights when we won't need EP. Overall, happy with the result - we essentially bought 4 EPs for $90 each.
I know some hate switching resorts, but it doesn't bother us - we've done it almost every Uni trip as well as trips abroad. The bigger pain will be having to check into two different hotels when we arrive on Tuesday.
I'll try to do some 'live' updates from the parks next week.
Hotel: When I looked for AP room rates, the premier resorts only had super expensive rooms - like $1400/night presidential suites. Nothing at Cabana Bay, Dockside was $134/night. Both Surfside and Aventura were $109. We chose Aventura if for no other reason than we hadn't stayed there before.
Park Plans: We also decided to do a day at Volcano Bay - we've never been there before. I haven't been to a water park in probably 35 years... and that was to Wet N Wild. I'm not a huge swimming or beach fan but VB looks like it will be fun. We also decided to get premium seating so that we were assured some kind of covered seating. It was much more than I wanted to spend ($200!!), but I would have been miserable if we ended up in uncovered seats either being blasted by the sun or us and our stuff getting soaked by the inevitable afternoon shower.
Our plan is to leave early Tuesday morning and make it to Orlando around lunch time. We'll check into the hotel(s) (more on that in a bit) and head to US/IOA for the rest of the day. We'll spend Wednesday in US/IOA - probably using Early Entry for IOA and hitting Velocicoaster and/or Hagrids as often as we can/want.
Thursday is VB day, and we'll play Friday by ear. We may spend a few hours in US/IOA before heading home... or maybe not.
Food: We've never pre-planned dinners on our Universal trips. We had longer than normal waits on our trip in October and, reading some recent reports, it seems like it hasn't improved much. We grabbed times for NBC Grill and Vivo for the park days. On the VB day, we'll just figure it out as we go since we have no idea how long we'll stay there.
No express pass?? This would be our first trip to Universal without EP. On our first trip, we bought them as add-ons. Since then, we've stayed at a premier hotel to get the EP benefit (we typically arrive late at night and stay somewhere cheap, then move over to a premier the next morning).
We looked at the add-on EPs and they are $250 each per day so that was a no go. We were okay with having to tour without EP. We figured we'd use some single rider lines if things got too long. However, I kept checking the hotel AP rates to see if something popped up at the premiers.
Yesterday afternoon, a Club Level room opened up at Royal Pacific for $465. We debated grabbing that for Tuesday night and keeping Aventura for the rest of the nights, but felt it was a little too steep. We wouldn't get any benefit out of the Club, so we decided to pass.
Later this evening, I looked again and saw a Deluxe room at Portofino for $359 - now we're talking. I called and I couldn't remove the Aventura reservation for Tuesday night without losing the AP discount for the rest of the nights (bumping the nightly price up to $189), so we decided to double book that night. That will give us EP for our two long park days, and we'll still have the lower priced room the rest of the nights when we won't need EP. Overall, happy with the result - we essentially bought 4 EPs for $90 each.
I know some hate switching resorts, but it doesn't bother us - we've done it almost every Uni trip as well as trips abroad. The bigger pain will be having to check into two different hotels when we arrive on Tuesday.
I'll try to do some 'live' updates from the parks next week.
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