Since I have read so many posts comparing and bashing one or the other, including the resort hotels, I thought I would add my 2cents and give my experiences with both. I don't think you can honestly compare the two side by side as one being better than the other cuz they are two different kind of parks. IMHO that you can only point out what appeals to you and give your experiences with both, keeping in mind that it is your experience.
So here's my opinion on the two:
First, I would like to say that I grew up in Southern California going to Disneyland on a regular basis. We lived real close to it. I got married and eventually moved to Florida and visited Disneyworld for the first time. I was married with little kids and Dis seemed the way to go for the kids. At that time, Disneyland is all I knew. We decided to add a visit to USO. It was much more relaxed then Dis. I was starting to like USO a tad bit better. It seemed that after our Dis vacation, I needed a vacation to recoup from my vacation. Disney was non-stop compared to USO. We use to always stay off site when we went to both of these parks. A couple years ago we decided to go to both Dis and USO. We decided to stay on site at both. We have a large family and this trip we decided to take our two little girls so we were able to afford staying on site. We stayed at Pop Century at Dis and RPR at USO. One of the reasons I wanted to stay on site at Dis is because I read posts saying you could go back to the hotel and rest the kids mid-day and go back to the park later. I found that to be impossible to do. If it was just me doing so then it was no big deal to go back and forth(I actually had to do that, but that's another story,LOL). It would take way too much time to do. So, that idea doesn't work, at least not for my family. Anyhow, on to what I think about DisneyWorld and Resorts and Universal Studios and On site Resorts.
DisneyWorld: Pop Century was great. The kids had a blast. I enjoyed having the Dis atmosphere all around us and having the store/restaurant right there(sorry can't remember the name of the store/restaurant)was convenient. The room was clean. The service was great. The added attention from the housekeeping with placing the kids stuffed animals in the curtains and so forth was nice. Will we go back to pop century? Yes we will. What we didn't enjoy too much was the transportation to the parks. We drove to Dis so we had the option of the buses or driving ourselves to each park. We did both. This is where Universal wins hands down. It took so much time just getting to the parks. Then, when you got to the parks you had to fight through the crowds which got down right scary at times. In planning our Dis trip, I used TourguideMike, which helped out tremendously. I had every detail of our day planned out so that we didn't have to wait in lines forever and were able to make the best of our time. Even with the excellent tips from him, it got scary trying to get to some of the rides. You have to get there early and know all the tricks and still get trampled when attempting to get a fast pass just to be able to ride a popular ride. At the end of the day we would be exhausted. I like the fact that there are multiple parks but they are so far apart. That exact fact is what i love about USO.
USO: We stayed at RPR the first trip. We ended up extending our tickets to annual passes and went back and stayed at HRH. It was so much more relaxing. I wish they had more parks like Disney but would that then cause the same problem with getting to the parks taking so long like at Dis?
Our second trip to USO was great. We had some issues with the HRH but the perks of being so close to the parks and the fotl access is worth it. I wish the hotel wasn't so expensive but again, the perks for the parks makes me want to stay on site. It's so awesome to walk over to the park just to eat (we had the meal deal), watch the night time fireworks show and then walk back and crash.
Our little ones were 6 and 8 yrs old when we did both Dis and USO asked them what park they liked better? They liked both places but when we said we were going to USO this year they were and still are so excited. They keep watching their height to see how tall they are getting so they can go on some of the bigger rides. A quick note: We have family in Florida and when we did our two trips we separated the trips with our kids. The first trip was with the young-ins. The second trip we left the young-ins with family and took our two teenage girls and stayed at the HRH. So, the older ones never stayed at the RPR and the little ones never stayed at the HRH. I think the little ones are going to love the HRH.
My bottom line opinion on Universal Studios and DisneyWorld is this:
1.If you want to stay in a resort with the Disney theme all around you and you don't mind the transportation issues and your kids are younger then Disney is probably more for you. Keep in mind the crowd and the time of year you are going. Disney is a kind of vacation that you really need to take enough time to see it all. That means more vacation days. Don't try to cram it all in too quickly. You'll enjoy it more if you have enough days to really spread it out.
2. If you want to be close to the parks and be able to walk to them and take a mid-day break and go back to the hotel to rest or whatever you please, then USO and the on site resorts should be your choice(especially HRH).
I realize you can do this at some of the deluxe resorts at Dis but I feel it's more work and time consuming then it's worth.
