Universal ticket options

[Guest]

Looking for some advice everyone. First time on Florida as a family of 6 (4 adults and 2 kids) we are staying in an apartment close to Disney this October. Tickets are bought for Disney and universal already.

We have been told by more than one person to book into a universal hotel for 2-3 days during the trip to take advantage of the universal parks fast pass equivalent, less travel time, early entrance into park etc. Question is, is it worth it the extra expense? Advice please!

[Sweets]

It depends on your budget because for a family of 6 it would mean 2 rooms so you’re probably looking at £600 per night for your party.

If you have the budget, a night on site can be great because you get express passes and early entry for the 2 days.

[Guest]

Wow more expensive than I thought. Thanks for the reply. We are considering it as I have heard horror stories about queue times at universal that express pass would avoid, and also travel time from Disney area to universal during rush hour (60 minutes minimum is what I’ve heard).

However is travel and waiting as bad as that? Is the reduced hassle worth £600?

[JessBlu]

We were there in June and didn’t queue much.

Get in early or Late to make the most of non queues.

Defo not worth £600 IMO.

[RobertWestwood]

It depends very much on when you are going. There are ways to minimise time in queues eg avoid weekends, use single rider lines etc.

Its also possible to buy express passes on the day eg you can buy them from as little as around $80 plus tax for a two park ticket per day so it might be that some of your party would want to use them and others might not

Generally it does work out cheaper to book the hotel (only three offer them, Royal Pacific, Hard Rock and Portofino Bay) as these give you unlimited passes for two days (the cheapest purchased are one use per ride only for one day) but in your case the number of persons in your party go against that

Remember that you don't all need to stay in the room, so you could book one room which will take 5, get the five FOTL passes that come with that and purchase one two park unilimited pass for example.

Its worth looking at as generally speaking, both universal parks will be very busy throughout the summer

[Nimbus]

We've only had Express passes once. We stayed 1 night at a Universal hotel to get these. We did this only because we wanted to get on as many rides as we could in 2 days at Universal (we were concentrating more on Disney). We only needed 1 room (there are only 3 of us) and it cost just about £210 for 2 days of Express passes - check-in day and check-out day.

Otherwise, if we had had more days to spend at Universal then I wouldn't have bothered staying onsite to get the Express passes. And every other time we've been we've never had Express passes. If you're planning on spending 3 or 4 days at Universal then I wouldn't spend hundreds of pounds on Express passes.

If you do what RobertWestwood suggests and book just one room for 2 nights and get unlimited Express passes for the extra person for the 3 days, you're still looking at an extra £740 to the price of your holiday (eg. £250 x 2 for hotel and £80 x 3 for Express passes). It's still expensive.

[Moorlandman]

I agree with Nimbus. If you are planning on visiting the parks over 3-4 days then you will easily get on all the rides several times without Express passes. Early mornings and evenings after 5pm are the best times to get on the rides