Universal Hotel Help

[Wysbob]

Hi Lovely Dibbers,

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, we have booked a Disney hotel for Oct 21, however we are looking to Direct flights from Glasgow. This would mean we would have to change our date at Disney as this was transferred from this year, but I had a light bulb moment and wonder if it would be feasible to do a 2 night stay at Universal Studios.

I'm just not sure what the packages are like and what hotels would be best to stay in, so any thoughts would I be grateful.

Also if I purchase a ticket for Universal do I have to use it within a certain time i.e 3 day.

Thanks everyone.

[Rescuer]

A 2 night stay at Universal is totally possible.

We have annual passes and other than that have only bought the 14 day tickets so I'm not up to date on ticket offers but I think companies like Orlando Attractions offer tickets valid for less days. Of late Universal themselves have had some deals with tickets.

I really like the hotels at Universal, we've stayed at 4 different ones.

The top 3 offer express pass for length of stay which is fabulous.
Royal Pacific is generally the cheapest. A lovely hotel. Great location, walking distance to the parks and city walk. the path brings you out closer to Islands of Adventure. Boat transportation is regular. We really like the pool there as well, large, great for swimming and our Ds loves that it has pool volleyball.

Hard Rock, closest distance, minutes to Universal Studios, we like the vibe and pool area is nice but the pool is fairly shallow, Ds likes the beach volleyball court.

Portofino, longest walk but not by that much, boat transportation. Largest rooms, I love the harbour area with Starbucks, the bar and Sals Pizza is pretty cheap and so good. 3 pools and all are nice.

If you don't want express pass we love Aventura, much cheaper, really compact hotel, great rooftop bar, small pool but I've never seen it busy. Really good food court. It is just across from Sapphire falls so you can use their boats or we walked through there and RPR to walk to the parks. Sapphire Falls is lovely too, not stayed there yet but it is next on my list, really nice inside with good food options as well.

We were at Aventura for a week in February, Hard Rock and Portofino last summer, Royal Pacific and Aventura last April, I've done trip reports for them all if you want to see pictures.

[Donaldfan]

Sapphire Falls is where I'm staying next year 😀

[Scaramouche]

We love Hard Rock - for us the express passes are needed so we try and stay in a deluxe for this. The only thing we don’t like about the hotel is the pool is shallow - but you can (or could, haven’t checked since covid) use the pools in the other hotels at universal.

One year we stayed in 7 (including the night in London) different hotels to keep costs down - it was great fun actually! But we did spend a night in Sapphire falls (arrival night, had dinner, crashed out and checked out early the next morning to move to HRH to get express passes). We really liked Sapphire Falls and the pool looked really lovely. If express passes weren’t a huge thing for us then we would stay here again.