3. The fotl access at USO blows away Dis fast pass(and trust me, I mastered the fast pass system at Dis).
4. We don't have to get up bright and early in the morning at USO to beet the crowds and long lines. Even though I'm always too excited to sleep in much. But, the option is there. It's funny and i never thought i would complain about this but i did find myself griping about having to walk what seemed forever through the express line on rides at USO that i was getting wiped out and out of breath by the time i got to the front of the line. I was with kids mind you and they wanted to rush up to the front of the line so i had to keep up. 
I do wish they would adjust the ropes in the express line when there's such a short line. It seems silly to walk so far. And yes, i did just go under some ropes to shorten the walk.
So my 2cents here is that each park has something to offer for everyone. It's just like every other theme park out there(just the most famous). Everyone has their own preferences in what they want in a vacation. Some people can financially afford to stay at deluxe resorts and stay at only the deluxe resorts at Dis. Some people can only afford to stay at the value resorts(that's us). We saved for a long time to stay on site at USO. For us, the perks of staying on site at USO made the expense of the hotel worth it. We still try to find the best deal at USO on site hotels.
I think the problem here on this forum is that even though it's convenient to have both a Dis board and a USO board on the same forum website, these two parks are in competition with each other. They are the two big theme parks in Orlando that compete for business. I'm not including Sea World cuz it's a theme park of a different kind(i hope that made sense). You have die hard Dis fans and die hard USO fans. I actually like both parks and resorts and have dislikes about both. But, the one thing that really irks me big time is when someone wants to come to a board and vent on an issue that occurred with their vacation, allot of people seem to attack them. Sometimes all you want to do is just vent. Or sometimes you want the thoughts and advice of seasoned park visitors who could help you on what to do about the situation. But the last thing the poster needs is to be attacked because they had a bad experience and feel the need to vent. Not everyone, including myself doesn't always word it perfectly and it comes across differently then i meant for it to. I've been posting on forums for a very long time and i have noticed that it's become difficult to express your feelings and experiences without having salt poured into your wounds by fellow posters. I'm not referring to any specific board. I'm talking about forums in general. It's really too bad that it has come to this. Why can't people just have the right to say what they want to as long as it's not vulgar or against board rules? Anyhow, that's my vent and now I'm done. Thank you for sticking with reading this post if you made it this far. Feel free to reply or move this post if it's in the wrong place. I apologize if it's in the wrong place.
So here's my opinion on the two:
First, I would like to say that I grew up in Southern California going to Disneyland on a regular basis. We lived real close to it. I got married and eventually moved to Florida and visited Disneyworld for the first time. I was married with little kids and Dis seemed the way to go for the kids. At that time, Disneyland is all I knew. We decided to add a visit to USO. It was much more relaxed then Dis. I was starting to like USO a tad bit better. It seemed that after our Dis vacation, I needed a vacation to recoup from my vacation. Disney was non-stop compared to USO. We use to always stay off site when we went to both of these parks. A couple years ago we decided to go to both Dis and USO. We decided to stay on site at both. We have a large family and this trip we decided to take our two little girls so we were able to afford staying on site. We stayed at Pop Century at Dis and RPR at USO. One of the reasons I wanted to stay on site at Dis is because I read posts saying you could go back to the hotel and rest the kids mid-day and go back to the park later. I found that to be impossible to do. If it was just me doing so then it was no big deal to go back and forth(I actually had to do that, but that's another story,LOL). It would take way too much time to do. So, that idea doesn't work, at least not for my family. Anyhow, on to what I think about DisneyWorld and Resorts and Universal Studios and On site Resorts.
DisneyWorld: Pop Century was great. The kids had a blast. I enjoyed having the Dis atmosphere all around us and having the store/restaurant right there(sorry can't remember the name of the store/restaurant)was convenient. The room was clean. The service was great. The added attention from the housekeeping with placing the kids stuffed animals in the curtains and so forth was nice. Will we go back to pop century? Yes we will. What we didn't enjoy too much was the transportation to the parks. We drove to Dis so we had the option of the buses or driving ourselves to each park. We did both. This is where Universal wins hands down. It took so much time just getting to the parks. Then, when you got to the parks you had to fight through the crowds which got down right scary at times. In planning our Dis trip, I used TourguideMike, which helped out tremendously. I had every detail of our day planned out so that we didn't have to wait in lines forever and were able to make the best of our time. Even with the excellent tips from him, it got scary trying to get to some of the rides. You have to get there early and know all the tricks and still get trampled when attempting to get a fast pass just to be able to ride a popular ride. At the end of the day we would be exhausted. I like the fact that there are multiple parks but they are so far apart. That exact fact is what i love about USO.
USO: We stayed at RPR the first trip. We ended up extending our tickets to annual passes and went back and stayed at HRH. It was so much more relaxing. I wish they had more parks like Disney but would that then cause the same problem with getting to the parks taking so long like at Dis?
Our second trip to USO was great. We had some issues with the HRH but the perks of being so close to the parks and the fotl access is worth it. I wish the hotel wasn't so expensive but again, the perks for the parks makes me want to stay on site. It's so awesome to walk over to the park just to eat (we had the meal deal), watch the night time fireworks show and then walk back and crash.
Our little ones were 6 and 8 yrs old when we did both Dis and USO asked them what park they liked better? They liked both places but when we said we were going to USO this year they were and still are so excited. They keep watching their height to see how tall they are getting so they can go on some of the bigger rides. A quick note: We have family in Florida and when we did our two trips we separated the trips with our kids. The first trip was with the young-ins. The second trip we left the young-ins with family and took our two teenage girls and stayed at the HRH. So, the older ones never stayed at the RPR and the little ones never stayed at the HRH. I think the little ones are going to love the HRH.
My bottom line opinion on Universal Studios and DisneyWorld is this:
1.If you want to stay in a resort with the Disney theme all around you and you don't mind the transportation issues and your kids are younger then Disney is probably more for you. Keep in mind the crowd and the time of year you are going. Disney is a kind of vacation that you really need to take enough time to see it all. That means more vacation days. Don't try to cram it all in too quickly. You'll enjoy it more if you have enough days to really spread it out.
2. If you want to be close to the parks and be able to walk to them and take a mid-day break and go back to the hotel to rest or whatever you please, then USO and the on site resorts should be your choice(especially HRH).
I realize you can do this at some of the deluxe resorts at Dis but I feel it's more work and time consuming then it's worth.
3. The fotl access at USO blows away Dis fast pass(and trust me, I mastered the fast pass system at Dis).
4. We don't have to get up bright and early in the morning at USO to beet the crowds and long lines. Even though I'm always too excited to sleep in much. But, the option is there. It's funny and i never thought i would complain about this but i did find myself griping about having to walk what seemed forever through the express line on rides at USO that i was getting wiped out and out of breath by the time i got to the front of the line.
I was with kids mind you and they wanted to rush up to the front of the line so i had to keep up. I do wish they would adjust the ropes in the express line when there's such a short line. It seems silly to walk so far. And yes, i did just go under some ropes to shorten the walk. So my 2cents here is that each park has something to offer for everyone. It's just like every other theme park out there(just the most famous). Everyone has their own preferences in what they want in a vacation. Some people can financially afford to stay at deluxe resorts and stay at only the deluxe resorts at Dis. Some people can only afford to stay at the value resorts(that's us). We saved for a long time to stay on site at USO. For us, the perks of staying on site at USO made the expense of the hotel worth it. We still try to find the best deal at USO on site hotels.
I think the problem here on this forum is that even though it's convenient to have both a Dis board and a USO board on the same forum website, these two parks are in competition with each other. They are the two big theme parks in Orlando that compete for business. I'm not including Sea World cuz it's a theme park of a different kind(i hope that made sense). You have die hard Dis fans and die hard USO fans. I actually like both parks and resorts and have dislikes about both. But, the one thing that really irks me big time is when someone wants to come to a board and vent on an issue that occurred with their vacation, allot of people seem to attack them. Sometimes all you want to do is just vent. Or sometimes you want the thoughts and advice of seasoned park visitors who could help you on what to do about the situation. But the last thing the poster needs is to be attacked because they had a bad experience and feel the need to vent. Not everyone, including myself doesn't always word it perfectly and it comes across differently then i meant for it to. I've been posting on forums for a very long time and i have noticed that it's become difficult to express your feelings and experiences without having salt poured into your wounds by fellow posters. I'm not referring to any specific board. I'm talking about forums in general. It's really too bad that it has come to this. Why can't people just have the right to say what they want to as long as it's not vulgar or against board rules? Anyhow, that's my vent and now I'm done. Thank you for sticking with reading this post if you made it this far. Feel free to reply or move this post if it's in the wrong place. I apologize if it's in the wrong place.
I love the way you say commando touring with you there. That's the way it is with me too. But in the end my dh always thanks me for it. I do wish we could spend 15 days there though. That would make it less hectic.
